Rural-urban migration and redefining indigeneity in Dhaka, Bangladesh

This paper illustrates how students from indigenous groups from the Chittagong Hill Tracts who migrated to Dhaka adapt to their new urban environment. To grasp the challenges for student migrants I first provide a background to the Chittagong Hill Tracts region and the problems of national integration of the region in Bangladesh. Afterwards I investigate the role of national and international indigenous people’s discourses in the redefinition of indigeneity in the urban context of Dhaka and examine the influence of Bangladeshi nationalist discourses in this process. I do so by presenting ethnographic data from fieldwork in Dhaka during the first three months of 2012. Data will reveal how indigenous students relate to Bangladeshi middle class discourses that stress modernity and consumption, while at the same time not disregarding the importance of belonging to indigenous groups in Bangladesh. In documenting these social changes, this paper provides empirically grounded insights in social change and social mobility in contemporary Bangladesh. Bangladeshi nationalism and the Chittagong Hill Tracts