Voicing the Voiceless: Exploring the Life of Precarity and Diasporic Subjectivity of the Migrant Workers in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People (2017)

The term Diaspora is a multifaceted nuanced one, ranging from a wide variety of immigrant experiences in the context of contemporary socio-political global scenario. Migrant experiences across the globe contextualize different migrant subjectivities, depending on individual subject position. The conventional notion of the idea of an ideal ‘homeland' or an indifferent ‘hostland' has been problematised in the context of the dynamic process of Global migration, displacement and re-discovery of the ‘self'. In the context of present-day diaspora and mass exodus of people across borders, the term Diaspora points out to an ambivalence that helps re-think the idea of homeland/ hostland. Deepak Unnikrishnan's Temporary People (2017) is such a testament of the precarity of the displaced migrant labourers that lays bare the predicament of the working class migrants in the gulf countries. Unnikrishnan, a writer from Abu Dhabi and a resident in the US, hails from a Malayali village in Kerala. Temporary People (2017) is his debut novel that poignantly explores the themes of precarity, homelessness and the predicament of migrant labourers in the gulf countries who are treated as modern day slaves due to the system of Kafala. Thus, Unnikrishnan lays bare the complex diasporic subjectivity by portraying the ‘lived experiences' of the migrant labourers who are considered as disposable cheap labour, an indispensable part of the country's economy, having no right to claim themselves as permanent citizens. Thus, my research paper aims at exploring the diasporic subjectivity of the migrant workers in the gulf countries who undergo the life of precarity, alienation and discrimination. By so doing, I would focus on how Unnikrishnan gives a voice to the ‘voiceless' and exposes the varied diasporic experiences, affected due to the system of Kafala. I have employed the theoretical frameworks of Homi. K. Bhabha's “Third Space” as brought out in his The Location of Culture ( 1994). In addition to these, I have employed other theoretical interventions of Vijay Mishra, Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben..