Positionality and the Relational Production of Place in the Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan

This chapter explores the different lifeworlds and socio-spatial environments in which male and female Wakhi student migrants from Gojal are situated after moving from their rural high mountain valley for higher education to Gilgit, the major city and educational centre of the Gilgit-Baltistan region in northern Pakistan. It introduces and presents selected places as key arenas of the student migrants’ everyday lives and interactions, such as the village place, public space in Gilgit town, the female hostel place, and the campus place of the Karakorum International University. It shows how the migrants’ socio-spatial positionality is modified and renegotiated in these places and describes the ways in which in turn these places are reshaped through the migrant’s (inter-) actions.