Ayesha Pattnaik

DPhil Candidate

Affiliation: 
Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Expert in: 
Cities and migration, Migration governance and policy, Migration narratives, representations, and public opinion
Geographic focus:  
India, South Asia

Ayesha studies the experiences of law and citizenship among internal migrant workers in India. Her doctoral research is based on a year-long, multi-sited ethnography with migrants from Odisha in eastern India who work in the informal economy of the south-Indian state Kerala. She documents how migrants navigate informality and legal frameworks in their destinations. She focuses on migrants' perspectives on the law and how these change as they move across state borders. Trained as a sociologist, she previously worked in India's development sector as a researcher on a variety of projects. She is interested in socio-legal and ethnographic approaches to studying intersecting vulnerabilities of migration, informality, and citizenship.