Living at the Margins: Experiences of Borderlanders of the Indo-Bangladesh border

Abstract

The contested Bengal Border divides people of same culture. The people living on the edges of the state have unique life experiences in the everyday life of the border. Life stories are significant genres of narrative analysis, which ‘is a way of sharing and making sense of experiences in the recent or remote past and recounting important, emotional, or traumatic events and the minutiae of everyday life’. This kind of narrative does not explicitly represent the ‘truth’ but captures the dynamic interplay between lives, experiences, and stories. The study aims to illustrate the formation of the Bengal border and the expansion of the bordering infrastructure. It also tries to study the experiences of borderlanders about the border infrastructures and its impact on their everyday lives. This study is an empirical chronicle from the Bengal borderlands. Forty open-ended semi-structured interviews are conducted with the people of Borderlands in different areas of Border districts of West Bengal along the Indo-Bangladesh border. The interviews are analyzed by the narrative analysis method by coding and categorizing through the QDA Miner qualitative data analysis software.