A Historical Geography of Movement

The partition of British India in 1947 resulted in one of the largest mass migrations in history. This traumatic event laid the foundation for decades of cross-border movement between what would become East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and India, particularly in West Bengal and Assam (Chatterji, 2007). Migration surged again during the 1971 Liberation War, as over 10 million refugees fled to India (Sikdar, 1994). Since then, movements have continued—sporadically yet persistently—driven by a combination of economic necessity, environmental vulnerability, and ethnic-religious tensions.

The historical continuity of migration has produced what Samaddar (1999) refers to as a “postcolonial migration regime,” where borders are not impermeable barriers but zones of negotiation, fluidity, and everyday contestation.

Drivers of Cross-Border Migration

Contemporary migration from Bangladesh to India is shaped by multiple overlapping factors:

• Economic disparity between rural districts in southwestern and northwestern Bangladesh and the relatively prosperous Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura

• Ecological displacement due to river erosion, cyclones, salinity intrusion, and loss of agricultural land in areas like Satkhira and Khulna (Iqbal & Roy, 2020)

• Social networks and kinship ties, which have endured across the Radcliffe Line for generations

Many of these movements are circular or seasonal, with migrants crossing informally for labor, especially in agriculture, construction, or domestic work. Borderland villages function as key transit points, with tacit social arrangements allowing such mobility to persist even under formal restrictions (Raghavan, 2016).

The Border as a Lived Space

The Bangladesh–India border is one of the most densely patrolled in the world, with barbed-wire fencing, surveillance technologies, and regular military presence - particularly by India’s Border Security Force (BSF). However, from a human geography standpoint, the border cannot be understood simply as a line on a map; it is a lived and negotiated space.

Many residents of borderland areas live bi-national lives: they own land or have relatives on the other side, send children across the border for education or marriage, and engage in small-scale trade. These interactions defy the binary of legal/illegal and illustrate what Van Schendel (2005) calls the “borderland logic”—a set of locally embedded practices that challenge the authority of the state.

Yet, this fluidity is not without peril. Reports of violence, disappearances, and shootings—particularly against undocumented migrants—underscore the precarity and vulnerability faced by those navigating the border (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

Migration as Resistance and Survival

Despite being portrayed as “illegal infiltrators” or “security threats,” many migrants engage in adaptive and resilient practices to survive. During fieldwork for my undergraduate thesis in border-adjacent villages of the Satkhira district, multiple respondents described seasonal movement to India for work in brick kilns or rice mills, enabled through informal agreements with local brokers and networks. These decisions were not made lightly, but out of necessity - fueled by landlessness, debt, and environmental loss.

Migration, in this sense, becomes a form of agency, not victimhood. Migrants deploy tactics—from bribing guards to acquiring forged documents—to navigate restrictive regimes and claim space in hostile environments. As De Genova (2002) argues, the “illegality” of migration is not inherent, but produced through the criminalization of movement by the state.

Reframing Migration Through Human Geography

The Bangladesh–India migration corridor challenges us to move beyond statist framings. From a human geography perspective, migration is not just about movement from Point A to B, but about the production of space, negotiation of power, and reconfiguration of identities.

Place matters. So does scale - from global climate patterns to local informal economies. Most importantly, the lived experiences of migrants—their hopes, fears, and tactics—must be central to how we understand and respond to cross-border mobility.