The theme of the book is visualizing migrant lives and livelihoods. It is a book of photographs taken in the field by the Principal Investigators and the researchers in Guwahati and Jalandhar, over the course of the field based research funded by UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) - Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR), for the Collaborative Project "From the Margins: Exploring Low Income Migrant Workers Access to Basic Services". The book will also include photographs taken by the migrants about their own lives and work. These latter images emerged from workshops conducted with migrants, organized by Dr. Jeevan Sharma [PI University of Edinburgh] Prof. Anuj Kapilashrami [Co-PI, University of Essex], and Ms. Anurita Hazarika of NEN, at the two research sites, Guwahati, Assam and Jalandhar, Punjab.

Radhika Chopra, formerly Professor of Sociology, is author of Amritsar 1984: A City Remembers and of Militant and Migrant: The Politics and Social History of Punjab. Deeply interested in visual cultures, she has edited Ways of Worship (2020), based on fieldwork photographs taken by anthropologists. She has published extensively on visual cultures, on migration and on gender and South Asian masculinities.