Mobilities across European Banglascapes

Bangladeshi migration to Europe began as early as the 1600s, when young Bengali men worked as deckhands on British ships bound for London. The British capital became home to what would become, in the following centuries, the largest Bangladeshi community in Europe. However, in the 1970s, the United Kingdom and other continental European countries that had traditionally been destinations for international migration (e.g., the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and Switzerland), tightened their control over new arrivals. At the same time, Mediterranean European countries, which had recently undergone profound social and economic transformations, established themselves as new destinations for migration from the “Global South.” This meant that by the 1990s, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal were among the main destinations for Bangladeshi migration to Europe. The next twenty years saw the 2008 global economic crisis (which hit southern European countries particularly hard) as well as changes in the expectations and the legal and family status of Bangladeshi migrants in Mediterranean Europe (the second generation was born, and the first generation had acquired European passports). Hence, a new migration began to take shape, with Bangladeshi communities again moving to London, but this time from Mediterranean Europe. However, the migratory mobility of these Bangladeshi Europeans has not ended: while some have settled in the United Kingdom, even acquiring British citizenship, many others, because of the disillusionments concerning the United Kingdom as well as the implementation of Brexit, have decided to retrace their steps partially, returning to Mediterranean Europe or settling in other European countries. Meanwhile, many unskilled Bangladeshi workers who previously migrated to Libya also find themselves undertaking a further migration, crossing the Mediterranean to claim asylum in Italy. This demonstrates the ever-increasing complexity of interwoven mobilities across European Banglascapes.