To Remember a Life in the Diaspora

This chapter sets out the theoretical context of the book at the critical conjuncture of diaspora studies and memory studies, both agreeing that processes of identification are contingent on individual and collective mnemonic processes. Introducing the history of British Bangladeshi women, their migratory trajectory, and how they started building their lives in London, the complex relationship between remembering and belonging in a postcolonial world will be discussed with the assistance of classical thinkers of memory studies and diaspora studies. This will reveal omissions in the existing literature and point at the second generation of British Bangladeshi women, the first born and/or grown up in Britain, to occupy a powerful role in processes of mnemonic transmission and identification in the diaspora.