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This paper analyses findings of the 'PROWELLMIGRANTS'2 project, which qualitatively investigated COVID‐19 impacts on migrants' well‐being and mental health in Kerala, India. It draws on a novel conceptual framework that combines assemblage‐thinking with theories of social contracts in disasters. The paper first explores how past development processes and contemporary migration policies in Kerala, and India more widely, generated conditions of vulnerability for migrant workers in Kerala prior to the pandemic. Next it shows that Government of Kerala interventions, in some cases supported by the central Government of India, temporarily addressed these vulnerabilities during the pandemic. In acknowledging the helpful response of the Kerala government, we problematise its stance on migrant workers during 'normal' times and speculate that permanently addressing these conditions of vulnerability would be a more logical approach. We acknowledge this involves overcoming many wider barriers. Thus, the paper also contains national‐level policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper is joint reflection on the role of research assistants (RAs) in fieldwork for disaster risk research, particularly at the doctoral level. The paper has been co-authored by Gurung, who worked as a RA with the other author McGowran during his doctoral field research in Kalimpong from May 2019 to January 2020. The piece allows Gurung to voice his ideas on the research in a published research output and allows both authors to reflect on how the collaborative approach taken helped to make the research more responsive to, and reflective of, the problems people affected by landslides in Kalimpong face. The paper aims to highlight the benefits of working with RAs on landslide prevention and management in areas that may be unfamiliar and to provide a space for the RAs to voice their opinion on the research. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is split into sections written by and in the voice of the authors. This reflects a compromise between wanting Gurung's voice to be clearly heard in the piece and the challenges of non-academically trained RAs contributing to academic outputs that require specific training. Brief outlines of Kalimpong district disaster research in the region are set out by McGowran initially. Gurung then outlines how he became involved in the research and how this affected the research methodology. He reflects on how the research played out and presents some brief reflections on the findings. McGowran then concludes the piece. Findings: The authors discuss how landslides in Kalimpong are related to locally specific political, economic, cultural and physical processes. It is only through discussing these processes with the people who live with and are affected by these landslides that this more holistic understanding can be gained, even though complete explanations are never usually found. Ideas for further research into landslides in Kalimpong and elsewhere are presented, centering on the involvement of people affected by disasters in this research. Originality/value: The authors hope the publication of the paper might set more of a precedent for the voice of RAs – and those who are affected by disasters – to be more clearly heard in disaster risk research and practice in future. More of this type of research could help to address some of the issues this special issue raises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that landslides ought to be understood as geopolitical processes. The argument is based on a study into the causes and impacts of landslides in Kalimpong District, West Bengal, India. The article is based on six months of qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2019 and early 2020. Several semi-structured interviews with both landslide victims and some other key informants provide most of the data for the article. This was complemented by field notes and other ethnographic methods. Landslide prone Kalimpong District sits mostly in The Eastern Himalayan foothills and is West Bengal's newest district, annexed from Darjeeling district in 2017. That year also saw the third major uprising of a century-long movement for a separate Indian state of Gorkhaland, of which Kalimpong would be a part. The intersections of that movement and its drivers with disaster risk and its management in Kalimpong are the primary focus of the article. I make sense of these intersections by advancing a conceptual framework that combines assemblage-based geographical theories of disaster risk and the concept of geopolitical assemblages. This allows me to, by narrating people's experiences and understandings of three specific landslides, illustrate that geopolitical processes make landslides possible and then exacerbate and prolong their impacts. The article makes novel theoretical contributions to geographical literatures on infrastructure, geopolitics, and hazards. It also provides a critical, contemporary overview of the geopolitical context of the Eastern Himalayas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on previous work that has sought to link assemblage theory with the study of disaster risk. Specifically, we propose that the existing idea of a 'disaster risk management assemblage' can be used in two ways. The first is an overall approach to analysing disaster risk. The second is to conceptualise disaster risk management assemblages as objects of study. These are the assemblages, or apparatuses, that seek to manage – but also create – disasters-in-the-making. We go on to explore how these ideas can be used in empirical research and how they can help us to imagine doing research differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]