Doctoral Dissertation Research: Borderland Orders: An Ethnographic Exploration of Border Securitization in a High Population Density Context

Shana Ghosh, under the supervision of Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan at Yale University explores how newly established borderlands transform social, cultural, and economic relationships and influence cross-border activities. The project asks how the securitization of previously porous borders impacts regional economic networks and affects the daily lives and livelihoods of borderland residents. The research takes place along the border of India and Bangladesh, a 4,000 km long border which India has recently taken the initiative to fence and guard. This is an appropriate site for this study since securitization is taking place within a densely populated area. Most studies of borderlands have tended to regard borders as landscapes of defense or as zones of criminality, rather than as places characterized by the mobility and circulation that one might find in densely populated areas. This project focuses on the new economies and relationships that emerge in an area of the world that has been transitioning to democracy and free trade.

The researcher will conduct 16 months of ethnographic research combining participant observation with interviews, life histories, network mapping, and focus group discussions with residents of this borderland, border security forces, and local administrative officials of both countries. The research will focus on northern Bengal, and be based in Coochbehar district, India and Lalmonirhat district, Bangladesh. The wide range of research methods and informants will provide a rich account of participation in transborder movements for familial, religious, and economic reasons.

The project critically engages with the existing assumptions about cross-border movements to uncover how and why people and goods move, to illuminate debates and values on mobility, citizenship, and security from the points of view of those who reside in this borderland and experience its securitization daily. It will contribute to scientific debates about the relationships between states, the social practices and structures that undergird cross-border activities, and debates about migration, resettlement, and transnationalism.

The project's findings will be of great benefit to policymakers and practitioners concerned with understanding how the role socioeconomic stability, migration and trade play in areas of the world that are democractizing. The project also provides for the training of a graduate student.