I’m Shubhankar Paul and I’m a student of the EUROSUD Cohort 2021-23 from India, with a background in European Studies and International Relations. I had the chance to attend my second semester of the programme in Athens and I am currently in Rome for my third mobility at LUISS Guido Carli University. For me, EUROSUD and its research track was a natural extension of my studies about Europe, and I was particularly attracted to the components of the coursework on migration: I represent the third generation in a twice-migrated family that migrated from Pakistan to India in the late 1940s, and later internally migrated across the linguistically and culturally diverse states of India, over the next few decades.
While being in the research track and anticipating its academic demands, I always found myself torn between the public policy side of migration and the ethnographic and anthropological side of migration. For my thesis, I have attempted to find a middle ground between my research interests, and I am scheduled to begin work on my master’s thesis on acculturation strategies of South Asian migrants in Italy and Greece this upcoming semester.
I chose Luiss Guido Carli University for my third mobility because I was attracted to the coursework on Migration Politics in the Mediterranean region, and rightly so. Prof. Stefania Panebianco helped us learn hands-on multilateralism and diplomacy with the help of a two-day simulation exercise. I must mention that this interest in migration was instilled in my second semester in Athens while studying the coursework on migration with Prof. Angeliki Dimitriadi. As well as the courses themselves at LUISS that I learned a lot from – Business Environment in the Mediterranean region and History of European Integration to name a few – I greatly benefitted from the learning infrastructure at LUISS. The infrastructure is built to help students function efficiently: well-lit and equipped reading rooms, computer rooms, libraries, a 24-hour canteen and a beautiful campus with intriguing architecture, all serve as icing on the cake.
At LUISS, you also get the opportunity to socialise with the academic elites and professionals from the disciplines of politics, diplomacy, law and journalism – this greatly enhances the socio-cultural capital of the students in my opinion.
I also feel a certain sense of pleasure and responsibility to be studying what I do because migrants and migration will determine the future of not only the affairs of Europe, but also the rest of the world. As a student from the Global South with research interests in migrants’ lives, I would urge more students to pursue this discipline – the academic output on migrants from particularly South Asia in South Europe, is disproportionately understudied, in my opinion, when examined with respect to the migrant population they represent in south European countries. I am grateful to EUROSUD and LUISS faculties for their efforts to contribute to more academic output in this understudied field and at the same time, helping me, as a post-graduate student to accurately identify the intersection of my broader research interests in European studies and my associated identity as a Global South student from South Asia.
Shubhankar Paul