Mirrored Boundaries: The Intersection of Ongoing Homeland-Hostland Contexts in Bangladeshi Immigrants' Boundary-Work in Los Angeles

• In Event: 148 - Regular Session. Cultural Studies 1: Identity in Action: Music, Religion and the Everyday

Abstract

This article studies how ongoing homeland political and religious divisions shape ethnic boundary making and collective identity formation of a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant community in the hostland. Based on ethnographic data, I argue that the community struggles to define a collective identity by drawing boundaries based on ongoing homeland political and religious divisions in Bangladesh. These immigrants’ boundary making process is shaped by negative experiences based on religion and nationality in the hostland. This study contributes to the fields of international migration and ethnic studies in three ways: 1) by empirically showing how reactive transnationalism intersects with ethnic boundary-making at the ground level 2) by examining how ongoing homeland politics and religious tensions shape an immigrant community’s identity formation 3) by extending the existing literature on Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in the United States by providing a framework that focuses on both homeland and hostland.

Author

• Tahseen Shams, University of California-Los Angeles