In corollary, I also explore how labour and bargaining rights are conceptualized differently by film organizations based on their ideological positions. Focusing on the Malayalam language film industry based in Kerala, this article examines how the film industry’s apprenticeship and unpaid labour arrangements affect below-the-line labour and less influential job profiles on a film set. But such arrangements do not proffer equal participation or bargaining rights to everyone in the industry. more Labour discourses in the film industry are often couched in the language of ‘welfare’ and an effort to maintain harmony among different filmmaking sectors. Labour discourses in the film industry are often couched in the language of ‘welfare’ and an effo. In interrogating the matrices through which regionality, entrepreneurship, ethics and success as migrants are woven into such programming, I track how different agents use varying strategies to showcase heterogenous migrant experiences mediated by class, caste and fluctuations of capital. In this paper I examine how stratified audience categories are targeted by satellite television programming. The entertainment industry not only produces content for this demographic, but also works with expatriate Malayali communities on content that empowers them as creators of their own stories. In this paper I locate Malayali diasporic media formations from the late 1990s onward and examine how they contribute to the construction of the 'Gulf-Malayali' as a prominent vector for the satellite television industry based in the south Indian state of Kerala. more The proliferation of Malayalam satellite television in the Gulf indicates the primacy that Indian nationals from Kerala have attained as a significant televisual demographic. The proliferation of Malayalam satellite television in the Gulf indicates the primacy that Indian.