Universität zu Köln

Kabir, Punny ORCID: 0000-0001-7740-3754 (2026). Building a Political Home: Bangladeshi Migrants and Local Solidarities in Rome’s “Banglatown”. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

PDF (PhD Dissertation) Punny Kabir_Final Doctoral Dissertation_2026.pdf - Accepted Version Download (6MB)

Abstract

Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Torpignattara, Rome, often referred to as “Banglatown,” I examine how Bangladeshi Muslim migrants seek a social and political foothold in alliance with local extra-parliamentary left actors, including radical-left militants, self-managed social centres, and anarchist and autonomist collectives. I analyse how conditions of settlement shape migrants’ political subjectivities, how neighbourhood alliances are formed across differences of religion, ideology, class, gender, legal status, and political commitment, and how these alliances make particular grievances publicly actionable. Central to the analysis is the process through which everyday problems are articulated and translated into collective demands, as well as the frictions, inequalities, and unresolved differences that this process generates. I treat political participation not primarily as electoral voice, but as the uneven capacity to organise, make claims, act upon public space, negotiate with institutions, and sustain collective action. I argue that these alliances create limited but consequential avenues of participation through which migrants build what I call a political home: a locally grounded foothold of voice, recognition, and political agency without full political membership. This political home is neither stable nor complete. It is continuously made and remade through alliance work, remains spatially bounded, and is only partially transmitted across generations.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Kabir, Punny punni.kabir@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7740-3754 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-810499
Date:	2026
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 4: Außereuropäische Sprachen, Kulturen und Gesellschaften > Institut für Ethnologie
Subjects:	Social sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Migration and Islam English Migration to Europe English Anthropology of migration English Anthropology of Globalization English Political Solidarity English Extra-parliamentary Left English urban citizenship English Migrant political Participation English Rome English
Date of oral exam:	17 July 2026
Referee:	Name Academic Title Brandtstädter, Susanne Professor Dr. Herzfeld, Michael Professor Dr. Vereni, Pietro Professor Dr.
Funders:	a.r.t.e.s Graduate School
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/81049