ABSTRACT
Migration concerns me both as an academic subject and as lived experience. While the terms migrant and refugee are regularly mistakenly interchanged in everyday parlance, it is perhaps only merely indicative of the fact that the moment a person finds herself in a geopolitical situation where she is the other, her status is commonly perceived as and reduced to one seeking ‘refuge’. Regardless whether one may have migrated on a high paying job or as an academic, out on the street s/he so often is a ‘refugee’.
While migration is not a new phenomenon, for every person who is a migrant, it is a novel individual experience. But is leaving home more difficult or finding and making one in a new country? What does a migrant carry with her when making this movement? What carries the migrant through this difficult journey? Memories perhaps. Memories have no baggage restrictions or border control.
As part of my documentary project ‘Migration and Memories’ I talked to Prof. Zakia Rahman and Prof. Abdur Rahman, emeritus academic faculty of the University of Limerick, who migrated to Ireland some 40 years ago from Bangladesh. They spoke of how, in spite of being here for 40 years, they still sometimes feel like an outsider, and how, when they go back to Bangladesh for the annual tour, they never feel at home there. What is the no man’s land that they inhabit? Where do they belong? This essay foregrounds the migrant experience through my interviews with the Rahmans and addresses 2 key questions: how are migrant identities constructed? Why are migrant identities always in a state of flux?
