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.