The 'Urdu-speaking population' in Bangladesh, displaced by Partition in 1947, and made 'stateless' by the Liberation War of 1971, exemplify some of the key problems facing uprooted populations. Exploring differences of 'camp' and 'non-camp' based displacement, this paper represents a critical evaluation of the way 'political space' is contested at the local level and what this reveals about the nature and boundaries of citizenship. Semi-structured and narrative interviews conducted among 'camp' and 'noncamp' based 'Urdu-speakers' found that citizenship status has been profoundly affected by the spatial dynamics of settlement. However it also revealed the ways in which 'formal' status is subverted -the moments of negotiation in which claims to political being are made. In asking how and when a 'stateless' population is able to 'access' citizenship, through which processes and by which means it reveals the tension, ambiguity and conceptual limitations of 'statelessness' and citizenship, unearthing a reality of partial, shifting and deceptively permeable terrain. In doing so, it also reveals the dissonance and discord (constitutive of an 'us' and 'them' divide) upon which the creation of 'political space' may at times rely. Citizenship functions to exclude and, therefore, it is very often born of contestation.

The articles in this volume reflect upon a very specific moment in the social architecture of British society: a moment which brings financial meltdown together with some sizeable shifts in the racial and ethnic landscape of the UK. As a 'neoliberal revolution' (Hall 2011) heralds the end of public services and the end of the welfare state, it proclaims 'the end of race' as well. But cultural retrenchment and coded xenophobia have also been sweeping the political terrain, accompanied by 'new racisms' and 'new racial subjects' which only close contextual analysis can unpick. Against those who suggest we live in a post-racial time, the research presented offers friction. By focusing on particular locations in Britain at a particular moment, the articles explore local stories of 'race' and racism across changing socio-political ground.

The ‘reactive transnationalism hypothesis’ posits a relationship between discrimination and transnational practice. The concept has generally been studied using quantitative methods, but a qualitative approach augments our understanding of two context‐specific dimensions: the nature of the discrimination involved, and the types of transnational behaviour that might be affected. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with Bangladesh‐origin Muslims in London, Luton and Birmingham, in the UK, we demonstrate how anti‐Asian and anti‐Muslim racism have been conflated with intensified anti‐migrant racism in the context of ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies and the EU referendum (Brexit), producing an amplification of racist discourses associated with purging the body politic of its non‐white bodies. The insecurity generated is altering some people's relationships to Bangladesh, incentivizing investment in land and property ‘back home'. While this represents an example of ‘reactive transnationalism', we argue that ‘protective transnationalism’ might be a more appropriate way of describing the processes at work.

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This article considers the convivial turn in migration and diversity studies, and some of its silences. Conviviality has been conceptualised by some as the ability to be at ease in the presence of diversity. However, insufficient attention has been paid to considering who is affectively at ease with whose differences or, more particularly, what the work of conviviality requires of those marked as other vis-a-vis European white normativity. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with British Bangladeshi Muslims in London, Luton and Birmingham, we argue that a focus on ‘ease in the presence of diversity’ obscures the ‘burden of conviviality’ carried by some, but not others. We discuss three key types of burden that emerged from our data: the work of education and explanation, the work of understanding racism, and quite simply the work of ‘appearing unremarkable’.

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation-state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a powerful example. However markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced (Ansari, 2005). Using the case of the displaced 'Urdu-speaking minority' in Bangladesh this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation-state. It reveals that the language of 'integration' is embedded in colonial narratives of 'population' versus 'people-nation' which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of 'modernity' and 'progress' fold into religious discourses of 'pollution' and 'purity'. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a 'nation-in-formation': the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.

The paper examines understandings of citizenship and ethnic identification among the 'Urdu-speaking linguistic minority' in Bangladesh, addressing three key areas of debate. First, it explores the relationship between the material institution of citizenship and conditions of (physical) integration/segregation. Second, it attempts to unpick the intimate connection between that material institution and the ethnic and national identities of individuals. Finally, it investigates a dissonance discovered between the bureaucratic state recognition of citizenship and imaginations of that status among interviewees, the 'identities of citizenship' occupied at the local level. The paper demonstrates the significance of subject positionality, economies of power and the 'dialogic' nature of ethnic identity formation, and Victoria Redclift 2 discusses the complex emotional ordering of belonging they collectively construct. 1

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