Ashraf Hoque

Ashraf Hoque is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at University College London (UCL). He has conducted long-term multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the UK (Luton and Tower Hamlets) and Bangladesh (Sylhet), focusing on migration, masculinities, and transnational religion and politics. He is author of Being Young, Male and Muslim in Luton (UCL Press, 2019), and co-author of Mafia Raj: the Rule of Bosses in South Asia (Stanford UP, 2019).

My field setting

My fieldwork was based in multiple settings: London's eastern borough of Tower Hamlets, home to the world's largest Bangladeshi diaspora; and Sylhet, Bangladesh, where over 90 percent of the UK diaspora originate from. These transnational links made for a fertile social field to follow forms of 'extortion sociality' across international borders. In Sylhet, I carried out fieldwork among UK Tier-4 Student Visa applicants, travel agents, and student activists. In Tower Hamlets, I conducted fieldwork among gig-economy workers at a secluded backstreet playfully named Neta Golli (Leaders' Alley), due to the presence of a Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP) branch office.

My key research questions

My interest is chiefly to understand the roots and routes of extortive relations across a transnational scale between Britain and Bangladesh. In particular, how opposition political exiles in the UK navigate their precarious legal status; the role of state institutions in producing extortive relations through various forms of lawfare, both in the sending and receiving country; and the impact of trauma, mental health, and financial insecurity in the production of migrant masculinities.

My research findings

My research traces the roots and routes of extortive relations across a transnational scale between Britain and Bangladesh. I explore how opposition political exiles in the UK navigate their precarious legal status, the role of state institutions in producing extortive relations through various forms of lawfare, and the impact of trauma, mental health, and financial insecurity in the production of migrant masculinities. The research reveals how extortion sociality operates across international borders, embedded in migration journeys, diaspora politics, and bureaucratic violence.

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