The Bangladesh Studies Network Conference 2019 was held in Oslo, Norway, this year. It is a network of people, including academics, activists, journalists, and researchers, who come together annually to share their latest work. The conference is a very intimate and open space to familiarise oneself with the work others are doing on Bangladesh, the Bengal, as well as on the diaspora communities. It provided us also with the latest political developments in Bangladesh and the possible impact/s this/these could have on those engaged with the region.
Our paper told a very British story. Entitled: ‘Hostile Environments? ‘Reactive’ or ‘Protective’ Transnationalism’ we drew on the data collected across Birmingham, London and Luton to demonstrate how anti-Muslim racism has been conflated with intensified anti-migrant racism in the context of ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies and the EU ‘Brexit’ Referendum, amplifying racist discourses associated with non-white communities. We touched upon the relationship between the ‘hostile environment’ and the deprivation of citizenship power, a power increasingly used in the UK, and only ever on the children on immigrants.
In this context of severe racism and Islamophobia, our data suggests that British Bangladeshis are investing in land and property ‘back home’ as a ‘Plan B’ should they be forced to leave Britain or things ‘get worse’. The third and fourth generation of British Bangladeshis we interviewed expressed their gratitude that their parents had retained these investments in case they are no longer able to stay in the UK. We argued that the continuous reminder of their ambiguous status within British society was opening up the possibility for young British Bangladeshis to perpetuate what used to be referred to as the ‘myth of return’; often considered a first generation phenomenon, abandoned by later generations as permanent roots were made. Our data suggests that second, third and fourth generation British Bangladeshi’s have reconfigured this ‘myth’ as a back-up plan should they be forced to relocate to their parents/grandparents ‘homeland’.
The conference was extremely interesting and the organisers did a superb job of making sure the papers were varied and covered a wide range of topics. There were papers on development, climate change, and disaster management, as well as folk music, indigenous politics and gender. There were special sessions on the state of democracy and the election, roundtables on free speech, academic freedom and foreign policy, and we were left overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of academic work being carried out in the region.
