Prof Parvati Raghuram
Professor
Biography
Professional biography
I completed my MA in India and my PhD at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I worked for many years at Nottingham Trent University before joining the Open University in 2005.
Research interests
My research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility of individuals, goods and ideas is reshaping the world. I have looked at the experiences of gendered workers in 'knowledge' sectors such as medicine, education and the IT sector. These issues have been studied through a range of interlinked projects (see below). My key concern is to understand the implications of mobility for class and race politics and the ways in which postcolonial theory can provide a route into such thinking. I have also taken concepts and ideas beyond the global north, thinking of the role of 'middle powers' and on how narratives and identities are co-produced across the global north and south. Alongside these issues I have also kept up an interest in methodological and epistemological issues and how these play out in education.
Current projects:
AHRC: (2024-2025) Building Equitable African Partnerships (PI)
AHRC: (2020-2025) Decolonising peace education in Africa (PI)
AHRC: (2019-2021) Contextualising peace education in Africa (PI)
ESRC-GCRF: (2017-2021): Migration and Inclusive African Growth (Co-I)
British Academy/Leverhulme: (2020-2021) Writing International Student Migration in Africa (Co-I)
Completed projects:
ESRC-Newton (2016-2019): Facilitating equitable access and quality education for development: South African International Distance Education http://ideaspartnership.org/ (PI)
ESRC: (2017-18): Smart Cities in the Making: Milton Keynes (Co-I)
ESRC (2016-18): Gender, Skilled Migration and IT industry: a comparative study of India and the UK
(PI)
A repository of research publications and other research outputs can be viewed at The Open University's Open Research Online.
Teaching interests
I am currently involved in the module DD216.
I am also developing Open Education Resources on Decolonising Pedagogy, Decolonising Peace Pedagogy and Creative Economies in Southern Africa
Impact and engagement
I have written a number of papers for thinktanks and INGOs such as ILO, UNRISD, IPPR and UNESCO.
Recent Reports
2022 Indian Women's Migration to the EU.
2020 Women IT Expatriates: Global Lessons from India
2019 Skilled Migration and IT Sector: A gendered analysis (India Migration Report 2019)
Public interventions
- TechPartnerships and the Open University (March 2018) Bridging the skills gap: lessons from India.
- NASSCOM Diversity and Inclusion Summit (March 2017), Bangalore; (March 2018), Chennai.Independent Parliamentary Trust (Feb 2017) Digital Skills: Bridging the Gap for Women in Technology, London.
- British Geriatric Society website Archive of Geriatrics (2016); British Geriatric Society Newsletter (June 2015);
- Research and communication associate, British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO). Editor of BAPIO journals 2007-2012 Harmony and Sushruta
External collaborations
I chair the Executive Board of Directors of IMISCOE.
I am on project advisory boards and on the editorial boards of several journals,
International links
My current project is AHRC funded and is called Building Equitable African Partnerships. My partners are the Oasis Peace Web and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre.
Projects
Migration for Inclusive African Growth
A new wave of economic dynamism in Africa has created a pressing challenge of translating this elite-based, resource-driven growth into more inclusive growth. Africa’s growth has intensified contemporary migration within and to the continent, with important implications for sustainable and inclusive growth in both ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ contexts. Therefore, the aim of the project is to understand how and to what extent contemporary migrant communities are taking advantage of, and contributing to, sustainable and inclusive growth in Africa. Despite being an important channel for trade, investment and skills development, little is known about the nature and potentially transformative outcomes of these diverse migration flows. In addressing this, the novelty of this project is threefold: (1) in analysing the impacts of migration through the lens of inclusive growth, (2) in exploring internal, regional and intercontinental migration together and moving the study of migration and development beyond South-to-North flows, and (3) in co-designing policy responses and capacity-building resources for optimising the contribution of migration to inclusive African growth. This proposal arises out of an ESRC GCRF network grant that has identified, through a series of workshops hosted by the African partners, that our knowledge of the size, motivations, organisation and impacts of recent flows of migrants and their relations with host communities is largely anecdotal, while official data is fragmented, inaccurate or partial. This proposal will produce the first multi-country comparative study of these groups in Africa, with a focus on how and with what impact these groups operate in the manufacturing and service sectors of four African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Mozambique) that are all on the OECD DAC list.
Publications
Book
Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction (2015)
Tracing an Indian Diaspora: Contexts, Memories, Representations (2008)
The Practice of cultural studies (2004)
South Asian women in the diaspora (2003)
Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, welfare and politics (2000)
Book Chapter
Intersectional research for migration studies (2024)
Revisiting Access in Debates on Internationalisation: Transnational Rights? (2024)
The sustainable development goals and skilled migration: A review and Agenda (2024)
The Entangled Infrastructures of International Student Migration: Lessons from Covid-19 (2022)
Gender and International Student Migration (2021)
Gendered Highly Skilled Migration in the Knowledge Sector (2020)
Geographies of gendered migration: Place as difference and connection (2020)
Skilled Migration and IT Sector: A Gendered Analysis (2019)
Gender, Migration and Social Reproduction (2018)
Care, women and migration in the global south (2015)
Knowledge, gender, and changing mobility regimes: women migrants in Europe (2013)
Genere, migrazione e lavoro di cura nel Sud globale (2012)
Women and migration in Asia – eroding borders, new fixities (2011)
Situating women in the brain drain discourse: discursive challenges and opportunities (2009)
Migration in a globalizing world: Knowledge, migration and development (2009)
Governing the mobility of skills (2008)
Representations: Contestations of/in the Indian Diaspora: Introduction to section 4 (2008)
Doing Diaspora: Identifications; Introduction to section 3 (2008)
Reconceptualizing UK’s transnational medical labour market (2008)
Thinking UK's medical labour market transnationally (2008)
Conceptualising Indian emigration: The development story (2007)
Feminist theorising as practice (2007)
Asian women medical migrants in the UK (2006)
Dis/placing migration theories (2006)
Global maid trade : domestic workers in the global market (2005)
Initiating the commodity chain: South Asian women and fashion in the diaspora (2004)
Crossing Borders: Gender and Migration (2004)
(Dis)locating south asian women in the academy (2003)
Skilled migratory regimes: The case of female medical migrants in the UK (2003)
Fashioning the south Asian diaspora: Production and consumption tales (2003)
Diasporic embeddedness and Asian women entrepreneurs in the UK (2002)
Religion and Development (1999)
Interlinking trajectories: migration and domestic work in India (1999)
Invisible agricultural labour in India (1998)
Journal Article
African women migration researchers and the question of reflexivity (2025)
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches (2025)
The role of place in international student mobility (2024)
Rethinking Migration Studies for 2050 (2024)
Conceptualising place and non-place in internationalisation of higher education research (2023)
Caring for the Manifesto—Steps toward Making It an Achievable Dream (2022)
New racism or new Asia: what exactly is new and how does race matter? (2022)
Platform urbanism, smartphone applications and valuing data in a smart city (2021)
The Future of The Geographical Journal : Engaging with Public Issues (2021)
Distance Education as socio-material assemblage: Place, distribution and aggregation (2020)
From Asia to the World: “Regional” Contributions to Global Migration Research (2019)
Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method (2019)
New directions in studying policies of international student mobility and migration (2018)
Provocations of the present: what culture for what geography? (2016)
Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North (2016)
Conceptualizing international education: From international student to international study (2015)
Oral history voicing differences: South Asian doctors and migration narratives (2014)
Rising Asia and postcolonial geography (2014)
International student migration: mapping the field and new research agendas (2013)
Theorising the spaces of student migration (2013)
Unsettling responsibility: postcolonial interventions (2012)
Global care, local configurations - challenges to conceptualizations of care (2012)
Women, migration, and care: explorations of diversity and dynamism in the global South (2012)
International migration and development in Asia: Exploring knowledge frameworks (2010)
Difference and distinction? Non-migrant and migrant networks (2010)
Ethnic clustering among South Asian geriatricians in the UK: an oral history study (2009)
Which migration, what development? Unsettling the edifice of migration and development (2009)
Rethinking responsibility and care for a postcolonial world (2009)
Caring about ‘brain drain’ migration in a postcolonial world (2009)
Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students (2009)
'Don't mix race with the specialty': interviewing South Asian overseas-trained geriatricians' (2009)
Migrant women in male-dominated sectors of the labour market: a research agenda (2008)
Interrogating the language of integration: the case of internationally recruited nurses (2007)
Towards a method for postcolonial development geography?: Possibilities and challenges (2006)
Gender and global labour migrations: incorporating skilled workers (2006)
Working a fraction and making a fraction work: a rough guide for geographers in the academy (2005)
Gender and skilled migrants: into and beyond the work place (2005)
Migration, gender, and the IT sector: intersecting debates (2004)
An introduction from the Guest Editors (2004)
Out of Asia: skilling, re-skilling and deskilling of female migrants (2004)
Big Brother: Reconfiguring the 'active' audience of cultural studies? (2002)
The state, skilled labour markets, and immigration: the case of doctors in England (2002)
Caste and gender in the organisation of paid domestic work in India (2001)
Gendering skilled migratory streams: implications for conceptualizations of migration (2000)
Diasporic connections: Case studies of asian women in business (1998)
Feminist research methodologies and student projects (1998)
Negotiating a market: a case study of an Asian woman in business (1998)
Domestic service as a survival strategy in Delhi, India (1993)
Report
Indian Women's Migration to the EU (2022)
The Implications of Migration for Gender and Care Regimes in the South (2009)
