‘Hunger has brought us into this jungle’: understanding mobility and immobility of Bengali immigrants in

the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh

Nasrin Siraj and Ellen Bal

Abstract:

The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between
minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In
general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-
Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous
category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into account their complex histories as mobile landless
peasants. Our ethnographic research reveals that the framing of the local minorities and the mobile
Bengalis as two antagonistic categories with opposing interests obscures the fact that both categories have
fallen victim to very similar regimes of mobilities and immobilities of the state and national and local
(political, economic and military) elites. Here, we reject binary thinking that counterpoises mobility and
immobility as two antagonistic concepts and argue that mobility and immobility are intrinsically related
and their relationship is asymmetrical.

KEYWORDS: Mobility, immobility, ethnic-conflict, Chittagong Hills, Bangladesh

Published at Social Identity, Issue 5, Volume 23,

For full article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1281443