Introduction

This project addresses the epistemological injustices done to the Pakistani community by focusing on their movement from New York City to the Broome County area during and after the pandemic. Since 2020, more than 500 hundred Pakistani families have migrated to the area and many more are planning to come. These doubly marginalized families are less or little represented in existing digital archives. I call them doubly marginalized because COVID 19 put these already struggling people into a vulnerable situation. Moreover, in my observation the group I focus on (Pakistani migrant families) is marginalized even within the archives that claim to preserve the South Asian archives.

This digital archive preserves the stories of Pakistani re-migrants who moved from New York City to Broome County area because of loneliness, job loss, lack of support, insecurity, financial crisis and above all representational injustice. These Pakistani immigrants first moved from Pakistan to New York City and through years of hard work made that place their home. Most of these Pakistani -Americans are second or third generation of Pakistani immigrants who left their country and settled in New York City under different circumstances.

These immigrants usually hesitate to articulate their experiences especially because of the stereotyping, vigilante violence and racism they experienced after 9/11. Extending Yusef Omowale’s argument (“We Already Are”), this project creates an alternative archive because “the mainstream repositories” remain oblivious to the marginalized subjects too afraid to speak and too oppressed to claim their rights. This project produces stories to undo the silence imposed on the New York City based Pakistani community facing poverty, homelessness, discrimination, and health risks, especially during COVID 19. It preserves the stories of the vulnerable and marginalized community to resist “the violence perpetrated against them” because of the lack of their effective representation (Bergis Jules, “Confronting Our Failure of Care…”).

Binghamton Universities Libraries featured this project on their blog with the title Digital Byte: Engaging in community building through digital storytelling.