Lives in motion: the life-course, movement and migration in Bangladesh

Through a series of ethnographic examples drawn from long term research in Bangladesh, this article examines the relationship between different forms of migration and movement and the life course, focusing in particular upon how the life course influences peoples’ pro-pensity to move rather than how movement affects peoples’ experiences of the life course. Understanding the latter as inherently gendered, contextually varied and constructed by history, culture and global economies as well as physiology, the cases detailed in the article illustrate how human migration must be understood both in terms of the vagaries of individual lives and biographies (and hence micro-levels of analysis) as well as broader structural factors. The article is thus a reminder that the study of migration must involve appreciation of the interconnection of both micro- and macro-levels of analysis.