Professor Datta's research interests span migration, development, gender and finance, and has contributed to critical understandings of transnational migration, financialisation and migrants’ financial practices. Her current and recent projects have investigated the intersections between transnational migration and the shifting nature, politics and sensibility of work in global cities; migrants’ everyday remittance, debt, inheritance and charitable practices within the broader context of financial in/exclusion; the financialisation of remittance intermediaries/money transfer organisations and the increased significance of digital finance in migrants’ lives.
With a particular interest in masculinities, Professor Datta is interested in interrogating how gender is shaped by, and in turn shapes, migration. She is also working with colleagues in the London International Development Centre’s-Migration Leadership Team to develop the ESRC and AHRC’s strategy for funding migration and displacement research. Her work has explored both global south to south and global south to north migrations, and she works in Southern Africa, India and the U.K.
In addition to publishing numerous journal articles, she is author of Migrants and their Money: Surviving Financial Exclusion in London (Policy Press: 2012); co-author of Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour (Policy Press: 2010) and co-editor of Housing and Finance in Developing Countries (Routledge: 1999).