By Jake Angelo
By Jake Angelo
By Jake Angelo
Protests in Bangladesh Cause Divide Among Immigrant Populations in Jackson Heights
Nikita Apte
The storefront of Ittadi Bazaar at the corner of 73rd Street and Broadway Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens is deceptively small. Upon walking inside, patrons are led into an expansive space with separate sections for fresh produce, meat, packaged foods, and other household items.
Shakil Abu Numan, the owner of the store, also runs an adjacent restaurant that specializes in Bangladeshi cuisine.
“My focus is on the people who come from Bangladesh,” he said, referring to the large Bengali immigrant population in the neighborhood. “I serve food that people eat back home.”
Census data from 2020 shows that 213,372 Bangladeshis live in the United States. Almost half of them — over 93,000 — call New York State home.
Abu Numan, who is an immigrant himself, moved to the city over 35 years ago. But he has conflicting feelings about unity in the ethnic enclave in Queens, which is home to 66 percent of New York’s Bangladeshi population, according to a 2019 study by the Asian American Federation.
Despite being firmly settled in the neighborhood, Abu Numan says Bangladeshi immigrants in Jackson Heights continue to maintain a hyperfocus on politics in Bangladesh — at the expense of interest in national and citywide politics that impact their livelihoods.
Continued infighting and a political divide within the South Asian community in Jackson Heights is a major cause of lack of political representation at the city level, Abu Numan explained
Recent protests in Bangladesh that resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have exacerbated these tensions in Queens.
“Our people cannot be together, because everyone has their own agenda,” Abu Numan said. “There are some who set up political movements, but they use it for their own personal gain.”
Small business owners who are dealing with their own problems, such as rising rent and crime due to the homeless population, say that those who step up to political leadership roles do it not for the betterment of the community, but to gain popularity back home in Bangladesh.
Amin, a local business owner at Premium Sweets located at 37th Avenue and 73rd Street, said the Bangladeshi community in Queens is not only unsupportive of each other, but downright hostile at times.
He pointed to rivalries between two opposing political groups in Bangladesh, the Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which has created an ideological divide among community members.
“They fight over that… for their position. The protests are in Bangladesh, but the restaurant owners fight over here,” Amin said. “They do not want to work together.”
He pulled out his phone to show videos of a brawl that took place on Roosevelt Avenue at the height of the protests. Authorities barricaded the road as local Bangladeshis took to the street to voice their support for or against the movement.
Nearly half of America’s Bangladeshi immigrant community arrived during or after the 2000s, according to a 2014 study by the Migrant Policy Institute. Political turmoil and repression in Bangladesh was a deciding factor for many of them.
Many immigrants are not eligible to vote due to citizenship status, or are not registered voters. For others, cultural and linguistic barriers play a significant role.
“Voting is a habit forming activity,” said Van Tran, professor of sociology and international migration studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “There are clear differences in voting patterns across different Asian ethnic groups, even when you account for eligibility, status and linguistic and cultural ability.”
The reason, he says, is a lack of political socialization among immigrants.
“Economic survival and thriving has always been at the heart of the immigrant experience,” said Tran, who studies race, ethnicity, migration, and inequality, particularly in the context of immigrant communities in New York City. “It’s about making a better life for yourself – politics are less important when you're struggling to put food on the table.”
Amin is unsure about voter turnout for the November election, but said he and his fellow Bangladeshi businesspeople are focused on policies that affect how profitable their business is.
“What I do know is that this community, where several are small business owners, care about only one thing — the health of the economy.”