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Dispositions and Destinations: Refugee Agency and “Mobility Capital” in the Bengal Diaspora, 1947–2007

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Joya Chatterji
Joya Chatterji*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
*
jc280@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This study seeks to illuminate patterns of refugee settlement in the Bengali Muslim diaspora since 1947, which replicate global trends identified by Aristide Zolberg in new nation-states. Based on historical research and oral testimony gathered from over two hundred migrants in different settings in India, Bangladesh, and Britain, it suggests why some Muslims crossed borders after India's partition and others did not; why most moved only short distances within the delta; and why so many huddled in the shadow of the new national borders and so few traveled to the West. I uncover the subtle interplay between migrants' agency and structures of coercion, and between histories of mobility and of affect, in the shaping of migration choices, and explain how the recurrent patterns identified by Zolberg were produced in a regional context of critical but unexplored significance. The essay explores the impact of nation-state formation on older forms of mobility in the region, and the continuing interconnections between local micro-mobilities and regional, national, international, and trans-oceanic migrations. I suggest that the concept of “mobility capital” can help to explain not only patterns of migration, but also patterns of staying on. I conclude by questioning “cumulative causation theory,” which has inadvertently lent credence to fears that the developed countries of the West will be “swamped” by immigrants drawn from ever-expanding migratory networks based in the “third world.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 273 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013

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References

1 “Home” often had to be wholly reconstructed, since few communities survived the war intact. Kamaluddin, A. F. M., “Refugee Problems in Bangladesh,” in Kosinski, L. A. and Elahi, K. M., eds., Population Redistribution and Development in South Asia (Dordecht, 1985)Google Scholar.

2 The term “Bihari” has come to be used to describe all Urdu-speakers in the region, though by no means all of them come from Bihar. Md. Rahman, Mahbubar and Schendel, Willem Van, ‘“I Am not a Refugee’: Rethinking Partition Migration,” Modern Asian Studies 37, 3 (2003): 551–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term has acquired pejorative connotations; hence my placing it within quotes.

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4 I have described these processes elsewhere: Chatterji, Joya, The Spoils of Partition, Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge, 2007), 188–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Bose, N. K., Calcutta, 1964: A Social Survey (New Delhi, 1968)Google Scholar; and Siddiqui, M. K. A., The Muslims of Calcutta: A Study in Aspects of Their Social Organisation (Calcutta, 1974)Google Scholar.

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10 Some of the project's interviews are available on its website: “Bangla stories” at http://www.banglastories.org/.

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