Ellen Bal
Biographic Data
| ID | 618013 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Bal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Bal |
| SIGNATURE | BAL E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2893-0977 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Hyper‐Precarious Lives: Understanding Migration, Global Supply Chain, and Gender Dynamics in Bangladesh
This article examines the lived experiences of precarity in Bangladesh’s ready‐made garments (RMG) industry, focusing on female migrant workers employed in Dhaka and surrounding industrial areas. Over the past three decades, the growth of the RMG sector has attracted economically disadvantaged rural women, distancing them from their traditional domestic and agricultural roles. This sector predominantly employs young women due to their perceived f…
Aspiration and Desperation Traps in Trajectories of Physical and Social Mobility-Immobility: Young Female Migrants in the City
Over the last two decades, Bangladesh has experienced a dramatic shift in terms of female rural–urban migration, often referred to as the feminization of migration. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research on young female migrants’ livelihood experiences in Dhaka and Gazipur, this article makes three contributions to the migration and mobilities literature. First, while migration often constitutes an adequate tool for resolving desperation, it …
Invisible mobilities: Stigma, immobilities, and female sex workers' mundane socio-legal negotiations of Dhaka's urban space
Drawing on ethnography, this paper conceptualizes invisible mobilities by exploring the linkages between mobility, invisibility and hotel and residence based sex work in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since both are illegal in Bangladesh, hotel and residence based sex workers (HRSWs) become targets of the different laws and sex work related social stigma. We show, in this paper, how invisible mobilities is used to strategize and counter-enact against the exi…
We are the True Citizens of This Country”
Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liber…
Migrants in liminal time and space: An exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam
This paper sheds light on the relationship between individual agency, transnational social relations, geographic place, and cultural constructions of life phase and gender among highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands. Amsterdam is attracting an increasing number of Indian migrants who work primarily in the fields of information technology, engineering and business management. The nature of this highly skilled work requires mobile, flex…
Hunger has brought us into this jungle: Understanding mobility and immobility of Bengali immigrants in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh
The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into accou…
Talking about mobility’: Garos aspiring migration and mobility in an ‘insecure’ Bangladesh
All around the world, people are exposed to information and imageries that may have been generated in far-away places, but by implication become part of their everyday lives. These cultural imaginaries, whether ‘realistic’ or not, are widespread and have real-life consequences. They do not only produce new self-images, aspirations and ideals, but also transform notions of (aspired) belonging and mobility. In this article, we show how mobility (tr…
Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA
Introduction: Aspiring migrants, local crises and the imagination of futures ‘away from home’
This special issue addresses the imagination of futures ‘away from home’ in a globalising world. While a growing number of migration scholars have taken into account that migration considerations are always socially embedded and culturally informed, the processes at work among a mounting number of (young) men and women throughout the world, who are convinced that a better life can only be found ‘away from home’, have been notably understudied. Th…
Yearning for faraway places: The construction of migration desires among young and educated Bangladeshis in Dhaka
These days, the imagined destinations of ever more people, particularly in the ‘global South’, are not where they were born but elsewhere. Using a case study of educated (lower) middle-class youth in Dhaka, this paper attempts to demonstrate that for many ‘aspiring migrants’, the yearning for leaving is a metaphor for disappointment and disengagement rather than the first step towards transnational migration. Economic growth, rapid urbanisation a…
The Borders that Divide, the Borders that Unite: (Re)interpreting Garo Processes of Identification in India and Bangladesh
The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and Bangladesh, have never constituted one unified and self-defined in-group, although British colonial rule indeed produced a feeble notion of an imagined Garo community. Hence, the international border of 1947 formalized certain distinctions between hill Garos and lowlanders that had existed much longer, and gave a further impetus to the articulations of ethnic…
A World of Insecurity: Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security
1. Human Security and Social Anthropology Thomas Hylland Eriksen Part I The Political Economy of Human Security 2. Taking Risks for Security's Sake: Bolivians Resisting their State and its Economic Policies Ton Salman 3. State Formation, Imposition of a Land Market and Silent Resistance among the Berbers of the Middle Atlas Bernard Venema (with Ali Mguild) 4. Flexible Migrants: Brazilian Gold Miners and their Quest for Human Security in Surinam M…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities: Teaching and learning anthropology in an insecure environment
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
"Staging "small, small incidents
In this article, we reflect on the gendered contours of young Kashmiris' dissident practices against the Indian military occupation of the Kashmir Valley. It is largely based on ethnographic research that coincided with the launch of an ongoing, predominantly nonviolent people's movement in which youth have played a prominent role. The article shows how university students' and young professionals' "small activism" is entangled in the gendered dy…
A World of Insecurity: Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security
Religious Identity, Territory, and Partition: India And its Muslim Diaspora in Surinam and the Netherlands
This article relates the Indian Muslim diaspora to the events of 1947, when British India was partitioned. It is argued that although the government of India has tried to woo people of Indian origin, it is interested only in Hindus, while reterritorializing Muslims to Pakistan. It is also argued that, as a consequence, Muslims of Indian origin in Surinam and the Netherlands do not identify with present-day India. Nor, however, do they look upon P…
‘No holy cows in Surinam’: Religion, transnational relations, identity politics, and the Hindostani Diaspora in Surinam
Becoming the Garos of Bangladesh: Policies of Exclusion and the Ethnicisation of a ‘Tribal’ Minority
This paper focuses on the relation between state policies and ethnicisation in the borderland of Bengal. On the basis of a case study of the lowland Garos of Bangladesh, the paper argues that attempts by the successor states of Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh to ‘other’, and even ‘exclude’, the Garos have significantly impacted on Garo self-perception and organisation, resulting in the formation of a close-knit ethnic community. The paper fo…
British Indians in colonial India and Surinam
The authors present a case study of Indian nationalists who drew from a discourse on 'exploited overseas Indian migrants' to serve their own political interests. At the same time, overseas British Indians, in this case in Surinam, advocated the continuation of transnational relations between (British) India and Surinam in order to strengthen the position of their community locally. Clearly, for some time, transnational identification served the (…
Muslims in Surinam and the Netherlands, and the divided homeland
This article invites a rethinking of the relation between homeland, diaspora and religion. We reflect on Muslims of Indian origin whose ancestors left British India long before 1947, when the country was partitioned and the new nations of Pakistan and India were established. The article interrogates the understanding of the Indian diaspora with religion as its core feature. It cautions that such a conceptualization often leads to the perception o…
Migrants in liminal time and space: An exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam
This paper sheds light on the relationship between individual agency, transnational social relations, geographic place, and cultural constructions of life phase and gender among highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands. Amsterdam is attracting an increasing number of Indian migrants who work primarily in the fields of information technology, engineering and business management. The nature of this highly skilled work requires mobile, flex…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities: Teaching and learning anthropology in an insecure environment
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
The Borders that Divide, the Borders that Unite: (Re)interpreting Garo Processes of Identification in India and Bangladesh
The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and Bangladesh, have never constituted one unified and self-defined in-group, although British colonial rule indeed produced a feeble notion of an imagined Garo community. Hence, the international border of 1947 formalized certain distinctions between hill Garos and lowlanders that had existed much longer, and gave a further impetus to the articulations of ethnic…
Hunger has brought us into this jungle: Understanding mobility and immobility of Bengali immigrants in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh
The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into accou…
Invisible mobilities: Stigma, immobilities, and female sex workers' mundane socio-legal negotiations of Dhaka's urban space
Drawing on ethnography, this paper conceptualizes invisible mobilities by exploring the linkages between mobility, invisibility and hotel and residence based sex work in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since both are illegal in Bangladesh, hotel and residence based sex workers (HRSWs) become targets of the different laws and sex work related social stigma. We show, in this paper, how invisible mobilities is used to strategize and counter-enact against the exi…
Muslims in Surinam and the Netherlands, and the divided homeland
This article invites a rethinking of the relation between homeland, diaspora and religion. We reflect on Muslims of Indian origin whose ancestors left British India long before 1947, when the country was partitioned and the new nations of Pakistan and India were established. The article interrogates the understanding of the Indian diaspora with religion as its core feature. It cautions that such a conceptualization often leads to the perception o…
We are the True Citizens of This Country”
Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liber…
Becoming the Garos of Bangladesh: Policies of Exclusion and the Ethnicisation of a ‘Tribal’ Minority
This paper focuses on the relation between state policies and ethnicisation in the borderland of Bengal. On the basis of a case study of the lowland Garos of Bangladesh, the paper argues that attempts by the successor states of Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh to ‘other’, and even ‘exclude’, the Garos have significantly impacted on Garo self-perception and organisation, resulting in the formation of a close-knit ethnic community. The paper fo…
Talking about mobility’: Garos aspiring migration and mobility in an ‘insecure’ Bangladesh
All around the world, people are exposed to information and imageries that may have been generated in far-away places, but by implication become part of their everyday lives. These cultural imaginaries, whether ‘realistic’ or not, are widespread and have real-life consequences. They do not only produce new self-images, aspirations and ideals, but also transform notions of (aspired) belonging and mobility. In this article, we show how mobility (tr…
"Staging "small, small incidents
In this article, we reflect on the gendered contours of young Kashmiris' dissident practices against the Indian military occupation of the Kashmir Valley. It is largely based on ethnographic research that coincided with the launch of an ongoing, predominantly nonviolent people's movement in which youth have played a prominent role. The article shows how university students' and young professionals' "small activism" is entangled in the gendered dy…
Religious Identity, Territory, and Partition: India And its Muslim Diaspora in Surinam and the Netherlands
This article relates the Indian Muslim diaspora to the events of 1947, when British India was partitioned. It is argued that although the government of India has tried to woo people of Indian origin, it is interested only in Hindus, while reterritorializing Muslims to Pakistan. It is also argued that, as a consequence, Muslims of Indian origin in Surinam and the Netherlands do not identify with present-day India. Nor, however, do they look upon P…
Muslims in Surinam and the Netherlands, and the divided homeland
This article invites a rethinking of the relation between homeland, diaspora and religion. We reflect on Muslims of Indian origin whose ancestors left British India long before 1947, when the country was partitioned and the new nations of Pakistan and India were established. The article interrogates the understanding of the Indian diaspora with religion as its core feature. It cautions that such a conceptualization often leads to the perception o…
British Indians in colonial India and Surinam
The authors present a case study of Indian nationalists who drew from a discourse on 'exploited overseas Indian migrants' to serve their own political interests. At the same time, overseas British Indians, in this case in Surinam, advocated the continuation of transnational relations between (British) India and Surinam in order to strengthen the position of their community locally. Clearly, for some time, transnational identification served the (…
‘No holy cows in Surinam’: Religion, transnational relations, identity politics, and the Hindostani Diaspora in Surinam
Becoming the Garos of Bangladesh: Policies of Exclusion and the Ethnicisation of a ‘Tribal’ Minority
This paper focuses on the relation between state policies and ethnicisation in the borderland of Bengal. On the basis of a case study of the lowland Garos of Bangladesh, the paper argues that attempts by the successor states of Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh to ‘other’, and even ‘exclude’, the Garos have significantly impacted on Garo self-perception and organisation, resulting in the formation of a close-knit ethnic community. The paper fo…
Religious Identity, Territory, and Partition: India And its Muslim Diaspora in Surinam and the Netherlands
This article relates the Indian Muslim diaspora to the events of 1947, when British India was partitioned. It is argued that although the government of India has tried to woo people of Indian origin, it is interested only in Hindus, while reterritorializing Muslims to Pakistan. It is also argued that, as a consequence, Muslims of Indian origin in Surinam and the Netherlands do not identify with present-day India. Nor, however, do they look upon P…
A World of Insecurity: Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security
"Staging "small, small incidents
In this article, we reflect on the gendered contours of young Kashmiris' dissident practices against the Indian military occupation of the Kashmir Valley. It is largely based on ethnographic research that coincided with the launch of an ongoing, predominantly nonviolent people's movement in which youth have played a prominent role. The article shows how university students' and young professionals' "small activism" is entangled in the gendered dy…
Introduction: Aspiring migrants, local crises and the imagination of futures ‘away from home’
This special issue addresses the imagination of futures ‘away from home’ in a globalising world. While a growing number of migration scholars have taken into account that migration considerations are always socially embedded and culturally informed, the processes at work among a mounting number of (young) men and women throughout the world, who are convinced that a better life can only be found ‘away from home’, have been notably understudied. Th…
Yearning for faraway places: The construction of migration desires among young and educated Bangladeshis in Dhaka
These days, the imagined destinations of ever more people, particularly in the ‘global South’, are not where they were born but elsewhere. Using a case study of educated (lower) middle-class youth in Dhaka, this paper attempts to demonstrate that for many ‘aspiring migrants’, the yearning for leaving is a metaphor for disappointment and disengagement rather than the first step towards transnational migration. Economic growth, rapid urbanisation a…
The Borders that Divide, the Borders that Unite: (Re)interpreting Garo Processes of Identification in India and Bangladesh
The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and Bangladesh, have never constituted one unified and self-defined in-group, although British colonial rule indeed produced a feeble notion of an imagined Garo community. Hence, the international border of 1947 formalized certain distinctions between hill Garos and lowlanders that had existed much longer, and gave a further impetus to the articulations of ethnic…
A World of Insecurity: Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security
1. Human Security and Social Anthropology Thomas Hylland Eriksen Part I The Political Economy of Human Security 2. Taking Risks for Security's Sake: Bolivians Resisting their State and its Economic Policies Ton Salman 3. State Formation, Imposition of a Land Market and Silent Resistance among the Berbers of the Middle Atlas Bernard Venema (with Ali Mguild) 4. Flexible Migrants: Brazilian Gold Miners and their Quest for Human Security in Surinam M…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities: Teaching and learning anthropology in an insecure environment
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA
Talking about mobility’: Garos aspiring migration and mobility in an ‘insecure’ Bangladesh
All around the world, people are exposed to information and imageries that may have been generated in far-away places, but by implication become part of their everyday lives. These cultural imaginaries, whether ‘realistic’ or not, are widespread and have real-life consequences. They do not only produce new self-images, aspirations and ideals, but also transform notions of (aspired) belonging and mobility. In this article, we show how mobility (tr…
We are the True Citizens of This Country”
Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liber…
Migrants in liminal time and space: An exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam
This paper sheds light on the relationship between individual agency, transnational social relations, geographic place, and cultural constructions of life phase and gender among highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands. Amsterdam is attracting an increasing number of Indian migrants who work primarily in the fields of information technology, engineering and business management. The nature of this highly skilled work requires mobile, flex…
Hunger has brought us into this jungle: Understanding mobility and immobility of Bengali immigrants in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh
The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into accou…
Invisible mobilities: Stigma, immobilities, and female sex workers' mundane socio-legal negotiations of Dhaka's urban space
Drawing on ethnography, this paper conceptualizes invisible mobilities by exploring the linkages between mobility, invisibility and hotel and residence based sex work in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since both are illegal in Bangladesh, hotel and residence based sex workers (HRSWs) become targets of the different laws and sex work related social stigma. We show, in this paper, how invisible mobilities is used to strategize and counter-enact against the exi…
Aspiration and Desperation Traps in Trajectories of Physical and Social Mobility-Immobility: Young Female Migrants in the City
Over the last two decades, Bangladesh has experienced a dramatic shift in terms of female rural–urban migration, often referred to as the feminization of migration. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research on young female migrants’ livelihood experiences in Dhaka and Gazipur, this article makes three contributions to the migration and mobilities literature. First, while migration often constitutes an adequate tool for resolving desperation, it …
Hyper‐Precarious Lives: Understanding Migration, Global Supply Chain, and Gender Dynamics in Bangladesh
This article examines the lived experiences of precarity in Bangladesh’s ready‐made garments (RMG) industry, focusing on female migrant workers employed in Dhaka and surrounding industrial areas. Over the past three decades, the growth of the RMG sector has attracted economically disadvantaged rural women, distancing them from their traditional domestic and agricultural roles. This sector predominantly employs young women due to their perceived f…
Sociology (18 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Geography (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (8 works) · Social science (7 works)