Each year a small portion of AoIR conference fees go toward several Kelly Quinn Travel Scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their research interests.
Who are you?
Subham Basak
Where are you from?
University of Oxford
What is your current area of study?
Doctor of Philosophy in International Development
Describe the research you will present at AoIR2024
Livelihood-related Internet use among low-privileged young men in Kolkata
This study investigates, with a qualitative framework, how urban young men of low-privileged backgrounds in Kolkata (in eastern India) access digital content, mostly on YouTube, to acquire skills for and information about income opportunities in the face of a lack of access to quality institutions. In addition to having a Global South focus in a study of the Internet, this research goes one step further to not see the Global South as a monolithic category but acknowledges the existence of hierarchies of socio-economic privileges in its population. For instance, it does not believe in ignoring the enormous differences in life-worlds and life chances of an industrialist and a rag-picker residing in the same neighbourhood in India.
With the backdrop of stark inequalities in opportunities for employment in India, mainly shaped by the source, level, and quality of formal education, the participants of this study stand at a significant disadvantage since their family lacked the means to send them to private schools. By choosing to bring to light the experiences of young men from ‘low-privilege backgrounds’, this study recognizes the intersections of age, gender and privilege in forming contexts for Internet use in the Global South. It also succeeds to address their tensions of being the supposedly dominant gender and having multiple constraints in financial, social and cultural capital while living in a Global South metropolitan city. More specifically, it asks whether and how the outcomes of Internet use related to finding suitable livelihood options are shaped by their specific life contexts which influence the necessity and scope of application of such information.
This research contributes both to knowledge of digital experiences from the Global South and extends the theories of domestication of digital technology and digital divides to youth in low privilege settings, thus representing a distinctive perspective of under-represented populations. In addition, the final findings will provide detailed ethnographic insights into the lives of the young men to also discuss the balance between various uses of the internet; for skills and for entertainment, and how they negotiate the challenges of digital industries offering them a mix of both, but which only some of them can utilize to enhance their life chances.
Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If so, what was your experience? If #AoIR2024 in Sheffield is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference? What do you expect from it?
No, I have not presented at AoIR in the past.
AoIR’s efforts and focus to form a global community of scholars from all parts of the globe and open opportunities to those fresh in the field has been a key attraction for me personally, being a PhD student who has migrated to the UK from the Global South with no academic pedigree in my family. Its global reach is already good and growing, and I hope to experience important research from all over the world.
In the conference, I expect to attain valuable feedback for my work that can help me develop it further. I also expect to network with leading academics and students to exchange ideas and look for possible collaborations in the future.
