Personal Profile

Jagat Sohail is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on questions of migration, mobility and flight, and the way in which these phenomena intersect with notions and practices of self, labour and political economy. The core concern at the centre of his research is the question “what moves people?”. His research thus far has primarily focused on the reception of newcomers in Germany, where he conducted his doctoral research with young, male asylum seekers and refugees from the Middle East who arrived in Berlin in and around what became known as Germany’s “long summer of migration” of 2015/16. His previous research charts the enduring consequences of the much publicised Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) of the time on the long-term prospects of mutual belonging between newcomers and their host communities in an increasingly fraught and polarised German context. His work brings together insights from the fields of economic anthropology and political economy on the one hand, and psychological anthropology and psychoanalysis on the other, to explore themes such as boundaries, drives and motivations, hospitality, reciprocity and sacrifice in the lives of people on the move and those that receive them. For his postdoctoral research he is turning his attention to the current wave of migration from India to Germany. In particular, he is interested in the movement of students from the north of India - many of whom are absorbed into Berlin and Germany’s ‘gig economies’ as delivery couriers, as well as the migration of male nurses from the southern state of Kerala, brought in under the German state’s “Triple Win Programme” to fill acute labour shortages in the healthcare industry.