In recent decades, Italy has become a major destination for migrants from cities and villages in the northern Indian state of Punjab. While much attention has focused on economic and legal aspects – such as labour conditions, gang-mastering, and intermediation – questions of intra-group social hierarchies and power dynamics around caste and gender have often been overlooked. Yet these profoundly shape the aspirations, opportunities, and experiences of migrants and their transnational families, and are themselves deeply transformed in the process.
It’s in this space that Annamaria Laudini, a PhD researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences, situates her research. "My interest lies in understanding how migration can reconfigure deeply-rooted social hierarchies and inequalities," she explains, "In particular, I study how caste, gender, and class shape Punjabi migrants’ experiences in Italy, and how, in turn, migration transforms these power relations both at the places of destination and of origin."
Her work spans multiple sites, in Italy and Punjab, and is sustained by lasting relationships she developed with people from all social backgrounds, deep immersion in the study of Punjabi language and culture, and an ethnographic approach to observing, interviewing, and surveying. Rather than focusing only on those who migrate, she also follows the lives of those in the villages of origin – parents, siblings, and spouses – offering a rare transnational perspective.
Annamaria’s intellectual journey began with a year-long solo trip to India, an experience that inspired her to question and reflect on the social constructs shaping identity. "I put into question many of the expectations and norms related to gender, class, nationality, that structure our lives," she recalls. Later, while pursuing a Master’s degree in Applied Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, she conducted her first ethnographic work with Indian women in Rome, her hometown.
"Ethnography felt like a revolution," she says. "The meaningful exchanges that generate from first-hand engagement in people’s lives, the high standards of empathy, self-reflexivity, and attentiveness to the details of what people say and not say, all this made me really fall in love with anthropology and with ethnography."
For her PhD, she moved to a rural town in Italy with a significant Punjabi population and immersed herself in local life – visiting temples, participating in community events, conducting interviews, and building relationships that would later open the door to fieldwork in the villages of Punjab.
"During this research, I found that this migrant community, often depicted as a homogeneous group and highly stereotyped in Italian public media, is actually very diverse, dynamic, and heterogeneous in terms of caste, religion, and class. It became more and more clear to me that I had to take these aspects into account, and thus I developed my research questions around these axes."
Her work sheds light on the transnational experiences of mobility of the Ravidassia, a Dalit religious community that separated from Sikhism – the main religion of Punjab – in the 21st century in response to long-lasting caste discrimination and tensions, which culminated in the 2009 killing of a Ravidassia religious leader. Through migration and religion, Ravidassia members have found new opportunities to assert their identity and challenge entrenched caste hierarchies.
"The Ravidassia achieved high levels of upward mobility through migration and show an impressive capacity for self-assertion thanks to transnational networks and powerful symbols like Ambedkar and Ravidass, who promoted equality and advocated for the liberation of Dalit and women from any oppressive social structures," she explains. "I experienced first-hand the power and strength of this community when I participated in the yearly pilgrimage to Varanasi on the ‘Begampura express’ train (the name standing for the utopian ideal of an equal world), organised on the occasion of Ravidass’ birth anniversary, where Ravidassia people gather in mass from all over the world, to claim a new social space."
Annamaria’s position as a young Italian woman played a complex role in her research. In Italy, her gender identity helped foster close connections with Punjabi women, whose experiences are often underrepresented in both scholarship and public discourse. At the same time, being a native Italian and an independent researcher granted her a certain freedom from societal expectations, allowing her to also navigate predominantly male spaces.
In Punjab, she visited six of the villages linked to the migrants she had interviewed in Italy, staying with their families. There, she was treated like a daughter – protected yet somewhat constrained in her movements. "It was very insightful to be positioned like that," she reflects, "because it embodied the experience of gender in the family." This shifting dual positionality offered her a unique window into the community’s social norms and expectations.
Rather than a discrete phase of research, Annamaria sees fieldwork as a continuous process built on relationships that continue long after interviews end. "Every person I met wasn’t just a one-time interaction. I’m still in touch with many interviewees and survey participants – we follow up with messages and calls," she explains. These evolving connections are emotionally and time-intensive, but offer insights no other method can provide. "These relationships create the conditions to unsettle the (very unsettling) power imbalance that’s always there between the researcher and the researched."
"In studies of migration, there is this assumption that when migrants arrive in a new place, their social identities cease to matter – but that’s not the case, especially when there is a growing diaspora, which can reproduce its norms and networks abroad," Annamaria found. "Caste and gender continue to shape the migratory experience of Punjabis in Italy, influencing networks, opportunities, and social relations." At the same time, migration can open up space to challenge those very structures. "I met women who, through migration, have managed to re-negotiate their roles within the family," she explains. "Some challenged the practice of arranged marriage, and even more importantly, some rejected the expectation to marry within their caste, which is precisely how caste and gender hierarchies reproduce – as Ambedkar critically noted."
However, if there is something that all migrants share, it is the experience of the structural and legal constraints in the country of reception. "The drive for social mobility is strong in the diaspora," Annamaria explains, "but it’s also very limited by institutional barriers – especially the restrictions faced by non-EU migrants under highly selective and increasingly discriminatory migration and citizenship regimes." While these systems don’t entirely prevent change, they complicate people’s chances to resist the multiple unequal relations in which they are entrenched. "That’s why I try to highlight the agency of the people I work with – Dalits, women, migrants – even as they navigate systems that are not designed for them to succeed."
Central to Annamaria’s ability to conduct this research has been her knowledge of the Punjabi language. "I started learning Punjabi in my first year at the EUI, and the Institute was incredibly helpful – it supported my classes from the very beginning." She later received research grants and mission funding that covered fieldwork expenses and allowed her to work with local research assistants, including Ajay and Sonia. "Their help has been precious," she adds.
At the EUI, Annamaria found both academic support and a dynamic intellectual environment that allowed her project to take shape. Mission funding, language training, and participation in working groups on gender, migration, qualitative methods, and decoloniality, helped her develop an engaged and reflective approach. "All researchers here have unique interests and views of the world, which lead to potentially endless discussions; professors are all very accessible, and the staff is extremely professional and kind, making the EUI the best environment to do your research independently, but with strong support," she notes.
As for the challenges, there are many. "Qualitative research submerges you with a mountain of data of different kinds – notes, diaries, interviews, transcripts, photos, audios, videos, all of which are updating and constantly growing. It can feel overwhelming at times," she reflects, "and some of that data can be very sensitive." One of the most complex aspects of her work is the question of representation and confidentiality. "You always want to make sure that your findings do not endanger the people you’re working with and are not used for the wrong agendas."
Her research efforts were also deeply appreciated by the community. "Punjabis – and the Ravidassia in particular – were always excited to find out that research was being done about them, and happy to meet an Italian who was making the effort to speak their language and understand their culture. The support I received from the community always gave me a lot of motivation to continue exploring and asking questions."
That linguistic and cultural exchange was mutual. During her fieldwork in Italy, Annamaria helped establish an Italian language course funded by EU integration funds. "I realised that I was only staying for a few months, and I wanted to give something positive back to the people that had so openly and generously welcomed me," she says. "So, as a kind of legacy, I helped to set up this Italian course."
Ethnography, for her, is not simply a method – it’s an ethical and generative practice. "As a researcher, you are also transformed," she reflects. "That’s where the magic of anthropology lies, both you as a researcher and the subjects of your research can be deeply changed in the encounter."
But that transformation, she notes, comes with responsibility. "One has to be very careful to make sure that any intervention does not – to say the least – yield a negative effect. We need to recognise that, as researchers, we have the upper hand in our position of knowledge producers. Our work is sustained and funded by specific knowledge regimes, and we rely on this privilege to access people and information. It is thus our responsibility to use this power wisely: not to abuse it, not to be extractive, not to misrepresent people, but to generate positive change for those we work with and society in general."
This reflection came into sharp focus during a conversation with a Ravidassia girl in Punjab. "I asked her, 'What would you like me to write about you and your community?'" Annamaria recalls. "And she replied: ‘On us Dalits, so much research has been done on how we are discriminated, how we are poor. What we want is you to tell a different story – of how we have risen, how we are trying to rise further, and what are the obstacles to our growth. Not just how we are oppressed. We know that already.'"
It’s this desire to 'tell a different story' that animates Annamaria’s research and shapes her vision of its purpose. "The way I see my research?" she says, "As a researcher, I do not want to speak for others but from them, with them, and to them, in view of uniting in the common struggle to a more equal society where everyone’s voice is heard and treated with the same respect."
Despite these tensions, or perhaps because of them, her commitment remains clear: to produce knowledge that is critical, inclusive, and rooted in real, sustained human relationships. "Research should be about building bridges," she says, "We need to be open to an exchange."
Annamaria Laudini is a PhD researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences. Her thesis is titled ‘Social Mobility among Punjabi migrants in Italy.’ Annamaria’s thesis supervisor is Fabrizio Bernardi (Former EUI Professor).