International Sociology and International Sociology Reviews

‘Domestic Work’ is our Topic of the Month for December 2024. On this topic, enjoy this month Free Access to this article by Tanzina Choudhury (Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh), Mohammad Morad (Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh) and Francesco Della Puppa (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy) published in International Sociology, Lacerated minds, stolen dreams: Experiences of Bangladeshi women migrants in Saudi Arabia. Read on to know more about the authors’ trajectory and work.

Tanzina Choudhury

Mohammad Morad

Francesco Della Puppa

Why are you working on this topic? Could you share an experience, a fact or a person who made you get engage on that research?

T. Choudhury: I have been working on international migration for quite a long time. From 2017 to 2022 I worked as the team leader of GCRF (Global Challenge Research Fund) GlobalGRACE project funded by UKRI. In this four-and-a-half-year project, I again came across many female participants who were internal migrants and some of them (a tiny little number) even were international migrants. Though these women migrated, they couldn’t stay in Saudi Arabia and returned home quickly. In GlobalGRACE project we opted for life history interviews of women. This facilitated my access to a few women’s stories about their lives in Saudi Arabia. I found these stories immensely interesting and wanted to gain a comprehensive and more nuanced understanding of the life and struggle of these migrant women. I therefore embarked on further research and many interesting issues emerged from our joint effort. One part of this research was submitted to International Sociology for publication and the article saw light.

F. Della Puppa: I have been working for years on the Bangladeshi diaspora in Italy and Europe, on intra-European Bangladeshi migrations, but despite knowing that this phenomenon constitutes, from a quantitative point of view, a smaller part of the migrations from Bangladesh in the world, I had never faced it yet. At the same time, I have worked a lot on the topic of domestic and care work for immigrant women in Italy and Mediterranean Europe, but I had never dealt with this topic in the so-called "Middle East", where the political, social and economic scenario and, obviously, the migratory, working and existential conditions of female workers are much harsher. These two reasons and these two gaps pushed me to delve deeper into this phenomenon and report it in this article.

Do you have any video, recorded conference, or online material that you would like us to share with others?

T. Choudhury: I have photos and videos of my participants discussing their struggles. However, I cannot share these with others as they do not want to be identified.

What would you emphasize about your academic trajectory? Can you highlight which have been your academic positions, universities, awards, departments and research centers please?

T. Choudhury: If I want to talk about my academic trajectory I must say GEMMA Master Program funded by the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship Award was something I need to mention. As a GEMMA master’s student, I met my PhD supervisor Prof. Suzanne Clisby who was the GEMMA coordinator at the University of Hull. After completing my MA degree, I pursued my PhD under her supervision. In 2017, when I was in a difficult situation juggling familial, social and academic demands, Prof. Clisby approached me to join the GlobalGRACE project. I was reticent, not wishing to accept the offer as I was already overburdened with many responsibilities. Prof. Clisby and Prof. Johnson believed in my ability and dragged me to run the GlobalGRACE project as the country lead (Bangladesh). In those days I was least confident and thought I would not be able to fulfil the expectations of the project team. However, as soon as the project started rolling I regained my confidence; there were 5 other countries in this project – the UK, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and the Philippines. Among these countries, the Bangladesh team did exceptionally well (not my version!!) and was highly appreciated by the other teammates and internal and external evaluators of the project.

I am a Professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. I specialize in research and teaching in the areas of gender and development, migration, and poverty in local and global contexts. I was PI (Bangladesh team) of the GCRF funded Global Gender and Cultures of Equality (GlobalGRACE) Project (2017-2022, £3.7 m). I continued to lead the GlobalGRACE Bangladesh team until the project ended in 2022.

Tanzina Choudhury https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3814-2472

M. Morad: I am a professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), Sylhet, Bangladesh. My research focuses on international migration, migrant labor, ethnic identity formation, immigrant integration, social network, transnationalism, diaspora, refugees and intra-EU mobility. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Italy, Germany, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and Bangladesh. I obtained my PhD in the area of Sociology of Migration, Social Networks, and Transnationalism under the program of Social Sciences: Interactions, Communication, Cultural Constructions at the University of Padova, Italy with an Italian Doctoral Scholarship. Drawing on multi-sited qualitative research conducted in Italy and the UK, my PhD dissertation titled Multiple Migrations: Social Networks and Transnational Lives of Italian Bangladeshis in Europe enriches migration literature by giving an analysis of the drivers of naturalized EU citizens’ step-by-step migrations and providing a discussion about the interplay between social networks and transnational ties in driving multiple moves. I also hold a second Master’s degree in European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations from the University of Oldenburg (Germany), the University of Stavanger (Norway), and the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia) through the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Scholarship (Category A). Following a mixed method approach, my MA thesis titled Formation of Diaspora through Diasporic and Transnational Linkages: The Case of Bangladeshi Migrants in Italy discusses how the Bangladeshi diaspora in Italy is formed by analyzing three crucial elements of diaspora – dispersion, connection with the homeland, and maintaining ethnic identity in the host society.

In October 2022, I was awarded Padova University’s ‘Shaping World Class University Fellowship’ to work as a Visiting Professor, which enabled me to collaborate with the Research Group of Sociology of Work. Currently, I serve as the principal investigator of a research project titled ‘Moving Onward or Return Home? Transnational Ways of Belonging and Diasporic Networks of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh”.

Faculty profile: https://www.sust.edu/department/soc/faculty/morad-soc@sust.edu

F. Della Puppa: I held my Master degrees at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, then I held my PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Padua (Italy), with a thesis on masculinity transformation, labour, and family reunificaiton in Bangladeshi migration in Italy. I had some postdoc fellowship both at the University of Padua and Ca' Foscari University of Venice. I spent some visiting period at the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit in Dhaka (Bangladesh), at the University of Sussex (UK), at the Slovenian Migratory Institute (Slovenia), at the University of Arts of La Habana (Cuba). Right now, I am an Associate Professor in General Sociology at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. I am interested in international migration and asylum; migrant family and family reunification; social construction of gender and migration; labour and social conflict; migrant work and digital work and everyday life; racism and citizenship; Bangladeshi Diaspora; ethnography and qualitative social research. Lately, I have been interested in social sciences and comic, (ethno)graphic novels, and in establishing academic, scientific, social and human relations with Cuba.

Do you want to add any other information?

F. Dellapuppa: I am an ultra-runner and and mountain climber, and, back in the days, played in several post-punk band.