"Everything Must Match": Detection, Deception, and Migrant Illegality in the India-Bangladesh Borderlands (original) (raw)

Abstract

India's militarization of its border with Bangladesh has grown alongside a paranoia around the figure of the "infiltrator" made synonymous with the "Bangladeshi illegal migrant." Set in the borderlands of India and Bangladesh, where ethnic, racial, and linguistic markers do not allow for an easy distinction to be made between the Bengali members of two nation-states, this article focuses on the paradoxes of documentary citizenship. Residents of these highly surveilled borderlands, as well as a variety of state actors, find that simply possessing identity documents is inadequate amid forgery and deception. The possibility of detection-detectability-of the illegal migrant materializes in India's eastern borderlands across three distinct modes of policing: the interceptive, the judicial-determinative, and the certificatory. Through an ethnographic exploration of these modes of policing, this article sheds light on the political economy of migrant illegality and reimagines detectability, the infinite and promissory search for the impostor within, as the engine that drives the state. Detectability raises new questions beyond the fetishization of documents and the production and navigation of il/legibility. [borders, migrant illegality, policing, documents, South Asia] BENGALI ABSTRACT 1990s theke Bharat tar Bangladesher songe simantey samarikikaron kromagoto chaliye jachhe. Eki shonge Bharate bere uthchhe "anuprabeshkari" niye ashonka, jar roop Bangladeshi abaidya abhibashi aaj dharon korechhe. Bharat ar Bangladesher simanta elakaye, jekhane bhasha ba jati diye dui desher Bangali sodoshy-oder parthokyo chinhito kora shohoj noy, shekhane nana rokom sarkari najardari shadaron manusher dainandin jibonjaopone chhariye porechhe. Simantabasira dekhe je shudhu parichay patra thakle nagarik hishebe shikriti pawa jay na. Shobdhoroner parichay patra jali hoy bole bibhinno sarkari songstha-Border Security Force, Election Commission , police, judge-ebong simantabasira swayang, shobai shondehobhajon chokhe nagorik theke anuprabeshkarike khunje baar korar cheshtai lipto. Ei probondhey ami ei ashesh khonjer alochona kori ebong shei proshonge bartaman Bharate kagojer nagarikottor asongotir byakhya kori. RESUMEN La militarizací on de India de su frontera con BangladésBanglad´Bangladés ha crecido junto a la paranoia alrededor de la figura del "infiltrador" hecho sinónimosin´sinónimo con la de "migrante ilegal bangladesí". Situados en las zonas fronterizas de India y BangladésBanglad´Bangladés, donde marcadoresétnicosmarcadores´marcadoresétnicos, raciales y lingüísticosling¨lingüísticos no permiten una distincí on f ´ acil entre los miembros bengalíes de las dos naciones, este artículo se enfoca en las paradojas de la ciudadanía documental. Residentes de estas zonas fronterizas altamente vigiladas, así como una variedad de actores estatales, encuentran que poseyendo simplemente documentos de identidad es inadecuado en medio de la falsificací on y el engã no. La

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (46)

  1. Amoore, Louise, and Alexandra Hall. 2009. "Taking People Apart: Digitised Dissection and the Body at the Border." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27 (3): 444-64.
  2. Andersson, Ruben. 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Oakland: University of California Press.
  3. Appadurai, Arjun. 1998. "Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization." Development and Change 29 (4): 905-25.
  4. Bhat, Mohsin Alam. 2019. "The Constitutional Case against the Citi- zenship Amendment Bill." Economic and Political Weekly 54 (39): 7-8. Cabot, Heath. 2012. "The Governance of Things: Documenting Limbo in the Greek Asylum Procedure." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 35 (1): 11-29.
  5. Chu, Julie. 2010. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  6. Cons, Jason. 2016. Sensitive Space: Fragmented Territory at the India- Bangladesh Border. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  7. Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2005. "Being En Route." American Anthropologist 107 (2): 195-206.
  8. Das, Veena. 2004. "The Signature of the State: The Paradox of Illegibility." In Anthropology in the Margins of the State, edited by Veena Das and Deborah Poole, 225-52. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
  9. Datta, Antara. 2012. Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971. London: Routledge.
  10. De Genova, Nicholas P. 2002. "Migrant 'Illegality' and Deporta- bility in Everyday Life." Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419-47.
  11. De Leon, Jason. 2015. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland: University of California Press.
  12. Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson, eds. 2010. Borderlands: Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power, and Identity. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
  13. Donthi, Praveen. 2018. "How Assam's Supreme Court-mandated NRC Project Is Targeting and Detaining Bengali Muslims, Break- ing Families." The Caravan, July 1. https://caravanmagazine.in/ politics/assam-supreme-court-nrc-muslim-families-breaking- detention.
  14. Fassin, Didier. 2011. "Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries: The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times." Annual Review of Anthropology 40:213-26.
  15. Fassin, Didier, and Estelle D'halluin. 2005. "The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers." American Anthropologist 107 (4): 597-608.
  16. Feldman, Gregory. 2012. The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policymaking in the European Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  17. Galemba, Rebecca B. 2013. "Illegality and Invisibility at Margins and Borders." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 36 (2): 274-85.
  18. Ghosh, Sahana, and Rimple Mehta. 2017. "Under the Sign of Security: Why the Bogey of the 'Illegal Bangladeshi Immigrant' Is So Powerful across Urban Indian Homes." Kafila, July 27. https://kafila.online/2017/07/27/under-the-sign-of-securi ty-why-the-bogey-of-the-illegal-bangladeshi-immigrant-is-so- powerful-across-urban-indian-homes-sahana-ghosh-rimple- mehta/.
  19. Gillan, Michael. 2002. "Refugees or Infiltrators? The Bharatiya Janata Party and 'Illegal' Migration from Bangladesh." Asian Studies Review 26 (1): 73-95.
  20. Gordillo, Gastón. 2006. "The Crucible of Citizenship: ID-Paper Fetishism in the Argentinean Chaco." American Ethnologist 33 (2): 162-76.
  21. Govindrajan, Radhika. 2018. "Electoral Ripples: The Social Life of Lies and Mistrust in an Indian Village Election." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1-2): 129-43.
  22. Hansen, Thomas Blom, and Finn Stepputat. 2005. Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  23. Heyman, Josiah McC. 2013. "The Study of Illegality and Legality: Which Way Forward?" PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 36 (2): 304-07.
  24. Jones, Reece. 2009. "Agents of Exception: Border Security and the Marginalization of Muslims in India." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27 (5): 879-97.
  25. Jusionyte, Ieva, and Daniel M. Goldstein. 2016. "In/Visible- In/Secure: Optics of Regulation and Control." Focaal 75: 3-13.
  26. Kelly, Tobias. 2006. "Documented Lives: Fear and the Uncertainties of Law during the Second Palestinian Intifada." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (1): 89-107.
  27. McDuie-Ra, Duncan. 2014. "The India-Bangladesh Border Fence: Narratives and Political Possibilities." Journal of Borderlands Studies 29 (1): 81-94.
  28. Middleton, Townsend. 2015. The Demands of Recognition: State An- thropology and Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  29. Moodie, Megan. 2010. "Why Can't You Say You Are from Bangladesh?: Demographic Anxiety and Hindu Nationalist Com- mon Sense in the Aftermath of the 2008 Jaipur Bombings." Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 17 (5): 531-59.
  30. Mountz, Alison. 2010. Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureau- cracy at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  31. Nair, Vijayanka. 2018. "An Eye for an I: Recording Biometrics and Reconsidering Identity in Postcolonial India." Contemporary South Asia 26 (2): 143-56.
  32. Ramachandran, Sujata. 2003. "'Operation Pushback': Sangh Parivar, State, Slums, and Surreptitious Bangladeshis in New Delhi." Economic and Political Weekly 38 (7): 637-47.
  33. Reeves, Madeleine. 2013. "Clean Fake: Authenticating Documents and Persons in Migrant Moscow." American Ethnologist 40 (3): 508-24.
  34. Roitman, Janet Lee. 2005. Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Eco- nomic Regulation in Central Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- versity Press.
  35. Roy, Anupama. 2008. "Between Encompassment and Closure: The 'Migrant' and the Citizen in India." Contributions to Indian Sociol- ogy 42 (2): 219-48.
  36. Scott, James C. 1999. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  37. Shneiderman, Sara. 2015. Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities between Nepal and India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  38. Sriram, Jayant. 2015. "Govt. Set to Grant Citizenship to Hindus from Bangladesh." The Hindu, May 11.
  39. Sriraman, Tarangini. 2018. In Pursuit of Proof: A History of Identification Documents in India. New Delhi: OUP India.
  40. Taussig, Michael. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  41. Tripathi, Salil. 2016. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  42. Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. London: Anthem Press.
  43. Van Schendel, Willem, and Itty Abraham. 2005. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  44. Wilson, Alice. 2016. Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  45. Wilson, Thomas M., and Hastings Donnan, eds. 1998. Border Identi- ties: Nation and State at International Frontiers. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press.
  46. Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. 2007. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press.