ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the experiences of poverty-induced internally displaced and undocumented cross-border migrant women from Bangladesh living in the Indian state of West Bengal. It considers the problematic relationships between neoliberal development, globalisation, and its particular manifestation with respect to displaced people in India. The chapter suggests that globalisation has accentuated the conditions that lead to displacement. Based on fieldwork among displaced women, the chapter outlines how women and their families cope as forced migrants and how women themselves assess their situation. The findings for the chapter are derived from fieldwork among forced women migrants in 2004-2006 in Kolkata in the Indian state of West Bengal and Siliguri in the northern region of the state, including in-depth interviews with 13 key informants. The chapter highlights the ways in which the boundaries of the economic migrant and the political refugee became blurred, through women's narratives of displacement.
