Chasing the dream: masculinity and male honour of Italian-Bangladeshi men relocating to London

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the gender identity transformations of Italian-Bangladeshi men who, after first migrating from Bangladesh to Italy, then undertook a further onward migration, relocating, along with their families, to London. The paper shows the ambivalences and contradictions, in terms of male honour, involved in the new migration towards the UK. Specifically, it shows how the crossing of multiple borders, as well as their arrival and stabilisation in political-territorial contexts that were socio-historically constructed by colonialism as prestigious and wealthy areas, may increase the symbolic capital and male honour of male Bangladeshi migrants. However, if this experience increases their symbolic, gendered and social credentials, it also implies trajectories of professional, biographical, and social downgrading that compromise their image and position as ‘successful’ men.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant masculinity
• male breadwinner
• Bangladeshi diaspora
• onward migration
• social mobility
• honour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Bangla this means ‘those who went abroad’, ‘the emigrants’.

2 In Italy, it is possible to apply for citizenship after 10 years of regular and continuous residence in the country.

3 In Bangladesh, only the middle and highly-educated classes have access to the English language.

4 In Bangla, the ‘foreign land’ or ‘abroad’.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesco Della Puppa

Francesco Della Puppa is Professor in Sociology at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and member of the Master program on ‘Immigration: Migration Phenomena and Social Transformations’ at the same University. PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Padua, he carries out teaching and research activities on issues relating to international migration, migrant families and family reunification, transformations of masculinity in migration, migrant labour and racial discrimination, refugees and asylum seekers, digital labour. He likes to explore the possibilities that the language of comics and graphic novels offer to social sciences.