Paper short abstract:

This feminist participatory research in the Sundarban region makes an attempt to understand adaptations as perceived by the Bangladeshi women moving to India, being primarily driven by environmental stressors. It particularly focuses on the everydayness of the community-led coping strategies.

Paper long abstract:

Sundarban- the largest mangrove forest in the world, sharing borders between India and Bangladesh is susceptible to environmental stressors. It has witnessed cross-border irregular mobilities owing to a host of different factors in the post-independence period. Among those, environmental stressors have increasingly become a primary driver in the face of climate change.

Moreover, the women of the region are disproportionately impacted owing to gendered hierarchies and their interrelations with the resources both for income generation and daily household activities. This, in turn, pushes many Bangladeshi women to move to the metropolitan city of Kolkata in India driven by porous borders, historical ties, cultural commonalities and the sense of ‘Bengaliness’ (ethnic identity). However, the multi-causal nature of such mobilities, data voids, absence of legal frameworks and gender-responsive policies to tackle the environmental crises further complicate the scenario for them.

My research project, thus, questions the dominant discourses of migration-as-adaptation and brings back the focus to the lived experiences and self-perceptions of these women. Applying various principles of co-produced feminist participatory action research, the project attempts at understanding what the women of Sundarban consider as “adaptation”, how they respond to the environmental stressors faced by them both before and after crossing borders and the ways in which they support each other across political borders as a community to re-build their lives and livelihoods.