Goat Days by Benyamin

This essay is based on your reading of Goat Days by Benyamin. And the article on the migration of workers from Kerala to the countries of the Persian Gulf.

How does the academic treatment of labor migration compare to its fictional treatment in the novel? Does the novel reveal aspects of the experience that academic research does not? And conversely does academic research reveal aspects of the phenomenon that fiction does not? Which is more important for understanding the phenomenon of labor migration: the macro level analysis of the social sciences or micro account of subjective experience that novels portray?