Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant experiences in the U.S.

Although there has been a surge in research on Muslim lives since 9/11, there is a significant lack of research on the impacts of 9/11 on the lives of Bangaldeshi Muslim immigrants living in the U.S. Respondents reveal that 9/11 and the subsequent targeting of Muslims created a fear of being in public spaces because of fear of backlash from non-Muslims. The violence that men and women face along with the racialized notions of citizenship and belonging prevent Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants from full access to cultural citizenship. I use relevant theories of Orientalism, surveillance, discipline, empire, and cultural citizenship to understand the ways that Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants navigate their daily lives in light of post-9/11 government surveillance of people who look like them. However, these theories are not always applicable to the lives of minorities in the U.S. Instead, I posit that disciplining of Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants occurs in the public as well as private, and the motivation behind the disciplining is both reformative and punitive. Furthermore, the ideas of the panopticon as Foucault discusses and the camp and homo sacer as Agamben discusses exist even when physical structures are not present. The experiences of Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants require a reexamination and an extension of accepted theories of discipline and surveillance so that new theories may be applied to other minorities as wel