Introduction

In Bangladesh, people aged 18–35 years are identified as young (Vogel, 2015). Many gays, lesbians, hijras, and transgenders live in Bangladesh, which is predominantly Muslim. This chapter mainly focuses on young Bangladeshi homosexuals, hijras, and transgenders. It examines their struggles as they tend to migrate from rural to urban areas, and from the urban areas to overseas, in a bid to find safer spaces to live. To understand their migration patterns, the push and pull factors are important considerations. While these factors are common ways of tracing any migration pattern (Bradnock and Williams, 2014; Mishra et al, 2015), this chapter argues that these factors provide understanding to some geopolitically different societal challenges they confront. These challenges reveal interlinked frames in negotiating strategic violence: inter-societal homophobia, homonationalist queer friendliness, Islamophobia, nation-states’ strategic sympathy and its homo-neoliberal abandonment.

Bangladesh: push and pull factors of migration

Bangladesh, with 165 million people in 55,126 square miles and with a 1.6% population growth rate, is one of most densely crowded countries (Muzzini and Aparicio, 2013). Due to rapid urbanization, the rate of rural-to-urban migration is significantly high. Urban population increased nine-fold, from 2.6 million to 22 million between 1961 and 1999 (Hossain, 2011). About 30 million people of the total population are now living in urban areas (Lewis, 2011) and by 2030, about 40% of the total population will be living in urban areas (Hossain, 2011).

Surveys conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, non-government organizations (NGOs), and researchers reveal several common factors motivating rural-to-urban migration (Jahan, 2012; see Table 6.1). These are usually categorized under push and pull factors: push factors drive people off the rural areas and pull factors inspire their move to big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, and Khulna. However, research on internal migration does not focus on push and pull factors for Bangladeshi queers. It is difficult to collect data due to their discreet life and their valid need for concealing motivations for migration in a homophobic and transphobic context.

Migration of Bangladeshi queers to cities is often eclipsed by prevalent motivations for migration: seeking better opportunities for work and education, health care, and others.