IAPS travel bursary for Reshaad Durgahee

Reshaad Durgahee is a second year PhD candidate in the School of Geography. Reshaad’s research compares the experiences and identities of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritius and Fiji during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Mauritius became the first British colony to receive indentured labourers to work on its sugar plantations (450,000) and Fiji the last (60,000). The research examines the immigrants’ experience of space – their trans-colonial mobility juxtaposed with their relative immobility at the domestic level. The elite and subaltern links between the two colonies forged through indenture is also investigated. It is proposed that these links created an Indo-Pacific arena and engendered a figurative ‘indentured archipelago’ consisting of colonies in the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific Oceans, including Mauritius and Fiji. Reshaad has completed his fieldwork in Mauritius, and will be travelling to Canberra and Fiji in May to consult archival material over a three month period.