Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I -- Prelude: "This Is Pakistan" -- Regulating the unthinkable: Violence, migration, and the making of the state -- Concerning voluntary migrants -- After Hijrat: The urban and subjective terrain of settlement -- The one, divisible -- Part II -- Prelude: Ilaaqa Ghair - Sensing urban violence/becoming a nation -- The "rise" of the MQM: Urban non-elite citizens and the space of martial rule -- Questioning Muslim Nationalism.

"The Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), propelled by ethnic violence and led by university students with lower-middle-class backgrounds, transformed the cities of the southern Pakistani province of Sindh into an ethnic majoritarian stronghold at the unlikely height of a military dictatorship. The more novel aspect of the MQM's platform was its demand for the recognition of Muhajirs as a separate, "oppressed nationality" within Pakistan. Questioning Migrants is a granular historical and ethnographic study of the MQM's capacity to think beyond the exclusivism of Muhajir nationalism toward its contingency and toward a more plural and subaltern framing of the universal. It speaks to significant themes in Pakistan studies: the legacies of Partition, the rise of the martial state, and the dynamics of urbanization and democracy"-- Provided by publisher.