Circular Migration and Habitat: The city-country relation in an era of global urbanisation

• Applicant: Dr. Elisa Tullia Bertuzzo
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2012 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 214352125

This research project deals with circular migration in the context of South Asia. The consequences of big groups of people fluctuating between city and country as well as cross agricultural areas are in its focus. The growing mobility, so my hypothesis, is not only affecting forms of habitation and of living, and thereby local concepts of habitat, but also corresponds to a social form that is presently taking shape under changed conditions of urbanisation. Empirical evidence and theoretical reflection shall hence question spatial planning discourses that treat city and country as separate entities.The project, adopting methods of qualitative social research, is set in Bangladesh and West Bengal (India). It will 1) document circular migration in the two states; 2) analyse its consequences for the habitat both in terms of habitation forms and settlement patterns; 3) trace transformations of culturally forged concepts of habitat; 4) lead to a closer definition of the living forms of circular migrants, tentatively called “neither-urban-nor-rural”; 5) inspire environmentally sound territorial planning ideas for populations on the move in the specific context.The fieldwork, equally distributed in Bangladesh and West Bengal between October 2012 and November 2013, consisted of repeated travels with circular and temporary migrants. These routine travels were recorded and mapped via GPS. The experiences brought to light dominant trends, e.g. regarding seasonal migration in the agricultural sector and the indeed frequent phenomenon (especially in West Bengal) of city-land-migration, as well as causes, e.g. landlessness (especially in Bangladesh). The comparative approach revealed to be fruitful. For an example, the measures to foster rural development and limit immigration to cities via creation of job opportunities in West Bengal could be better appraised via a comparison with Bangladesh, where such planning issues have been tackled in a discontinuous way.In the last project phase, the remarkable increase of emigration experienced by West Bengal – traditionally prone to immigration from other neighbouring states – in the last decade comes to the fore. While the media are already speaking of the “great Bengal exodus”, this trend has not been object of scholarly analysis as yet. A significant portion of West Bengalis do not move permanently, but temporarily: I had the opportunity to follow farmers that, twice yearly, reach the 2,500Km far-away state of Kerala to work as construction workers. Kerala's construction boom in turn is largely boosted by remittances from the Gulf and is currently the site of a particular transfer of architectural forms, as the builder-owners opt for residential houses that imitate or reinterpret the Gulf's oriental architecture. I shall delve deeper into this double de- and re-territorialisation: that of circular migrants' survival strategies and that of moving construction forms.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants