Introduction

Does darkness bear light and colour? What is the circle of illumination without the shadow? The significance of these questions weighs heavily while exploring the dark reality of the human condition, as manifested in the lives of migrants and mobile populations. The book is a collection of mobile ethnographies, which capture the dispositions, ambiguities, and dissonances in the lived experiences of mobile populations, and how they reconcile with and make sense of their situations. It illustrates that mobility is never in stasis but a site of strife and dissension. Whether it is a nomadic community in Kutch, tribal urban youth in Ranchi, mobile rural youth in Chhattisgarh, the Musahars, an ex-untouchable community in Bihar, migrant labour in Delhi during the COVID-19 lockdown, north Indian Muslim migrants as well as the homeless in Mumbai, tribal plantation workers in Kerala or Char dwellers in Assam—these varied contexts bring out the intricacies of mobile lives and their lifeworlds. All the ethnographies grapple with the innate question of what extreme inequality and vulnerability can convey about the innate desire for freedom. Concomitantly, how does mobility express and give shape to this awareness?