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Migration Letters
January 2021
Volume: 18, No: 1, pp. 1 – 11
ISSN: 1741-8984 (Print) ISSN: 1741-8992 (Online)
journals.tplondon.com/ml
Migration Letters
All rights reserved @ 2004-2021 Transnational Press London
Received: 14 December 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v18i1.1253
Banglascapes in Southern Europe: Im-mobilities, emplacements,
temporalities
Andrea Priori
1
, José Mapril
2
, and Francesco Della Puppa
3
This special issue stems from a panel we organised at the European Conference on South
Asian Studies in 2018, under the title ‘Banglascapes in Southern Europe: comparative
perspectives’. Not all the panel participants from that conference feature in this special issue,
and not all the authors included here were present at the conference. Nevertheless, the panel
represents a first important moment in which we began to collect case-studies and insights on
a relatively new aspect of the so-called Bengali, or Bangladeshi, ‘diaspora’.
In recent years, the dynamics of Bangladeshi migrations in Europe have changed significantly.
If, up until the 1990s, the Bangladeshi presence on the continent was metonymically
epitomised by the British-Bangladeshi ‘community’, the last decade of the twentieth century
has seen the emergence of the influence of Southern European countries, such as Italy (which
has the largest Bangladeshi community in Europe after that in Britain), Spain, Portugal, and
Greece, due to the changing role of these countries in relation to global migrations. Frequently
perceived as emigration countries, since the 1980s, several Southern European countries have
also become immigration destinations (Zeytlin 2006).
In addition, in response to significant changes in the immigration and asylum policies of
Middle and Northern European countries (Knights and King 1998), Bangladeshis have settled
in Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Lisbon, Porto, and Athens, among many other cities,
establishing complex relations with the different immigration regimes, labour market
structures, and models of incorporation at national and city levels.
Simultaneously, in recent years, changing economic policies (specifically, the application of
austerity measures in the larger context of neoliberal readjustment programmes) have elicited
onward migration (Della Puppa et al. 2021), mainly towards the UK, and reconfigurations in
im-mobility trajectories which have added a further layer of complexity to the internally
diverse scenario of the Bangladeshi diaspora in Europe (Della Puppa and Sredanovic 2017;
Priori 2017, Mapril 2021). In this context, Southern Europe represents at the same time a final
destination for making a living, an increasingly important hub linking Bangladeshis in Europe
and worldwide and, sometimes, a stage in onward migration routes and trajectories (Della
Puppa 2014; 2018; Della Puppa and King 2019; Mapril 2012; 2014a; Priori 2010; 2012a; 2019;
Zeytlin 2006).
1
Andrea Priori, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany. E-mail: andrea.priori@sk.hs-fulda.de.
2
José Mapril, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon. E-mail: jmapril@gmail.com.
3
Francesco Della Puppa, Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. E-mail: francesco.dellapuppa@unive.it.
2 Banglascapes in Southern Europe: Im-mobilities, emplacements, temporalities
Migration Letters
With respect to the multiplicity of configurations that Southern Europe may assume for the
Bangladeshi diaspora, we wish to underscore here that it cannot be considered merely a
‘waiting room' for Northern European contexts – by which we mean primarily the United
Kingdom. In fact, we believe that, within the boundaries of the phenomenon of intra-
European onward migration towards northern countries and the UK that characterises the
Bangladeshi Diaspora – especially in the years between the 2008 economic crisis and the
advent of Brexit (Lulle et al. 2018; 2019) –, the envisaging of Southern Europe as a ‘transit
area’ for previously planned migrations to the British context belies an excessive mechanicism
and determinism. We argue that the phenomenon does not represent a consciously pre-
determined strategy by Bangladeshi workers and their families who had formerly migrated to
Southern Europe, but it is the result of a combination of both objective and subjective, and
both structural and individual, factors. On the one hand, one should take into consideration
the transformation of the global – and, above all, European – economic landscapes, resulting
from the aforementioned economic crisis of 2008, with its negative repercussions on the
labour market, especially in Southern European countries, and the resulting limitations of
social mobility for younger generations. On the other hand, we must also consider changes
which have taken place within individual and family biographies of Bangladeshi probashir
(migrants) in the years from their arrival in Southern Europe to more recent ones: they are no
longer middle-class Bangladeshi men, celibate and childless, who have migrated for personal
fulfilment and/or for the sustenance and growth of their family back home through
remittances, but they are instead husbands and wives who have been reunited with their
families, or created a family in Europe, and who feel responsible for them, with a
corresponding habitus and aspirations for social realisation (and mobility), that are typical for
those of their social class, and who have often become European citizens. Therefore, any
reactivation of migration mobility, for example, an onward migration towards the UK, is not
the outcome of a pre-ordered plan, but rather a response to class aspirations or individual and
family needs in a profoundly transformed economic and social scenario, one which has
gradually taken shape over the years. Within this framework, the acquisition of European
citizenship assumes the crucial role (Della Puppa and Sredanovic 2017; Mapril 2021) due to
the resulting increased motility (Kaufmann et al. 2004).
Despite the crucial role and importance of Southern Europe for Bangladeshis, and a growing
body of literature on Bangladeshi migrants in countries such as Portugal (Mapril 2010; 2012;
2014a; 2014b; 2017; 2019), Spain (Zeitlyn, 2006; Martín-Saiz 2017), Italy (Della Puppa 2014;
King and Della Puppa 2020; Knights 1996; Knights and King 1998; Mantovan 2007; Morad
and Della Puppa 2019; Priori 2010; 2011; 2012a; 2012b; 2014; 2017; Quattrocchi et al. 2003),
or Greece (Fouskas 2012; Kassimeris and Samouris 2012), there is still no comparative
approach looking at the impact of the different national and city contexts on our interlocutors’
experiences, nor at the connections (economic, political, religious, ritual, among others) which
they have created between different European countries in the past decades.
This special issue brings together scholars who focus on different features of Bangladeshi
migrations in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Italy, with the aim of accounting
for the intermeshing of Southern European destinations and routes into the worldwide
dynamics of im-mobilities. We want to provide insights on the dialectic between emplacement
processes and connectivity, and the multiple and complex ways of making ‘Banglascapes’, and
being Bengali and Bangladeshi.
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By doing so, this special issue attempts to make a contribution to the literature on
Bengali/Bangladeshi diasporas; a field which, in recent years, has seen an important turning
point with the publication of The Bengal Diaspora, the book authored by Alexander, Chatterji,
and Jalais in 2016. If The Bengal Diaspora urged migration scholars to take into account the
existence of different articulations of the diaspora, and recognise the importance of migration
movements towards the global South, then the contributions to this special issue provide
further examples of the complex nature of Bangladeshi migrations by focusing on the “South
of the North”, highlighting both its specificity compared to the foundational model
represented by the British context, and its internal diversities (Eade 1989; Eade et al. 1996;
2002, Gadner 1995; 2002; Zeitlyn 2016, inter alia). To put it another way, by addressing the
Bangladeshi migration in Southern Europe, this special issue brings to the surface the
importance of new geographies of the Bengali/Bangladeshi diasporas.
One might well ask: Why focus exclusively on Southern Europe? The answer is, and this is
our contention, that Southern European contexts present historical-structural specificities in
relation to other contexts in Europe, and these specificities affect Bangladeshi migrations and
subjectivities in particular ways. For instance, whereas in the UK or other Northern or Middle-
European countries informality is an exception, in the four countries to which this special
issue is devoted it seems to be quite the norm. Migration scholars have successfully covered
this informality using the definition of ‘Mediterranean model of migration’ (King 1993; King
and Black 1997; King and De Bono 2013; King et al. 1999; Pugliese 2002; 2011), highlighting
certain characteristics, such as the absence of specific migration governance policies and the
frequent use of amnesties; the social marginality of migrants and the large presence of
“irregular” residents; or a concentration of the migrant workforce in heavy, demeaning,
precarious and, often, informal occupations, as salient features of the migrant population in
this geographic area. Portugal has been included in this area not only because of its historical
connections with the Mediterranean world, but primarily because its models of incorporation
have strong family resemblances with those of Italy, Greece, and Spain. The multidimensional
precarity emphasised by the Mediterranean model, whose effect has only been exacerbated,
following the economic crisis at the end of the 2000s, is embodied in the lives of our
interlocutors in different forms and elicits an existential uncertainty which opens up liminal
spaces where both migratory paths are renegotiated and struggles to make a living locally take
place (Mapril 2019; Priori 2017; 2019). Although it is important to acknowledge that the
location and impact of informality and precarity vary according to national and city contexts
– in relation to labour market structures, economic sectors, and development policies – and
individual social capital, such structural vulnerabilities seem to be quite widespread in
Southern Europe.
Besides this structural commonality, each of the countries has a specific migration history,
one connected to colonial and post-colonial dynamics and mobilities. These have produced
dominant discourses about immigration and asylum policies, which, in turn, have an impact
on immigration regimes and, therefore, on our interlocutors’ experiences and forms of
participation. These immigration regimes become more complex when one bears in mind that
they are frequently articulated in line with European Union guidelines and ‘integration’ plans
(for instance, the Intercultural Cities Programme by the European Commission).
Nonetheless, the contradictory nature of the structures of opportunities available in Southern
Europe locates this area within the vast and hierarchically-organised space of the Bangladeshi
4 Banglascapes in Southern Europe: Im-mobilities, emplacements, temporalities
Migration Letters
diaspora (Priori 2017; cf. Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Fog Olwig and Harstrup. 1997) as a
desirable ‘mooring’. At least in terms of economic opportunities, it is more desirable than
Bangladesh or the oil-producing countries in Northern Africa and Eastern Asia, but still less
attractive than the UK or Germany. Power-geometries (Massey 1993) superimposed over the
geographic space inspire some migrants to move first from Bangladesh to Libya, and then
from Libya to Italy (Del Franco in this SI), or from Libya to Greece (Minamide in this SI),
just like they inspire others to undertake new mobilities towards London after obtaining
citizenship in Italy or Portugal (Della Puppa in this SI, or Mapril 2021), or to project further
movements from Greece to Germany (Fratsea and Papadopulos in this SI).
While the space of the Bangladeshi diaspora is crosscut by im-mobility trajectories which do
not point exclusively to ‘the north’, it is also true that in some cases, for example when people
have access to adequate mobility capital, these trajectories are indeed affected by a certain
magnetism to the north in which London represents the main pole of attraction. Moreover,
the old colonial capital does not only exert an influence in that it represents the ultimate
desired mooring of some fragmented migratory paths, but it also operates as a centre, radiating
out cultural tendencies and imaginaries of the Bangladeshi community. In this way, immaterial
artefacts such as religious orientations (Priori; Salguero and Hejazi in this SI) or patterns of
self-organisation (Mantovan in this SI), which have proved to be productive in the context of
the British-Bangladeshi community, are appropriated and translated into Southern European
idioms and emplaced in local processes.
If this special issue devotes particular attention to mobility and connectivity, the desire to lead
local lives and establish Bangladeshi spaces in Southern European sites can be seen as a
complementary characteristic, one which does not necessarily stand in opposition to
movement. The contributors highlight the importance of place-making processes and
connectivity with local actors in diverse fields, such as the production of a public Islam (Priori;
Salguero and Hejazi in this SI), the appropriation of urban space (Piazzoni; Salguero and
Hejazi in this SI), and the emergence of local associations led by migrants (Mantovan in this
SI), demonstrating the reciprocal entanglements of these local, sedentary processes with
transnational fluxes and mobilities (Mapril in this special issue).
***
But what then are the consequences of all this to the ways of being and the ways of belonging (Levitt
and Glick Schiller 2004) of our interlocutors? Of being Bangladeshi and Bengali in Southern
Europe?
The fact that we are focusing exclusively on Bangladeshis in Southern Europe does not mean
that we are reifying Bangladeshiness or leaving it unquestioned from an empirical point of
view. On the contrary, we intend to show how being Bangladeshi and Bengali are highly
contested and debated terms, which vary according to migration histories, class, gender, and
generation, but also with immigration regimes and dominant discursive formations. The
internal diversity of the Bangladeshi diaspora is a theme which connects all the contributions
in this SI. For instance, due to the configuration of Bangladeshi migration flows to Southern
Europe, it is possible to find several chain migrations that originate in different parts of
Bangladesh. This has led to enormous diversity along regional lines, corresponding to many
different associations and voluntary groups (Mantovan; Priori in this SI). On one level, this
has reinforced regional identities, for example being a Chittagongian in Lisbon, but on
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another, it has led to efforts to create initiatives and events that mobilise ideas and imaginaries
about being Bangladeshi (Mapril in this special issue). This concern with Bangladeshiness
overlaps with other transnational domains such as homeland politics and the omnipresence
of different political allegiances and their ideas about what it is to be a Bangladeshi or Bengali.
Moreover, Bangladeshiness does not stand alone, untouched by other forms of national
identifications. Those who settle in a new country start to consider new forms of belonging
and can identify as hyphenated-Bangladeshis (Eade, 2007), or elaborate creative identifications
which combine national and religious belongings, a trend which is particularly evident among
the so-called ‘second generations’ (Priori in this SI). Unsurprisingly, the concerns of parents
are not necessarily followed by their children, and intergenerational differences emerge quite
strikingly, not only in relation to Bangladeshiness and Bengaliness, but also with respect to
Islam, leisure activities, and marriage strategies among others, highlighting processes which
are paralleled in other diasporic contexts, and in shodesh (motherland) (Gavron 1996; Rozario
2011).
In addition, living in a country for a few years does not only elicit self-identifications as Italian-
Bangladeshi, or Spanish-Bangladeshi, but also forms of hetero-identification by migrants
living in other parts of Europe. People can be labelled as Italian-Bangladeshis even if they
think of themselves simply as Bangladeshis, and these complex identifications can add to
other complexities creating, for example, juxtapositions between Dhakaite-Italian-
Bangladeshis and Sylheti-British-Bangladeshis (Della Puppa in this special issue).
Therefore, being Bangladeshi in Lisbon is not the same thing as in Rome or in London, partly
because of contextual elements. For instance, in Lisbon, the intercultural model of citizenship
has elicited the emergence of certain cultural expressions by migrant populations in the public
sphere. It is in this context that several Bangladeshi entrepreneurs organised to build a replica
of the Shaheed Minar
4
in a central square in Lisbon (Mapril 2017). Whereas in the UK a replica
of the Shaheed Minar in Altab Ali Park was built in the context of anti-racism movements
(Alexander 2013), in Lisbon it was part of a larger effort to claim a public space in the context
of the intercultural immigration regime. The efforts were organised by a group of local
Portuguese-Bangladeshis who seek recognition not only as Bangladeshis but also as important
economic actors in downtown Lisbon (Mapril 2017).
In Rome, the issue of the Shaheed Minar is also connected with politics of recognition, but it
took different forms, due to the presence of a larger, and internally divided, Bangladeshi
community, and to an ethnicised model of appropriation of the urban space. Here, the
Shaheed Minar became a way to consecrate Bangladeshi neighbourhoods as ‘Banglatowns’
and to express political juxtapositions (Priori 2012a). Two opposing political groups erected
two different replicas, one in Esquilino and one in Torpignattara, but both replicas were
removed due to lack of authorisation from the local councils. A few years later, a third replica
was built in an upper-class neighbourhood in Rome where Bangladeshi presence is almost
4
The Shaheed Minar is a national monument located in Dhaka, built to commemorate the martyrs of the mother tongue
preservation movement killed by the Pakistani army on the 21st of February 1952. Erected by the students of Dhaka in the night
of the massacre and soon destroyed by the Pakistani army, after the independence of Bangladesh, in 1971, the monument was
rebuilt. Today the Shaheed Minar is the center of Dhaka’s cultural activities. The victims of the extermination are remembered
on 21st of February and recently the same date was chosen by Unesco as the International day of the mother tongue. Today, the
monument is one of the main symbols of the Bangladeshi national identity, even if, around it, different interpretations and
political visions of historical events and the war that Bangladeshi historiography calls ‘Liberation war’ clash each other (Alexander,
2013; Mapril, 2014b; 2017).
6 Banglascapes in Southern Europe: Im-mobilities, emplacements, temporalities
Migration Letters
irrelevant, as a result of diplomatic relations between the Italian Government and the Embassy
of Bangladesh. Unlike the other two, this third replica is still there.
Similar dynamics, characterised by fractures and conflicts between associations – which take
place along regional lines or personal differences – and political groups’ struggling for
community recognition, often supported by Italian institutional actors, have taken shape
within other Bangladeshi communities in Italy (Mantovan 2007; Morad and Della Puppa
2019). In the case of the Bangladeshi community residing in the Province of Padua, the
Shaheed Minar
5
is the result of a particular closeness and synergy between the traditionally
politically left local government of the municipality of Cadoneghe – in which the main migrant
community is by far the Bangladeshi one –, and the ‘Bangladeshi Association’ which has
managed to hegemonically impose itself with respect to intra-community associations. In this
case, from the perspective of the destination society, the monument replica symbolises an
acceptance of the resident migrants, thus inadvertently approximating the situation in Lisbon.
However, from the perspective of the Bangladeshi community in Padua, it constitutes both a
recognition of their presence and, echoing similarities in the context of Rome, the outcome
of a political and associative intra-community conflict.
At the same time, in several Southern European contexts, Bangladeshis have created both
religious and secular institutional apparatus that forms a dialogue with the religious and secular
infrastructure, and the dominant discourses and institutions concerning religion, including the
prominent role of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. For instance, although it is possible
to find Islamic prayer rooms in Athens, several conservative segments have blocked the
construction of a central Mosque. This has elicited a specific Islamic institutional framework
which is quite distinct from that in Portugal. In the latter, the Catholic Church joined with
other religious groups, perceived as less recognised religious minorities, in order to claim a
place for them. This has created opportunities for the emergence of new institutional
scenarios, including those for Bangladeshis.
One might argue that some of these phenomena have already taken place within the
Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK, and to a certain extent this view has merit. But at the same
time, it is the relation of these idioms to the historical-structural dynamics in Southern Europe
that gives meaning to what our interlocutors are saying and doing. This, in turn, makes clear
that being Bangladeshi and Bengali in Italy, Portugal, Spain or Greece is not exactly the same
thing as in the UK.
***
Our choice in approaching this field through fine-grained ethnographic analyses elicited a
variety of themes which offer straightforward examples of the internal diversity of the
Southern European diaspora.
Mapril shows how local relationships are re-embedded in transnational networks by analysing
the creation of a transnational federation of Bangladeshi associations. This allows him to
reflect on the concept of diaspora itself, as well as those of diasporic public space, and long-
distance nationalism. Del Franco analyses the construction of narratives of migration in the
context of the complicated and extenuating processes of evaluating asylum applications of
5
To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the second permanent Shaheed Minar constructed in Italy (after the one in Bari)
and the third in Europe (after that in London).
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Bangladeshi migrants who have fled from Libya to Italy following the inception of the second
civil war. Della Puppa deals with a more selective and desired vector of onward mobility which
connects Italy to the UK, and focuses on the representations of the class and district-related
dynamics which divide the Sylheti ‘community’ of London from the ‘Italian’ newcomers.
Fratsea and Papadopulos offer another picture of the fragmented scenario of Bangladeshi im-
mobilities by combining quantitative and ethnographic data in order to describe the impact
of precarity on the trajectories of migrants living, or transiting, in Greece. Minamide presents
a multi-sited ethnography linking Athens and a cluster of Bangladeshi villages, in which she
analyses the emotional strategies and the structure of opportunities available for different
generations of migrants, paying specific attention to the consequences of migrations for those
who remained in the motherland.
Piazzoni explores the nexus between mobile people and local urbanism by taking into account
the role of Bangladeshi street-sellers in place-making processes which, quite counter-
intuitively, do not occur in the ethnicised space of the Bangladeshi enclaves of Rome, but
rather in the iconic touristic landscape of its central area. In a contrasting context, Salguero
and Hejazi articulate the theme of the right to the city, where ethnicisation of the urban space
is leveraged in the process of emplacement of a Bangladeshi Islam in Madrid, and in the
creation of relationships with local actors.
Priori approaches Bangladeshi Islam from a generational standpoint by dealing with young
Muslim activists in Rome, whose religious and existential critique of the adults resonates not
only with rhetoric circulating within transnational Islamic networks, but also with their
concrete life conditions at a local level. Mantovan explores another kind of activism by tracing
a reasoned genealogy of an archipelago of secular migrant associations in North-Eastern Italy,
and by contextualising this nebula of organisations within political scenarios, both in the
motherland and Italy, highlighting connections at the local and transnational level.
The choice to build this special issue around specific case-studies entails not only a variety of
themes, but also a multiplicity of interlocutors: young people (Minamide; Priori) and adults
(Della Puppa; Mantovan); newcomers (Piazzoni; Del Franco) and well-established migrants
(Mapril; Della Puppa; Mantovan); Islamic activists (Salguero and Hejazi; Priori) and secularist
people (Della Puppa; Mapril); underpaid workers (Minamide, Fratsea and Papadopulos), street
sellers (Piazzoni), and aspiring professionals (Priori); and both migrants with poor educational
backgrounds (Del Franco; Fratsea and Papadopulos) and people with access to university
education (Della Puppa; Priori).
These diverse interlocutors incarnate different aspects of the Bangladeshi diaspora in
Southern Europe, and their stories show how the same idea or the same social asset can be
interpreted and employed in various, and often opposite, ways by different people, depending
on their positionalities. If, for example, Bangladesh works as a Procrustean bed on which to
measure the successfulness of one’s trajectory for the generation of the ‘first migrants’
(Minamide in this SI; see also Gardner 1995; Priori 2011; 2012a; Della Puppa 2014), those
who migrated to Europe as children or were born there see their parents’ reverence of the
shodesh as an anachronism hindering their personal development (Priori in this SI; see also
Gardner and Shukur 1994). Similarly, the presence of an established Bangladeshi community
can be interpreted by migrants as an asset (Mapril; Salguero and Hejazi; Mantovan in this SI;
8 Banglascapes in Southern Europe: Im-mobilities, emplacements, temporalities
Migration Letters
see also Eade 1989; Eade et al. 1996; Zeitlyn 2006) or a burden (Piazzoni in this SI), based on
their position within the power structures of the community itself (Priori 2010; 2012a; 2012b).
From this perspective, it is quite straightforward to conclude that the various Bangladeshi
communities scattered around Europe are internally diverse and that, despite its peculiarities
with regards to models of incorporation, the Southern European diaspora needs further
intersectional categorisation in order to be understood, just like any other general label. In
some cases, people pertaining to different ‘categories’ meet in the same setting. This is the
case in the contribution of Minamide, in which people who had arrived in Greece at different
times demonstrate different approaches to the migration experience. Another example is
provided by the case-study presented by Priori, where an opposition relationship between two
generations of Italian-Bangladeshis is depicted. In the article authored by Della Puppa, social
and district-based differences are performed in London, a scenario exceeding the areal
limitations of this special issue, where the representation of a conflict between Italian probashir
and Londoni epitomises symbolically dense oppositional lines, such as rural-urban, secular-
religious, educated-uneducated. The case-study presented by Della Puppa illuminates another
important difference between the European ‘south’ and the British context. In fact, while
emigration towards the UK was primarily by people from a specific social group, the taluk
dars (small landholders), from the Sylheti district, migrations towards Southern Europe
originate from a greater variety of sources, both in terms of Bangladeshi districts and social
origins, resulting in more diversified migratory chains. Countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal,
and Greece welcomed a mix of migrants with both rural and urban origins, from different
districts and cities, and an internally diverse array of self-appointed borolok (people of high
status), whose positions on the Bangladeshi social ladder range from small landholders with
an endangered familial status, to urban middle-class migrants with relatively solid social and
cultural capital (cf. Priori 2012a; Mapril 2014a). This greater heterogeneity is reflected in the
dynamics of political self-organisation which produced more centrifugal outcomes compared
to those of the UK (Mantovan; Priori; Salguero and Hejazi in this SI), also in respect to the
different models of incorporation implemented by the institutions.
While positionality represents a possible route for navigating Southern European
Banglascapes, at the same time it highlights some of the shortfalls of our analysis. Despite the
growing number of minors with Bangladeshi origins in Southern Europe, children are largely
absent from this special issue. The Hindu component of the diaspora is also lacking from our
picture, and we run the risk of reducing religion to solely Islam, the religion of the majority.
In this respect, we cannot help but draw attention to the poor scholarly interest overall in
these themes in Southern Europe, at least so far. A third remarkable limit of this special issue
is that a specific attention to women is almost completely missing, a characteristic mirrored
in the relative scarcity of scientifically relevant contributions referencing Southern European
countries (cf. Cristofori 2011; Priori, 2017; Della Puppa 2018). This is partially explained by
the nature of the subjects included in this special issue. Many contributors deal with primary
migration processes, in which hegemonic cultural constructions assign men the role of first-
migrant, with the role of opening the family ‘migration chain’ and achieving consequent family
reunification with wives and children. In other contributions, for example those concerned
with processes of self-organisation, men are often in the spotlight because of their grasp of
power in secular and religious associations which aspire to represent the community or at least
relevant parts of it, while another contribution deals with street sellers, a category of workers
in which Bangladeshi women do not figure. As a matter of fact, in Southern Europe as in
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Bangladesh, many Bangladeshis tend to reproduce segregated models of sociality, with the
women removed as much as possible from the labour market, and women’s organisations
carefully separated from those of men and from the politics of the community (Eade 1990).
Nevertheless, we are aware of the pitfalls of reproducing hegemonic representations by
portraying the Southern European probashir in this way, and wish to draw the reader’s attention
to our view that, although first migrants are generally men, women’s agency in Bangladeshi
im-mobilities is still substantial, especially with regard to emplacement processes and onward
migrations (Della Puppa 2018; Priori 2017; 2019), and that in Southern Europe there is a
growing number of Bangladeshi women accessing the labour market or running
entrepreneurial activities. Similarly, although the most visible organisations are led by men,
women’s associations have shown themselves to be reliable civil society actors in various
Southern European cities. Furthermore, despite the salience of a pattern of family
reunification, scholarly research cannot assume that Bangladeshi sociality is exclusively based
on a model of heterosexual marriage. These themes pinpoint the scientific limits of our work,
providing important vectors for further research, and making it clear that there are more ways
to be a Southern European probashi in the thick of social life than merely those represented in
our ethnographies.
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