Imagined Mobility

Michiel Baas is a researcher with the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on India, the middle class, migration, transnationalism and mobility.

• List of Illustrations; List of Abbreviations and Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Departure - Migration, Transnationalism and What Lies In-Between; First Semester - Of Leaving and Arriving: From and to a Culture of Migration; Second Semester - Some History Lessons as well as Learning the Hard Way; Summer School - A History of Students Going Overseas; Third Semester - Learning How to Work In-Between: Legal and Illegal Realms; Fourth Semester - Graduating as a Migrant; Arrival - Imagined Mobility; A New Departure - Curry Bashing and Alien Space Invaders; Data, Dilemmas and Doing Fieldwork the Ethical Way; Notes; References; Index

‘Baas’s juggling between the big and the small, between the global transformations of higher education and the specific aspirations and life trajectories of his informants […] gives the book its texture and complexity. […] What makes ‘Imagined Mobilities’ a fine example of ethnographic writing is the modest and reflexive way in which it shows how [student-migrant] paths urge us to think beyond current ways of conceiving migration and transnationalism.’ —Brett Neilson, University of Western Sydney, in ‘Asian Studies Review’