The partnership behind Miles Away is an attempt to ground intellectual research within the ongoing, long-term work of organizations committed to creating structural change in communities.
A small team of Khabar Lahariya journalists and editors conducted interviews with migrant workers and their families. The design of the interviews, their analysis, and their research outcomes were all decided through collective and collaborative processes. Research funds obtained from the project’s affiliated North American universities were used to fund KL staff to travel to brick kiln migrant families’ home villages and continue their reportage on the state of women workers’ rights throughout the country.
Meanwhile, the project’s union partner Building and Woodworkers International was clear in their agenda of building organized labour power for both kiln workers and Khabar Lahariya reporters. The plan was to build feminist labour power by directly engaging journalists and media producers from the Dalit and OBC communities who themselves came from communities and families involved in migrant brick kiln work.
Investigating labour and debt in this way—through situated and embedded filmmaking—invites viewers to reflect upon the ways gender, caste, and race constitute unpayable debt within the lives of rural migrant workers.
