Thanggoulen Kipgen
Dr. Thanggoulen Kipgen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, India. His research focuses on migration, borderlands, urban sociology, ethnography, and the social worlds of Northeast India. His work combines ethnographic depth with critical sociological analysis, offering significant insights into the experiences of migrants and the complexities of identity formation in contemporary urban contexts. He has also undertaken substantial research on transborder migration from the Indo–Myanmar borderland to Singapore, examining how globalisation, kinship networks, and religious institutions shape the mobility and reconstitution of Kuki communities across international boundaries.
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India
Session
This paper examines how international borders and state-making processes disrupted the historical continuity of the Kuki people as a transborder community across the Indo–Myanmar borderland. The colonial drawing of boundaries and the subsequent consolidation of nation-states fragmented Kuki kinship ties, producing political, social, and cultural disconnections between Kuki populations in India and Myanmar. However, contemporary migration to Singapore, shaped by globalisation, labour mobility, and transnational networks, has created new spaces for reconnection. In Singapore, shared kinship and ethnic networks enable the circulation of information, collective decision-making, and mutual support, allowing previously separated Kuki groups to rebuild relationships beyond the constraints of national borders. The paper further explores the central role of the church within this diasporic setting, showing how religious institutions provide a unifying platform for reconstituting Kuki identity. By fostering communal belonging, facilitating interaction between Kukis from both sides of the border, and healing divisions produced by earlier geopolitical separations, the church emerges as a key site where transborder solidarity is revived in a global city.