Findings and Achievements

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Small Grants
Networks and Workshops
Large Grants



THE BENGAL DIASPORA; BENGALI SETTLERS IN SOUTH ASIA AND BRITAIN: A COMPARATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY
Dr Joya Chatterji
Co-Investigator: Dr Claire Alexander

FINDINGS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

  • The aim of the project was to undertake the first ever international and inter-disciplinary investigation of the Bengali diaspora since 1947, comparing the migration experience of displaced Bengalis who resettled in South Asia, with those who emigrated to the United Kingdom. The focus was on Bengali Muslim migrants in these different settings, since over 90% of Bengalis in the UK are Muslims. The research team collected over 180 life histories of migrants, along with additional interview, visual and archival material.
  • The research found that internal displacees and refugees in South Asia, and migrants to Britain, have tended to cluster together in densely packed settlements. The migrants in the study all had significant skills and assets and networks, and it was the combination of these which seems to have been decisive in shaping their migration strategies and experiences - what we term 'mobility capital'. The research thus challenges clear distinctions between 'economic' and 'forced' migrants (or 'refugees'). Even individuals who migrated in a context of heightened violence and discrimination ('classic refugees') prove on examination to be embedded in well-established patterns of 'economic' migration and used these pre-existing routes and networks in order to facilitate their migration. Similarly, 'economic migrants' (in Britain), like 'refugees' (in Bangladesh) mobilised personal and community resources and networks to facilitate their movement and settlement in their new location. One striking and unexpected finding was that internal displacees - people who had crossed no international boundary but who had been displaced from their homes in a context of ethnic violence - fared worst of all. This suggests that much more research needs to be done on the phenomenon of internal displacement in the contemporary world.
  • The project explored how migrants' experience of settlement and integration in the place of arrival had been shaped by their different locations (cities, borderlands or camps) as well as their personal, family and community histories. Migrants were actively involved in creating 'home' as part of the process of migration. Thus, community histories were written and narrated to stress their community's part in the 'national' history of the host society as well as commemorate the story of migration. Festivals and rituals too were modified or re-invented in distinctive ways that simultaneously celebrated the 'community', acknowledged its internal diversity, and sought recognition in its new setting. These findings have formed the basis for the project's contribution to academic debates. They provide a challenge to policy, where migration is most usually viewed as a problem and migrants themselves remain invisible. The project has also produced innovative teaching materials for school curricula in the UK.
  • One of the key conceptual developments of the research is the concept of 'mobility capital' - a distinctive bundle of particular assets and competences possessed by migrants which constitute a package of dispositions made up, in varying proportions, of economic, cultural and social capital. The migrants interviewed often proved to be beneficiaries of pre-histories of mobility, and were legatees of debts and obligations earned in the course of these histories. In their turn, these factors proved extremely significant in shaping migrants' choices of destination, and explaining the patterns of settlement identified by the project.
  • The findings of this research have raised questions about some of the current assumptions and preoccupations which dominate migration studies. Above all, they challenge the notion of a clear conceptual distinction between 'forced' migrants (or refugees) and economic migrants. All the migrants studied in this project straddled this divide. They were drawn from communities that historically have been itinerant (whether for economic, political, cultural or even environmental reasons); and when faced with physical violence or threats to their livelihood and status, they possessed the wherewithal to move to safer and more propitious settings.
  • The research also explored how migrants understood and represented their experience of migration and settlement. Its findings underline the extent to which migrants experience and perform their 'identity' differently in different settings, and also the extent to which issues of gender, generation, religion and class constantly inform, contest and undermine efforts to reify and fix their history and identity. However, the research has also revealed the strong affective dimensions of community formation, local histories and new attachments to place that shape, and are shaped by, the presence of diasporic groups, and which challenge exclusionary national identities, static accounts of multiculturalism and over-simplistic accounts of diasporic cultures. The international and historic comparison explores too how the different circumstances of migration and arrival both opens up opportunities and constrains choice.
  • In addition, the findings of the research project challenged theories of 'new' migration which focus solely on migrants in the western world. They suggest that the scholarly neglect of the vastly larger migrations within regions from which these 'new' migrants have been drawn has led to conclusions that are unhelpful and even unsafe. Above all, it critiques the influential argument of 'cumulative causation', which holds that once a critical mass of people from a particular source network has migrated abroad, migration will continue until each and every member of that network has joined the pioneers in the west, irrespective of whether there are jobs for them in these places of settlement. The research shows that an exclusive concentration on the extensively networked one percent of vast populations of migrants and displaced people who have moved to the west, has led to the mistaken view that networks themselves stimulate 'chain' migration. In fact, in some instances they have actually restricted and prevented such migrations. Networks by themselves may be necessary, but they are not sufficient to enable migration. Other vital competences and assets - notably youth, health, wealth and skill - have been vital in making migration a viable option. Most migrants preferred to pursue opportunities closer to 'home'.
  • The research also suggests that an element of caution is needed in accepting those theories of diaspora which valorise 'networks' and 'diasporic spaces' as sites of radical and egalitarian possibility. The networks studied here tended mainly to be closed arenas in which migrants sought to maintain their social status, and in which relationships characterised by dominance and subordination have been perpetuated rather than subverted. The project stimulated further (unanticipated) breakthroughs. Work on the role of migration controls led to the conclusion that mass emigration from sending states has shaped policies of citizenship and nationality in these states (and not merely in receiving states, as has been hitherto the assumption of most scholars).
  • The project team organised and held a workshop on 'Rituals of Diaspora' with fellow academics. Members of the project team have presented numerous conference papers based on the project research. Dr Chatterji has spoken at SOAS, Oxford, Leeds, Guildford, Cambridge, the LSE, Jawaharlal University, Delhi, the CSSS Calcutta, the London Migration Research Group and NUS Singapore, and has been invited to speak at Harvard next spring. Dr Alexander has presented work from the project at conferences in Oxford and Leeds, the LSE and the British Academy, and in Sweden (Vaxjo University). A website (http://www.banglastories.org/) has been established.
  • The project leaders plan to hold an international conference in 2011-12 (funded by outside sources), coordinated to coincide with the launch of their co-authored monograph based on the project.

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