The Routes, Roots, and Narrative: South Asian Migration and the Gulf conference, hosted by Habib University on 17 August 2026, brings together scholars, policymakers, practitioners, journalists, artists, and students to examine one of the most consequential migration corridors linking South Asia and the Gulf. For over five decades, migration to the Gulf has profoundly shaped South Asian and Pakistan’s economy, labour markets, family life, and transnational social worlds, while raising pressing questions about development, mobility, citizenship, labour rights, identity, and belonging.
Situated within the wider context of South–South migration, the conference explores the movement of people from South Asia to the Gulf as a defining feature of contemporary globalisation. While these migrations have generated livelihoods, remittances, and new opportunities for millions, they have also revealed the inequalities embedded within global labour markets and temporary migration regimes. The conference seeks to create an interdisciplinary platform that examines migration not only as a question of economics and public policy, but also as a lived experience shaped by memory, culture, emotion, and imagination.
A distinctive feature of the conference is its commitment to fostering dialogue across disciplines and perspectives. Alongside scholarship on migration governance, labour regimes, development, and political economy, the conference brings together diverse approaches to the study of migration, encouraging exchanges between theoretical, empirical, and interdisciplinary research. By placing these perspectives in conversation, the conference seeks to deepen our understanding of migration as both a structural phenomenon shaped by historical, political, and economic processes and a lived experience that affects individuals, families, and communities across different contexts.
The conference also seeks to engage critically with questions of governance, regulation, and social justice. It invites reflection on recruitment infrastructures, labour protections, temporary migration regimes, transnational care, and the responsibilities of both sending and receiving states. At a time when migration continues to shape societies across South Asia and the Gulf, these conversations are essential for imagining more equitable, ethical, and rights-based approaches to labour mobility.
The conference emerges from two undergraduate courses offered at Habib University that approach migration from complementary perspectives. One of the courses is Global Migration, which introduces students to key debates on the ways migration influences institutions, multilateral and bilateral agreements, and everyday life. The course examines how global inequalities shape migration processes and discourses, as well as their impact on migration policies, governance institutions, and the lived experiences of individuals and communities. The other is Petrocultures: The Politics of Oil, which examines how oil has transformed societies, economies, cultures, and political life, with particular attention to Gulf petro-economies, South Asian labour migration, and the enduring imagination of the "Gulf dream." Together, these courses have encouraged students to think critically about migration through the lenses of political economy, history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and environmental humanities, demonstrating the value of interdisciplinary inquiry in understanding one of the defining migration stories of our time.
By bringing together academics, policymakers, civil society organizations, writers, artists, and migrant advocates, Routes, Roots, and Narrative seeks to create a vibrant forum for interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration. It is envisioned not simply as a one-day conference, but as the beginning of an ongoing conversation on migration, mobility, and justice in South Asia and the Gulf - one that advances scholarship, informs policy, and centres the voices and experiences of migrants themselves.
