Borders, Citizenship, and the Local: Everyday Life in Three Districts of West Bengal

Abstract

Borders have been considered essential to understanding the self and the other, with identities on either side established through functions of exclusion and inclusion. These processes, initially considered to be the preserve of the state as exercised through its policies of border management, also exist in tandem or in an asynchronous manner at the local level. Constituted of processes of identification and networks of interdependences, localized construals of the borderland and subsequently positioned engagements, comes to shape notions of accessibility and restriction as well as perceptions of the “other”. These engagements are not always reflective of statist positions on the border which are often uniform in the conceptualization of its capacity to contain.