UC Davis

This dissertation research argues for recalibrating an overused lens for understanding humanmobilities engendered by or engendering crises. Going beyond the canonical framework of people crossing borders, which dominates research and policy globally, I contend that it is necessary to engage with common experiences of being crossed, constrained, and conditioned by “borders”—social and legal barriers reinforced by political and economic power relations. I consider borders not only as objects or sites of inquiry, but as conceptual tool for critical inquiries around mobilities in relation to the climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, and conflict, with specific focus on local postcolonial contexts in the Global South. Empirically focusing on internal migrants within the nation-state boundaries of Bangladesh and India, I examine how effects of historically operating bordering processes shape their mobilities through creation and reification of intersectional borderized realities. I further demonstrate how migrants as borderized bodies on the move are simultaneously borderizing beings, capable of negotiating possible futures, and reimagining existing social, political, and legal boundaries by which they get defined and categorized. Drawing on data collected from in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and field observations during multi-sited fieldworks conducted over multiple time periods, I orient my analysis around insights emerging from three empirical studies to unpack nuances of the phenomena of borderized mobilities and borderizing migrants. I conclude with a discussion around refugee-ness as an emerging condition of concern linking the differentially borderized and borderizing in this era of converging crises. I ultimately contribute to advancing critical understanding of human mobilities shaped by and shaping multiple crises by illuminating experiential knowledge and subaltern standpoints of those already always crossed by borders.