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On Being Stuck in Bengal: Immobility in the ‘age of migration’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2017

JOYA CHATTERJI
JOYA CHATTERJI*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Immobility raises awkward questions for theorists of migration. From their standpoint, migration is unusual behaviour that requires explanation. Its obverse—staying in place—is seen as an ‘obvious’ state of affairs that calls for no explanation. Yet assumptions about the ordinariness of immobility are insecure. For one thing, we know a great deal more about the mobile societies of early modern Asia; for another, Asian mobility in the era of high imperialism is much better understood. Yet despite these cumulative gains in our understanding of the scale of mobility in early-modern and modern Asia, and its acceleration in ‘the age of migration’, immobility continues to be seen as the ‘obvious’ state of affairs. This article suggests some preliminary answers to ‘the immobility paradox’, based on a study of the greater Bengal region. By analysing the impact of the intensifying links, in the late colonial era, between Bengal and the global economy, it shows that this varied widely for different people, in ways that had a profound bearing on their capacity to move. The article develops the notion of ‘deficits’ which worked to inhibit the mobility of particular groups and individuals. Physical frailty and obligations of care, it shows, were crucial factors in shaping immobility. Relations of gender and generation, and the inequalities embedded in these relations, produced ‘overabundances’—of obligations to people and places—that tied certain people down. Finally, it hints at the reasons why, and the ways in which, stayers-on have grown poorer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 2: New Directions in Social and Economic History: Essays in Honour of David Washbrook , March 2017 , pp. 511 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

My thoughts on migration (and immobility) have been developed in conversation with David Washbrook, and in the graduate seminars we ran together. Thanks are also due to Prasannan Parthasarathi, Norbert Peabody, and the anonymous referees at Modern Asian Studies for their encouraging feedback.

References

1 Also see, Chatterji, Joya, ‘Of Graveyards and Ghettos. Muslims in West Bengal, 1947–67’, in Hasan, Mushirul and Roy, Asim (eds), Living Together Separately. Cultural India in History and Politics, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005 Google Scholar.

2 This article draws on research supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (UK), under the aegis of the ‘Bengal diaspora’ project, of which I was principal investigator. I am indebted to the AHRC, to my co-investigator, Claire Alexander, and research assistants, Annu Jalais and Shahzad Firoz. Unless otherwise specified, the interviews drawn upon here were conducted, translated, and transcribed between 2007 and 2009 by Annu Jalais. All names of interviewees have been changed, except where respondents said they wanted to be identified.

3 For a masterful overview, see Massey, Douglas S., Arango, Joaquin, Hugo, Graeme, Kouaouci, Ali, Pellegrino, Adela and Taylor, J. Edward, ‘Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal’, Population and Development Review, 19, 3, September 1993, pp. 431–466 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Neo-classical theory does not suffer from this problem, of course (although it has been challenged on other grounds), since it postulates that the migration of workers overseas is caused by differences in wage rates between countries. Migration, from this standpoint, between low-wage to high-wage labour markets, is to be expected in all cases where the costs of such migration do not outweigh the anticipated benefits. But it does suffer from the problem of explaining why people do not migrate in larger numbers, in what Malmberg describes as the ‘immobility paradox’. Malmberg, Gunnar, ‘Time and Space in International Migration’, in Hammer, Tomas, Brochmann, Grete, Tamas, Kristof and Faist, Thomas (eds), International Migration, Immobility and Development. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Berg: Oxford and New York, 1997, p. 21 Google Scholar.

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26 Malkki, Lisa, Purity and Exile. Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Google Scholar, p. 1.

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38 Memo by B. F. H. B. Tyabji dated 23 August 1952, Ministry of External Affairs (AFR II Branch)/AII/53/6491, 31 (Secret), National Archives of India.

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54 Chatterji, ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier’.

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