| Summary/Abstract |
Migration in its broadest sense implies spatial mobility, which is as old as human civilization itself. Research on migration came to be institutionalised since the 1960’s in the Western academia. The colonial states twin projects of state building and development led to the emergence of entirely new forms of migration, which were firmly rooted in the political economy of the colonial state and were highly gendered. Labour migration occurred within the confines of the colonies, in the emerging urban centres, mining and industrial sites and commercial farms became an important site for migration studies. The large-scale human movements at the behest of the colonial state, whether voluntary or forced, constitute an arena for the migration researchers. Researches on migration have focussed too on early migrations, in terms of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the Americas. In the past two or three decades, however, also the African dimensions of the Atlantic slave trade, “African slavery” and the “oriental slave” trade have been increasingly well researched.
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