Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the labour migration theory from a narrative of Bangladeshi to the Gulf States from both known and established facts and features, and those that are not so well documented but together they give it a distinct character.

Paper long abstract:

Between 1976 and 2015, more than seven million Bangladeshi labour migrated to the Gulf States, which was equivalent to three-quarters of the total labour outmigration from the country. Remittances sent by migrants through official channels reached a record high level of US$ 14.6 billion in 2015, nearly two-thirds of which came from the sweat and blood of the temporary labour migrated to the Gulf States.

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the labour migration theory from a narrative of Bangladeshi to the Gulf States from both known and established facts and features, and those that are not so well documented but together they give it a distinct character. The paper goes into the depth and breadth of the inside story by digging deeper into the causal domain through an analysis of the nuances and complexities of the migration decision-making. It also highlights the important role played by migrants' social networks as well as recruitment agencies and sub-agents in inducing the crave for a 'Bhalo' visa (one that would yield better work opportunities and higher incomes) from the country's nook and cranny to the Gulf States. The narrative draws largely on the author's empirical studies and also from the secondary literature.

From the narrative the paper highlights a set of new paradigms which confront conventional wisdom. It calls for generation of new theories to take into account this paradigm shift in explaining the causalities and outcomes of labour migration.

Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

How do we understand the mobility of people, and the transformations brought by the mobility to the lives of migrants? Time and space determine the varied causes and types of migration, and thus the effects of migration. Most debates about the migration privilege the economic perspectives and the north-south transmigrants at the cost of social and ideological dimensions and the south-south migration, and hardly include temporary migrant workers in the discourses. Against this backdrop, this paper reflects, through methods of storytelling, the way that migration influences the sense of belonging. How do migrants renegotiate a feeling of belonging when they are back home? This article scrutinises the subjective experiences of individual migrants and how those experiences are constructed by and in turn construct migrants' sense and politics of belonging. Three Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers' stories are at the root of much of this paper. The article provides the dynamics of (re)construction processes and the role that trajectories play in altering the shape of belongings that portray experiences of individual migrants from Bangladesh to the Gulf. Of special interest in this context is the increased significance of religion as a resource of belonging. The stories of migrants presented in this paper open up new avenues for the readers to reflect on the volatility of belonging and the issues that constitute mobility exciting for migrants.

Key words: Migration, Belonging, Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers, Religious motives.

Paper short abstract:

The present study is based on fieldwork conducted in November 2013 with thirty Burmese refugees living in Delhi. It addresses the following questions: reasons why these refugees have left Burma and gone to India; living conditions in Delhi; the refugees’ future prospects.

Paper long abstract:

Burmese refugees have started to take refuge in Thailand and India at the end of 1988, following the suppression of pro-democracy movements by the military junta. They have been welcomed by India: refugee camps were rapidly set up to accommodate Burmese dissidents, notably in Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland. But relations with the local population were tense and some Burmese dissidents were even forcefully repatriated to Burma. This led Burmese refugees to leave the camps and find refuge in India's cities, such as Imphal (Manipur), Aizawl (Mizoram) and New Delhi (where they looked for support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

The present study is based on fieldwork conducted in November 2013 with thirty Burmese refugees living in Delhi. It addresses the following questions: Why did they leave Burma? Why are they still in India in 2013? Why are they still coming to India? How do they live in India? How do they like living in India? What is India doing for them, if anything? What do they want to do in the future? Stay in India? Go back to Burma? Or pursue their journey to the West?

We will first look at the reasons why Burmese refugees have left Burma and gone to India. We will then focus on the living conditions of Burmese refugees in Delhi. And we will eventually look at the refugees' future prospects, whether real or idealized by the refugees themselves.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic material, this paper explores the experiential process of 'transit' for Somali refugees in Delhi where practices of waiting intertwine with attempts to create a meaningful life 'in the meanwhile'.

Paper long abstract:

Recent developments within the European Union, that have sparked widespread debate and concern over the 'refugee crisis', fail to acknowledge that large numbers of refugees continue to live in 'transit countries' the world over. India is one such example, which continues to house one of the world's most diverse refugee populations despite not being a signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol. As of July 2013, over 24,000 urban refugees and asylum seekers- originating from non neighbouring countries and Myanmar- are assisted by the UNHCR in India. Refugees from Somalia make up the African bulk of this population, as they await resettlement to a third country. Based on the narratives of Somali refugees currently located in Delhi, this paper will attempt to center mobility within the larger field of forced migration, understanding how ideas of (im)mobility and transit interact and engage with configurations of belonging and identity. Oelgemoller (2010) posits 'transit country' to be a politically charged term, located within state discourses of 'migration management'. This paper offers a reconceptualization of the temporal- spatial understanding of 'transit', or more specifically 'transit countries', as located in refugee narratives. Revisiting notions of 'home', 'belonging' and 'otherness', the paper also analyses the motifs of 'safety' and 'freedom' that dominate imaginings of the final flight to resettlement.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to understand the ramifications of rural-urban migration in context of the domestic house-helps in urban areas by engaging with the middle class or upper middle class employer, the rural migrant domestic house help and the ‘placement agencies’ that bring the two together.

Paper long abstract:

The urban cityscape today is incomplete without the presence of domestic house-helps. A growing number of 'placement agencies' in cities like New Delhi too, points towards an expanding space accommodating migrant domestic workers in the urban scene. Delving into an interaction of local full time house helps, their urban middle class and upper middle class employers and the placement agencies, hence facilitates insight into- triggers to rural-urban migration, ways in which such 'agencies' mobilise as well as exert power over migrant labour, the nature of work and living conditions the rural migrants are faced with and the expectations and outlook of the employers. Hence, this web of employer-linking agency-employee relations exhaustively demonstrates the ways in which downward mobility and social inequality backed by regional as well as ethnic differences is reproduced in the urban set up. Through ethnographic accounts and intensive case studies, the paper situates the web of pressures faced by female full time house-helps in the economically unstable local environment on the canvas of an urban set up, exploring the ramifications of such a migration which takes place in the wake of an exponential growth of demands for labour in the urban households. The discussion follows the trail also looking at the ways in which these 'placement agencies', though holding no legal sanction, connect urban requirements to local disparity often in a questionable way.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the strategies developed by migrants from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh in New York that meet the fulfilment of the upward mobility aspirations and how they negotiate their indigenous belonging in local and transnational space.

Paper long abstract:

A growing number of so-called indigenous people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts migrate to New York City in search of a "better life" and attempt to escape from a situation defined by deprivation and exclusion in the region, where neither peace building initiatives nor indigenous identity politics could change their marginal status. Seeking job opportunities, highly appreciated education and professional carriers in the 'land of freedom and prosperity', their aspirations are fundamentally geared towards upward mobility. The paper asks first: How do the migrants react when such aspirations clash with the reality of low income jobs, when former achievements and experiences are depreciated and opportunities for upward-mobility are denied? The data reveal that the migration experience adds a new layer of marginalization and longing for home seems to be a prevalent emotional stance. Return, however, does not emerge as a short-term goal and migrants develop several strategies to cope with the situation. One response to marginalization pursued in terms of diasporic self-organization relates to resistance against the strongly perceived danger of assimilation. Another strategy to master the migratory experience is commitment for political activism on behalf of the people living in the CHT. By analysing these strategies in relation to religion, the family, culture and politics, the paper reveals individual and collective strategies to construct and maintain belonging in transnational and local space.

Paper short abstract:

How do extensive family networks and kinship practices across the India-Bangladesh borderlands negotiate the increasing militarization of the border? This paper offers an ethnographic view on mobile practices through generations of borderland family histories.

Paper long abstract:

The India-Bangladesh border has had a varied life in terms of real and discursive management since its inception in 1947 - neither constant nor unilinear in its changes. In the subcontinent's east, massive cross-border displacements and migrations accompanied the Partition riots of 1946-47 and subsequently Bangladesh's Liberation War of 1971. The border of 1947, still in the making, cuts through historically united and densely populated regions with deep socio-cultural ties. This paper asks how the changing life of border control relates to family practices of mobility serving kinship along and across the border, looking not at moments of historical crisis but ordinary times between them.

In this paper I turn to the domain of kinship to see how practices of cross-border marriages and the upkeep of kinship relations have changed over generations within families residing in the borderlands of India and Bangladesh. Mapping family histories along and across the border over its life-course offers, I suggest, valuable insights into the entanglement of spatial and social mobility at individual and community levels as the newly formed states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have sought to instill national belonging. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in the borderlands of northern Bengal with residents, administration and security forces of both countries, I argue that the interface between the state policies of border control and socio-economic strategies of mobile borderland residents produces new pressures and priorities for the maintenance of kinship ties and family relations in these communities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores belonging as a contingent relation of inclusion that is produced through legislative and policy reform and through the enactment of rights to citizenship and property as these are reflected in court proceedings and policy choices.

Paper long abstract:

In the shadow of the 1947 Partition, a Hindu person who chose East Pakistan (and subsequently Bangladesh) as their country of citizenship and rights is always and already marked as a Hindu and a threat to the nation and state. This understanding of the Hindu as other is claimed and secured in legislative and policy reform as well as in court records. Importantly, however, senses of belonging and rights are not enacted once and for all but, rather, they are reproduced in historically specific ways across the temporal scape. Using examples of government reforms and court records, both prior to and since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, this paper explores the reproduction of difference as this constitutes varying enactments of who has the rights of membership in the community, including the rights that attend to citizenship, and what constitutes elations of belonging and exclusion. Stated differently, this paper examines shifting patterns of what might be conceptualized as inclusive exclusion that configure changing understandings of belonging and aspirations of recognition.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how mobility experiences by migrants from the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Dhaka, Bangladesh affect configurations of belonging, particularly against the backdrop of increased access to alternative economic opportunities, techscapes and consumption in the city.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how mobility experiences by student migrants from the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Dhaka in Bangladesh affect existing and produce new configurations of belonging, particularly against the backdrop of increased access to global imaginaries in the city. By applying a theoretical framework taking into consideration how migration entails exposure to new ideas, practices and a different everyday lived experience insights are provided into how spatial mobility (re)structures peoples' day-to-day lives. This way the paper reveals how mobility and migration are intertwined and how migrants from ethnic and religious minorities in Bangladesh redefine belonging to national, ethnic and religious identity positions by exposure to alternative lifestyles. These redefinitions take place against the backdrop of social and economic transformation in Bangladesh in recent decades and fierce public and academic debates over different interpretations of Bangladesh's past, particularly around issues of national identity and what defines being Bangladeshi. The paper illustrates how people do not become disjointed, but rather how engagement in global and national cultures opens up a space where cultures and identities can be renegotiated, allowing for appropriation and translation of existing hierarchical structures. The findings presented will draw on empirical data from three periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka in 2012, 2014 and 2015 totaling 7 months. The data collected illustrate the need to rethink identities against the backdrop of mobilities and social change in Bangladesh.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how rural-urban and transnational mobility intersect and affect feelings of belonging through ethnography of Vohras in Gujarat and abroad, who are making a 'Muslim area' in a rural town in central Gujarat into a centre of a regional and transnational community.

Paper long abstract:

Anand town in central Gujarat exemplifies the trend of 'ghettoisation' of Indian Muslims: after the violence of 2002, many Muslims from nearby villages and towns sought safety and comfort here. Ethnographic study of the 'Charotar Sunni Vohra' community, the main Muslim community in the town, reveals that a sense of belonging to the 'Charotar' region is maintained despite the trends of displacement, migration and residential segregation. The paper thus presents a different view on 'ghettoisation' and describes the 'Muslim area' of Anand as a centre of regional and transnational community making rather than as a site of isolation.

Vohra residents of the town tell a community narrative of long-term embedding in the 'Charotar' region and remain intimately connected to the rural hinterland through dispersed kinship networks and economic engagements. They see Anand as a well-connected 'centre' of the regional Vohra community.

Vohras who migrated abroad maintain connected to the region through remittances, investments and return visits. They have also redirected their attention to Anand recently. Though originated from different villages and towns, they have followed their local families to Anand and are making it into a hometown where they locate 'return'.

Based on ten months of research in central Gujarat, a rural region with a history of transnational migration and of violence against Muslims, and on two months among Vohras in the UK, the paper suggests trajectories of mobility are key to the regional experience, both for local residents and for transnational visitors.

Paper short abstract:

Through the dreams of three young men, their mental maps of the world and the material restraints that condition their different trajectories, my paper adds a deliberately ethnographic perspective on migration, highlighting the small steps not taken rather than the global routes dreamt of.

Paper long abstract:

Lucknow, home to Ahmad, Aasim and Ashfaq, can be a complicated place for Muslims. Former Nawabs speak of their nostalgia for a past long gone - but don't seem melancholic at all. Politicians promise jobs through affirmative action - and win elections though few actually believe them. And aspiring Ulema propagate a masculine morality for the emerging middle classes, to which many find it hard to adjust.

In this embroglio of competing visions of the future, the three protagonists of my paper above all long /not/ to belong. Lucknow is their home, but that is surely no reason to stay. Ahmad, the upper class boy, thus constantly makes plans to intern in Singapur, maybe, or Honkong - not for money, but for 'experience' and 'exposure'. Alas, he remains stuck. Aasim, the lower middle class entrepreneur without opportunity, spends his nights dreaming of Switzerland and its women, one of whom he hopes will marry him. Ultimately, he ends up as a marginalized labourer in Dubai. Ashfaq, in contrast, is the only one who voluntarily stays in Lucknow - but faces a different set of challenges: he runs the only modern jazz dance parlour in the old city...

By following the dreams of three young men, their masculine aspirations, mental maps of the world and the material restraints of class and religion that condition their different trajectories, my paper adds a deliberately ethnographic perspective on spatial mobility and migration, highlighting the small steps not taken rather than the global routes dreamt of.

Paper short abstract:

This study analyses the factors, motivations and aspirations of youth movements by a growing number of indigenous youth and student activists and its impact on the political and social aspects of the indigenous communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh.

Paper long abstract:

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region of Bangladesh, is considered the home of a number of indigenous groups, has been severely affected by the armed conflict between the state and an indigenous political group over issues of autonomy and identity following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. Till to date the studies on identity politics in the CHT have focused on the adult political organization(s) and its ideological project 'jumma nationalism' which derived as opposed to Bengali nationalism. Currently, there is no academic research on the emerging identity politics by a growing number of indigenous youth and student activists. This indicates the social marginality and invisibility of youths in their society in particular and in the academic community in general. However, this movement illustrates the awareness of indigenous youths of CHT by being experienced new ideas and ideologies through moving from their rural villages or small towns to bigger Bengali dominated cities in Bangladesh for educational or job purposes. Against this backdrop, the overall goal of this project is to analyze factors that contributed to youth movements, the motivations and aspirations behind the movements and to what extent these movements have an impact on the political and social aspects of the indigenous communities in the CHT. By employing a qualitative multi-sited ethnography and constructivist grounded theory approach, this study uses the concepts of identity politics, politics of place and youth movement to analyze the phenomena of youth movement in the CHT.

Keywords: Youth Movement, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Identity Politics.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics that surround the migration of human capital, primarily students in search of better avenues for higher education and work, from states in North-East India to cities in South India; to address the accompanying complexities in identity and aspirations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics that surround the migration of human capital, primarily students in search of better avenues for higher education and work, from states in North-East India to cities in South India; to address the accompanying complexities in identity and aspirations.

Northeast India, one of the most isolated and remote regions in India, comprising of hilly states that suffer from poor transport and communication infrastructures and virtually non-existent industrialisation, has witnessed increased flows of out-migration to other parts of the country, particularly South India in recent years. Unfortunately this spatial mobility has also encountered racially-inclined mistreatment at the hands of local host populations.

The push factors for out-migration have ranged from decreasing demand in the job market to weak local educational systems ill-designed to meet the requirements of the new economy occupations and professional service sectors. One of the primary factors that are responsible for pulling migrants out of the region is the impact of globalisation. The lure of better job opportunities attracts these citizens to mega cities in other parts of the country. In addition to this there is the pull factor of having better environments for educational opportunities, with multiple choices of study options to choose from.

This paper shall explore the mobility -migration phenomenon from North-East India to Bengaluru, the capital city of the South-Indian state of Karnataka, the silicon valley of India and the destination of large-scale migration from the northern parts of Karnataka and other states of India which are relatively poorer.

Paper short abstract:

This paper links conversations around consent to societal moves away from agriculture in the north Indian state of Haryana. It examines how the rising aspiration for new educational and professional opportunities outside of agriculture contribute to changing expectations from intimate relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In April 2015, the main opposition party in India organised a massive farmers' protest against the Land Bill Acquisition Ordinance, which proposed to remove the 'consent clause'. The massive presence of Haryana's farmers in this mobilization pointed to land rights having a resonance in local politics, distinct from the debates surrounding it at the national level. Haryana, a showcase 'Green Revolution' state, has in the past quarter of a century witnessed rapid urbanisation, rural-to-urban migration and spatial mobility. But it is also a state marked by high rates of violence against women, including sexual violence, low sex-ratios and 'honor killings' of couples defying caste and kinship norms of marriage. My doctoral research, which tracks the widespread phenomenon of 'love marriages' and elopements in Haryana, attests that consent and choice are recurrent themes in everyday discussions.

This paper juxtaposes these two different registers in which the debate on consent is being conducted in Haryanvi society to explore possible connections between the socio-economic transformations and new notions of personhood as seen in intimate relationships. Based on my ethnographic findings, this paper will link the conversation around sexual consent and choice with societal moves away from agriculture. It will examine how the new aspirations for educational and professional opportunities outside of agriculture contribute to the changing expectations from intimate relationships. The paper will also link spatial mobility with social mobility and flesh out the processes through which social change is resisted and negotiated and personalised through conversations on consent.