Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing

Labour migration to Saudi Arabia is considered a system-legitimising and commonplace phenomenon in Pakistan for economic, political, and cultural reasons: the Kingdom acts as an influential external actor in Pakistan at the (security) political, economic, and cultural levels. It is also the most important recipient country of Pakistani migrants. For these reasons, critical issues related to migration are rarely addressed in the Pakistani public sphere and are instead taboo. In recent years, however, new Pakistani public actors from civil society, media, and international organisations have begun to challenge this taboo. They want to make the precarious working and living conditions of migrants, structural violence, and the systemic exploitation within the migration process visible in the media. In this way, the new public actors contribute to a change in the media in Pakistan that challenges existing narratives and taboos on migration. Based on extensive empirical data, the book analyses the media practices and strategies used by these actors to expand limited public spaces on migration in Pakistan.