Guarding border: bodies and dichotomy in gendered control over mobility in a borderland of Bangladesh

Abstract Prior research has concentrated on border guards and the politics of bodies, but less attention has been made to the interaction between embodied differentials and women’s varied household income classes and its consequent effect, such as a dichotomy in gendered control over women’s mobility. This study established such a perspective by following the continuation of the application of the body as an analytical scale in scholarships of feminist political geography and taking the heterogeneous women’s voices into account. The analysis shed light on the gendered forms of domination implied by the entangled protection and control paradigms in framing the practices of patrolling the border. Thus, in this article, the author unpacked how incorporating the entwined paradigms of protection and control into the framing of border guarding manifests differential gendered implications, ranging from fear of making mobility-related decisions to immobilisation patterns. It connects these practices to gendered processes of othering, highlighting the interaction between embodied differentials and the various economic positions of women and thus finds a dichotomy in gendered control over mobility in the name of border protection under the guise of border patrolling practices.

International borders are ubiquitous and critical for security, economic progress, identity preservation, and geopolitical stability (Shahriar, Qian, and Kea 2020).Given the importance of international boundaries, the last decade has seen a surge in interest in borders and border patrolling (Prokkola and Ridanpää 2015).By depicting states as monolithic actors in asocial global settings, border research has traditionally focused on bureaucracy, border control, geopolitical and interstate interactions on border guarding practices, and border officials' use power and authority to separate bureaucracy and community (Tsianos and Karakayali 2010;Heyman 1995) These studies do not offer any alternative explanation for how power operates through bodies and their results.even though researchers have recently increased their focus on the relationship between state borders and bodies, examining gendered mobility (Basham and Vaughan-Williams 2013;Friese 2017), border management (Agius and edenborg 2019), gendered imagination of the border guarding (Prokkola and Ridanpää 2015), and surveillance of individual bodies (Hegde 2019;Tyszler 2021).Given the heterogeneity of women's bodies and economic class, control established by the practice associated with border guarding has gotten less attention.even in critical border research, which seeks to distinguish itself from interdisciplinary literature on borders by redefining the border as a bordering practice and viewing it through the lens of technocratic performance (Rumford 2006), border guarding is typically viewed as a disembodied national practice (Salter 2006).It can be interpreted as encouraging the imagination of border guarding as a disembodied activity promoting gender-neutral practices (Monahan 2009).
This study aims to deconstruct the image of disembodied border patrolling by exploring the gender implications of 'border patrolling practices'-systems that constrain individual movements and social ties in borderlands (Hill 2006, Parker andVaughan-Williams 2012).The author explored power relationships between border guards and border-dwelling women with varied bodily and economic backgrounds, emphasizing the latter groups' experiences with border guarding practices in Bangladesh's northwestern borderlands.Issues such as illicit economic activity, human trafficking, and illegal migration to India have elevated Chapainawabganj land border areas in Bangladesh's northwestern region to a new level of security concern and a source of increasing territorial anxiety (Siraj 2014).Thus, this border area transformed into a 'sensitive space,' that is space that represents territorial fears, uncertainties, and ambiguities and suggests attention to the paradigm of protection and control (Cons 2016;e. C. dunn and Cons 2014).Border Guards have adopted strict practices of patrolling to protect this 'sensitive space' (Siddiqui and Billah 2014).However, such practices have an uneven impact, making women more vulnerable than men (Shewly 2013).As a heterogeneous group, whether women's vulnerability to border guarding practices associated with border protection is homogeneous merits further investigation.Recent studies' engagement with border guarding's fast-evolving empirical reality has masked the fact that a detailed investigation of the gendered implications of such practices, considering women's class and embodied differentials, is not yet done, sometimes limited to the analysis of broad outcomes such as the burden of constant surveillance (Cons 2016).For example, Van Houtum and Van naerssen (2002) and Megoran (2017) described bordering as a paradoxical approach to rejecting and erecting othering without addressing class and gender.In the context of Bangladesh-India border security and border policing, existing scholarship on border dwellers' experience with constant surveillance has primarily focused on the intersectionality of sovereign violence and social legitimacy (Sur 2012), the cross-cutting relationships among daily mobility, political violence, and territorialities (Sur 2014), and different narratives concerning bordering practices such as fence construction and mobility control (Mcduie-Ra 2014).These studies, however, examine border residents' interactions with border guards.none of them bridges gap between the intersectionality of gender and class and the treatment of border residents that reinforce or produce a dichotomy in gendered control over the mobility.Similarly, although, Jones (2012) criticized the literature on sovereign power, the state of exception, and dominance and resistance in power relations to deconstruct the homogeneity of state authority that shapes borderlands security apparatuses and border patrolling practices.This scholar's investigation rarely examined the intersection of gender and class, and the heterogeneity of borderland women in understanding their interactions with border guards and mobility.In response to this research gap, this study used the scale of the body to understand border patrolling and gendered control over movement at the Chapainawabganj border area, emphasizing border-dwelling women's diverse bodily characteristics and economic backgrounds.The concept of 'scale' has been extensively used in scholarships on feminist political geography and feminist post-structural approaches (Schmoll 2014).According to Brenner (2011), 'scales are socially constructed and vary over time and space' .The body is a critical spatial unit within the scaled power process because it enables us to comprehend the relationship between spatial entities and particular power dynamics (Schmoll 2014).Thus, using the body as a scale of analysis reveals how border patrolling practices operate through bodies, resulting in varied implications for border-dwelling women with embodied differentials and diverse economic backgrounds.
This study starts with the acknowledgment that border guarding procedures favor masculinity (Mehta 2016(Mehta ). dunn (2009)), states the privileged position of masculinity in border guarding practices produces unequal relationships between guards and borderland women, highlighting the embodied nature of border guarding techniques.embodied border spaces and masculine administrative processes impose particular constraints on borderland women (Sahraoui 2020).This study attempts to add to a feminist analysis of embodied political geography given the masculine nature of border management and border spaces (Hyndman 2019;Williams and Coddington 2021) an interesting way.It is through positioning the embodied differentials at the center of scrutinizing one question.That is, how power dynamics in border patrolling practices produce differing gendered implications in which embodied differences reflect a variation in the border guards' intervention in women's everyday lives, concretizing a type of domination.This study focused on the heterogeneity of women based on economic class and embodied differentials such as maternity status with (out) physically challenged (Tlostanova, Thapar-Björkert, and Koobak 2016).Anicca (2017), argues acknowledging identities cut by borders and influenced by borderlands allows for a 'more holistic, inclusive worldview,' which may resonate with physically challenged women's experiences.In light of this claim, the physically challenged women who participated in this study combine two physical characteristics: (1) limited or nonexistent limb function, and (2) blindness.Very illustrative here are stereotypes of the physically challenged that are often based on asexuality: as children are considered asexual, so are handicapped persons infantilized and deemed asexual compared to the non-disabled individuals (Roets, Reinaart, and Van Hove 2008).Hence, it is expected that the emphasis on the women's bodily differences and economic class helps contribute to the recognition of the need to abandon a homogenized understanding of gender and women.Thus, it is likely to understand better the heterogeneity of border-dweller women's experiences with power and domination as an outcome of the border guards' gendered control of spatialities.In this way, the author hopes to add another layer of analysis to the field of border research: the one that views border guarding practices as inextricably linked to body politics and investigates border dweller women's experiences in this regard.Thus, this study prioritizes the less-heard voices of women who lived in the borderlands about their encounters with power and domination due to the border guards' gendered control over mobility.
Six sections comprise the article.The second segment introduces Bangladeshi borderland and society.The third section recaptures feminist studies on the body as a scale of analysis and sets it in the study on border guarding.It provides a conceptual framework for a feminist study of border guarding.In the following section, the researcher introduces the methodology for this research.In the fifth section, the author traces how border guarding has come to impose different forms of problem derived from the gendered control over the border-dweller women's mobility.In this section, the analysis is structured around two fundamental themes: first, the enmeshed paradigm of protection and controlling, and second, border guards' authority over women border dwellers' spatial mobility.Finally, the conclusion will be drawn by bringing these themes together.

Bangladeshi borderland and society
Bangladesh shares a 4000 km border with India (Shahriar, Qian, and Kea 2020).Given the proximity of Bangladesh to India and the vicissitudes of Bangladesh-India relations, the Bangladeshi border with India is known as a 'killer border' ( Van Schendel 2004) and the 'world's most deadly border (Percot 2020).The condition on the border is not homogenous (Sarkar 2017).
The porous land border of Chapainawabganj district connects with Malda of West Bengal, India (please see Map 1).This border area is Bangladesh's most dangerous zone (Ashraf, Ali, and Islam 2021).This border area is a transit point for trans-border trade but also a workplace for brokers who manage checkpoints to help people cross the border illegally, border dwellers, especially women who work in agriculture and as street vendors, and Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), who guard this border area on rotating six-hour shifts.Similar to other Bangladeshi frontiers, only men border guards patrol this border.Border guards check bags and interrogate suspects.It makes the Chapainawabganj border area a nerve center for policing borderland residents during their mobility across this border zone.

The embodied women within the apparatus of guarding the borders
In political geography, the use of the body as an analytical scale is newer.Feminist approaches to body linking power and space have gained prominence since the 1900s (Mountz 2018).The contemporary trend of using the body as an analytical tool permits unraveling situated epistemological ideas about underprivileged and vulnerable women (dixon and Marston 2011).Thus, it helps comprehend how power and space are experienced unevenly by different people (Massaro and Williams 2013).Considering the importance of using the body as a scale of analysis and embodied differentials, Winchester (2013) called the body the 'biggest scale of analysis.'The understanding that 'bodies, like other landscapes, can be understood as objects or ends of social processes, sites of activity and resistance (agency), or as the negotiated space between social processes and action' is the given reason' (156-173).However, this author defined the 'biggest scale of analysis' as the 'most detailed level of characterization ' (dunn 2009, 4).drawing on the feminist interpretation of Sharp's (2007) thesis that the personal is political, Massaro and Williams (2013) explain its meaning: it involves tracing the analytical path from the personal to the structural and local to the global level.Smith's (1987), 'institutional ethnography' draws the author's attention to connect these levels to comprehend the functioning of power between the border guards as institutional actors and the borderland inhabitants.Harding's (1986) feminist epistemology is another reason for linking these levels.The focus of this theory on situated knowledge and methodological attention to the materialities of everyday life to understand gendered behavior in political geography led the author to focus on a particular site of political geography (dixon and Marston 2011).
Previous research on political geography demonstrates that the border is a relevant site to study since it is where unequal power relations evolve; it clarifies how power and dominance act on bodies and manifests the embodiment of the control (Casaglia 2022;nevins 2008).notably, border guarding practices influence the corporeal experiences of borderlanders differently due to the intersectional pattern of dominance formed from the perceived sense of otherness injected by classed, racialized, and gendered understandings of bodies (Currah and Mulqueen 2011).It is how feminist studies on embodied geopolitics addressed power differentials (Mountz 2004) and helped explore how institutional actors justify power and authority over marked bodies to legitimize their duty as security enforcers to avoid violence (S.Smith 2011;Koch 2011).By identifying 'power as the scale of the body,' feminist political geographers agreed that exercising power and dominance over recognized bodies varies according to social groups (Zulver and Idler 2020).Beyond this consensus, a challenge emerged, such as how border guarding affects women's lives and bodily experiences or how border guards' control of border resident women's mobility is gendered (Sahraoui 2020).In an attempt to feminize asylum in protracted situations, Hyndman and Giles (2011) highlight an argument that adheres to border guarding practices in the Chapainawabganj land border area: mobility is the gendered phrase in the sense that it is often feminized when authorities force individuals to halt their movement by portraying them as docile and disciplined compared to the masculinized concept of active.It causes immobility.In the context of the Venezuelan and Colombian borderlands, Zulver and Idler (2020) claim that border guarding practices increase gendered power dynamics (2).Also, they argued that in borderland, the gendered effect of border guarding practices is feminized by portraying women as more susceptible owing to their feminine bodies, viewed as reproductive bodies.
Therefore, a brief review of body politics vis-à-vis the intersectionality of gender and economic class appears necessary to provide the theoretical backdrop for this study.Body politics is conceived as the driver of new modes of subjectivity for social control (as cited in Bordo and Bordo 2002).demanding environments and institutions generate body politics (Povinelli 2006).Thus, the rhetoric of body politics rests on institutionally established space between historically embodied grounds of rhetoric (Povinelli 2012).Gender and economic class intersect to form the historically embodied ground of rhetoric (Baer 2016).These demographic characteristics and those deemed disabled by society are primarily political because they define and shape the body, thereby, body politics (Johnson 1989;Sassatelli 2012).Body politics relies on the body as the critical point for the struggle over power (Foucault 1980) and reproduces the uneven hierarchical power connection between those who wield body politics and the targeted subjects (Krishna 1994).understanding body politics in this way enables for the examination of privileges/inclusion and marginalization/exclusion arising from body-centered considerations (ebila and Tripp 2017;Miller et al. 2017;Sharrow 2017).Based on the conceptualization of privileges/inclusion and marginalization/exclusion as protection and control in this study, 'guarding the border' can be understood as body politics that shapes the intertwined relationship between 'biopolitics' and 'thanatopolitics' (Foucault 2000): the former refers to protecting the people, and the latter denotes keeping people under control (416).Kelly (2010) centered the role of the entwined relationship between 'biopolitics' and 'thanatopolitics' to a much greater degree, describing border guarding as the exercise of biopower: it involved practices that encompassed not only strategies and mechanisms of protection from external threats but also spatial control.evidence demonstrates two related developments generated from biopower: first, stricter border guarding practices to contain cross-border threats, trans-border organized crime, and terrorist infiltration (Besenyő 2017).Second, border guards have accepted the protection logic of national security discourses (Côté-Boucher and Salter 2014) and the nexus between protection and control paradigms (Hill 2006).Some research examined how border guards balance protection and mobility control (Könönen 2022;Colombeau 2016;luibhéid 2002).drawing on these studies, Perkowski (2016) demonstrated that border guarding tactics mirror a hierarchical connection between border guards and border dwellers.Such type of relationship constitutes the escalation of militarization (Papers 2017).Consequently, it causes spatial mobility problems among differently situated populations (Massaro and Williams 2013).Given the concept of border guarding as the exercise of body politics to regulate people's movement, border residents' , particularly the women's experiences with border guarding practices have undoubtedly become more prominent owing to their heterogeneity based on bodily differences and diverse economic statuses.

Methods
The author used a case-study approach to conduct the current study and visited the research site 18 times from September 2021 to January 2022 (Table 1).It was followed by two additional visits in August 2022 on the advice of an anonymous reviewer.Semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions (FGds), and field observations were used to collect data.In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with women who have lived at the research site for at least ten years.The interview techniques (see Appendix 1) are open-ended so participants can share their experiences without being influenced by researchers' views.next, employing the snowball sampling technique (Cresswell 2012), the researcher interviewed 27 border-dwelling women from three income levels (Table 2).The women participants' total monthly income and the national average monthly per family income (15,988 BdT) were used to divide them into three economic classes.To compare borderlanders' and border guards' perspectives and experiences, the researcher interviewed five men border guards.each interview lasted for 45-50 min.In the second procedure, the semi-structured interviews are followed by three focused group discussions with the same women guided by two questions (Appendix 2).These questions addressed participants' critical perspectives of their everyday experiences with rigid practices of guarding the border and their perceptions of such practices.Also, it highlights the gender implications of border patrolling and the researcher's intention to render it.The researcher observed the field during January 12-18, 2022, to corroborate the interview and FGd findings.
To analyse the data, the researcher transcribed and read the interview and FGd data, which were collected in an audio-recorded format.The author has constructed narratives to illustrate key themes.Themes were combined or created based on similarity and dissimilarity.The researcher keeps notes during field visits to compare early thematic results and actual practice.The subsequent visits explored how border dwellers lived under border guards' rules.This strategy helps cross-check data for an in-depth explanation of the situation (Creswell 2012).
Authorization to visit the field and collect data from the study region was obtained from the sympathetic Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) officer after explaining the purpose of this research.The purpose of this study was also shared with the respondents in clear language.The aim was to help them decide whether to participate.All participants approved the semi-structured interviews and FGds.The researcher sought help from two graduate students to reach the participants.Before this investigation, the researcher visited the research site with a local assistant and interacted with residents informally.On his sixth visit, the author drank tea at a border stall and noticed three low-ranked border guards sipping tea.It helps him meet them, who honour him as a teacher.Once border guards became used to seeing the researcher, they offered him tea at a roadside stand one day.It helped talk with other border guards.Thus, multiple visits to the research site and contacts with border guards built participant trust.
during data collection, the researcher focused on creating good understanding, faith, and effective communication with all participants to facilitate two-way interaction.It is essential to understand the participants' everyday encounters with border guards.A pseudonym is used to ensure the participants' privacy and make the data anonymous.
The enmeshed paradigm of 'protection and control' in the practices of guarding the border evidence from the case study suggests ambiguous durability of border protectionism and control over mobility in practices of guarding the border.
Given the framing of the border as a 'sensitive space' (Cons 2016), multifaceted webs of patrolling practices involving an increasing number of border guards and the shifting configuration of border guarding activities under the paradigm of protection and control have developed (Hodge and Hodge 2015).In the research site, the paradigm of border protection is derived from the notion of security and danger.due to these two notions, the protection paradigm requires patrolling and interrogating suspicious border inhabitants to regulate their mobility.Adopting a strategy that underlies border protection and spatial control is intertwined with border patrol activities.Thus, similar to past research (Heyman 1995), the border guards seen used a mix of protection and control paradigms in an ambiguous setting.Accordingly, border patrol practices institutionalize the two paradigms of protection and control.Multiple everyday practices, from constant patrolling to controlling mobility with an emphasis on high-risk border inhabitants, show how border protection and spatial control are embedded in border guarding's institutional functioning.The research site's persistent patrolling across the border contrasts with the periodically redesigned security architecture at borders during emergencies, such as a border clash with a neighboring state.It shows the basic intertwining of border patrolling's protection paradigm with specific forms of spatial control.Anthropologist linke (2007) in a study conducted in the context of the european border, argues that the border protection rationale (i.e.making the national boundary free from criminality and violence) de facto institutionalized the effort of exerting control over borderland people's spatialities.According to Heyman (1995), such logic comes from the authoritative bureaucratic policy.In the research area, patrolling the border involves developing protection and spatial controlling efforts simultaneously rather than including border dwellers' spatial freedom in the bureaucratic strategy of border management.Resultantly, border guards' efforts to control borderland residents' spatialities have become part of border protection strategies, as evidenced by the data.One border guard discusses border protection strategies: Round-the-clock patrols continue.during patrols, we often question passersby.longtime residents are also interrogated.If we detect suspicious signs, we check the suspect's body.It's our routine duty.Sometimes we go to villagers' houses late at night based on suspicious daytime mobility and information from local spies about probable criminal activities and illegal trade.Suppose we find proof of such information during a visit.In that instance, we interrogate the suspect at our camp.We encourage villagers to avoid unnecessary border crossings at night.Previous research (i.e.Bagelman 2016; little 2015; Mcnevin 2018) demonstrates the intersection of spatiality and border security.In this study, border patrol practices appeared at the interplay of the institutional logic of border protection and control over spatial mobility due to being firmly embedded in border management systems.According to the data, border guards' endeavor to control the spatialities of borderland inhabitants is institutionally part of their border protection strategies.Interrogations and body checks by border guards are a systematized part of protecting the border that border inhabitants must go through.Such practices seem governed by biopower over bodies, which appears to link to border guarding work.In this view, guarding the border seems twofold, if not entirely subsumed, into securing the national frontier from threat and danger.At the Algeria-Morocco and Pakistan-India frontiers, Korte (2021) observed that border guarding tactics placed security over border dwellers ' mobility (63-68).
The inclusion of spatial control as part of the institutionalized practice of protecting the border informs two things.First, border protection and border inhabitants' spatialities are deeply interwoven.Second, it shows how the border-protection paradigm becomes problematic regarding restriction and compulsion when border-management logic determines the purpose of border protection.The findings show that the use of biopower goes beyond only protecting border residents (Foucault 2000).Instead, it focuses primarily on protecting borders by policing bodies as they move around border areas.Bigo (2014) noted that the logic of border protection involves stringent control over individual spatialities (214).likewise, the current study unfolds that biopower over borderlanders indicates border protection by curbing mass mobility.Thus, it shows the legacy of controlling residents' spatial mobility as a border protection tool (Mezzadra and neilson 2013).This legacy of controlling border inhabitants' mobility follows a hierarchical, patriarchal framework to secure the national border.Against this context, two border guards reported: We are trained and commanded to be continually alert not only to stop the illegal entrance of terrorists and illegal traders on the border but also to stop villagers from engaging in such crime and illegal activities; these are the threats to border security.So, per higher authorities, we must view borderlanders with distrust.Villagers must ask for permission to move at night.When they ask permission, we ask why… Why go there?Are you selling or purchasing phensedyl or yaba?Are you going to help somebody trade phensedyl or yaba?Why? Anyone living or moving across the border can do anything.We don't know if they're good or bad because we're ordered to avoid personal contact with civilians.We don't know their past because ours is a transferable job.We don't know why people cross the border.So we're trained and directed to be different from them (the borderlanders) because we believe our country would be at risk of foreign assault if we didn't end border crime.We check all border crossers.
From the border guards' perspective, the above story offers three lessons.First, they viewed border guarding as gender-neutral and disembodied (Monahan 2009).Second, organizational socialization and the moral prohibition on forming any social interaction with civilians make border guards unable to foresee future behavior; thus, fear of insecurity drives border guarding practices.Third, uncontrolled mass mobility over the border is a national security risk; hence controlling mobility is an effective way of border control and a driver of protecting territorial sovereignty.
The dual meaning (protection and control) of border patrol is underlined by border guards' use of 'administrative justifications' An interview with a border guard shows how they had to infuse the sociality of border guarding activities among border dwellers by convincing them about the national boundary's protection grounds.
We often convince them that we are interrogating them and restricting their movement not to show our administrative power but because we want to protect the border.We remind them that if the border is insecure, the state and they will be too.So they must collaborate with us to maintain border protection.
under the research site's interwoven paradigm of protection and control, the border guarding apparatus exhibits two significant power imbalances: between border inhabitants and low-ranked officers (border guards) and between high-ranked border guard officials and low-ranked border guard officers.This machinery of interconnected paradigms grants border guards supreme authority over border inhabitants and offers administrative justification for border guarding practices such as control over mobility.It shows how the concepts of protection and control support the power imbalance on which border guarding is founded (Cunningham and Heyman 2004).

Border guards' exercise of differential power over women's mobility
It is time to examine how the entwined paradigms of protection and control in border patrols have gendered consequences for expecting and new moms with (out) physical disabilities.Border guards frequently reported treating women equally, as seen in the previous section.According to women's accounts, border guards, who are street-level bureaucrats, have formed a systematic institutional culture in which the 'other'-women-are defined as good and bad women who must be protected and controlled.Thus, adding to a previous study (Heyman 1995), the current investigation demonstrated the intersection of bodily dissimilarities and varied economic classes as the primary driver of such classification.Among the practices such as interrogation and body checking that border-dwelled women must undergo during their mobility in the borderland, expectant and new mothers from privileged household income and physically challenged women, regardless of their household income status, are not supposed to be covered within such practices.expectant and new mothers with high family earnings often dress well when out of the house, which may explain why border guards never interrogate them.However, this group of women also stated that they believe some women engaged in crime and illicit commerce in the border zones dress nicely to mask their criminal activities, but border guards are efficient enough to detect genuine suspects.new mother C1 (from a high-class household) shared her experience with daily mobility.
I never encounter any interrogation and body checking by the border guards since they know who's from good families and who can commit a crime.When I go outside, I always wear clean, appropriate dresses.That's why border guards don't suspect.Some women who illegally deal yaba and phensedyl are well-dressed, but they're arrested since the guards know who the real criminal is.
For physically challenged women, A4 (from a low-income household) said: usually, border officers don't interrogate us or check our bodies.Border guards know we're disabled; therefore, we can't commit a crime.
Compared to the above groups of women, expecting and new mothers from low-income families and physically fit women without pregnancy and infants from the same family reveal a paradox regarding border guards' power over controlling mobility.On behalf of the former group of women, participant A3 (from a low-income household) said: Border guards always seem suspicious when they see us outdoors.daily, they interrogate us with boring questions (i.e.where we are going and why).A month ago, I returned home after a health check-up.Two border officers shout to stop me.When they got closer, they asked where I was from.They eyed me suspiciously and checked my physique to see whether I had Yaba.I was humiliated when I saw a well-dressed pregnant woman walk through the same two border guards without being stopped.
Similarly, for women who are physically fit, have no pregnancy or infant, and are from low-income households, respondent A8 reported: When they discover us on the road, they interrogate us.They call us criminals.We usually have our bags checked when leaving the house.They do this against our preferences.They forced us to the checkpoint for further interrogation if we objected, saying it was to protect the border.
Adding to the subject of how draconian power exercises affect economically disadvantaged women (Jones 2009), the narratives of two groups of women reveal an illuminating point.The women feared border patrol would interfere with their regular lives (i.e.going to the doctor for health check-ups during and after the pregnancy, working on agricultural land, doing business as a street vendor, and working as housemaids).Most had to leave their homes daily for these reasons.Participants A3 and A8 stimulate interactions, so border guards pressure them to let their bodies be checked when suspicious.These narratives highlight two specific aspects.First: pregnant and new mothers from low-income families and physically fit women from the same family are more likely to commit crimes in the borderlands.Second, border guards' perception of embodied differentials comes from the connection between bodily differences and the economic status of border women.Most women participants from low-income households, who are pregnant and new moms, and those from the same income group who are physically fit and have no pregnancy and infant related their experience of being compelled by border guards to cease their daily mobility for income generation.One participant, a street vendor during FGd, said she quit selling vegetables due to daily interrogations and body checks by border officials.Pregnant and new moms from low-income families and physically fit women without infants presented a unique perspective on border patrol.It serves as a controlling factor in the border protection system of border guards.Being interrogated by border guards, having the body checked, and being confined in the private sphere is a deterrent mechanism at the border to ensure protection (luibhéid 2002) except for physically challenged women, underprivileged women are more easily subjected to the exercise of power in the name of border protection.Thus, contributing to the finding of prior research ( Van Houtum and Van naerssen 2002) the current study demonstrated that the practices of rejecting and erecting 'othering' derived from the interplay between embodied differential and economic class.By sorting borderlander women by class and body type, border guards create 'ideal innocent women' and 'guilty others.'Such a finding demonstrates the effect of body politics on border guarding via essentialist assertions (Johnson 1989).Also, body politics in border guarding supports social hierarchies by creating gendered inequalities.In the research area, separating borderlander women into groups was emerged as the key to border protection strategy.These differences, or 'distinctions,' are vital to protecting the border, which benefits borderlander women from wealthy families.Border women must wear attractive outfits to prove they are from the upper classes and innocent of roaming freely.The biopolitics of determining whether women can roam freely is stunning.Focusing on class and physical differences, the language and spectacle of protection produced gendered control over movement.
The association of the border protection paradigm with the administrative management of border dwellers' everyday movement turns the control paradigm into a driver of border guarding activities with gendered implications.It terrifies low-income women about the border guards' power over their life.This finding is similar to Korte's (2021) focus on the impact of strict border security on borderland populations.In contrast to prior research that obscured the heterogeneity of women and concluded that border policing reflects an unequal relationship with border guards on top (Cons 2016;Perkowski 2016), the current study found that the entanglement of protection and control in the border guarding apparatus reflects varied power hierarchies between border guards and women.It is due to the intersection of the latter group's bodily differentials and diverse economic classes.Thus, in the case of two groups of women (pregnant and new mothers) without disabilities and with privileged and underprivileged economic classes, data reveals that the relationship between protection and control paradigms exacerbates a hierarchal power imbalance.Similarly, as backed by an earlier research (Roets, Reinaart, and Van Hove 2008), in the instance of physically challenged women, class appeared less influential because the border guards stereotyped them as infantile and asexual compared to non-disabled women.It is how border guards transform the disembodied nature and gender-neutral meaning of border guarding (Monahan 2009) when body politics influenced by the intersection of bodily differences and diverse economic class interplay with the practices of guarding the border (Foucault 1980;Krishna 1994).Thus, adding to the finding of earlier research (Könönen 2022), a dichotomy exists in border guards' gendered control over women's mobility while protecting the border.due to this paradox, the experience of economically disadvantaged women who are physically fit and have no infant and mothers with pregnancies or newborns demonstrates a problematic relationship between border protection and mobility controlling.Thus, the border guards' authority to regulate spatial mobility to secure the border symbolizes the gendered dimension of border guarding practices (Tlostanova, Thapar-Björkert, and Koobak 2016).In the research site, protection of the border seems embedded in controlling the mobility of two groups of poor women: physically fit women without pregnancy and infants and pregnant and new moms.Thus, gendered control over mobility became a border-guarding technique based on embodied variations and household income.
Similar to Casaglia (2022)'s recent findings, border guarding procedures exacerbated the unequal power relationship that manifests in any interaction of the border guards with women having no disabilities, newborns, and expecting or new mothers from the low-class household.These two groups of women were underprivileged within the border guarding apparatus at the research location due to spatial mobility vulnerabilities and economic challenges.The data suggest that border guards frequently exercise institutional authority over these groups of women's daily lives by controlling their mobility under the institutional logic of border protection.In addition, border guards influence the mobility decisions of these groups of women through their institutional authority.Participant A2, (physically fit expectant mother from a low-income household), and A7 (physically fit, having no pregnancy or infant, low-income household), typically reported: When they saw us on the road, they asked where we were going.They take us to the camp if they think our answer is odd.When they don't like our answer, they advise us to go home instead of where we wish to go.data reveal that gendered restriction over mobility at the Chapainawabganj border induces immobilization in the name of border protection.Although 'protective framing' is part of border management, this immobilization tendency goes against what pregnant or new mothers want most (i.e.continuing their everyday mobility for income generation, health care, for maintaining social relations with their relatives).Immobilization to avoid potential danger and threat seems to have varied gender consequences for women's experiences with this issue.
Accordingly, the author demonstrated that border guarding practices are structured in an imbalanced connection in which border guards are positioned on the hierarchy of their relations with border women and produce gendered dominance.Such a situation does not preclude a true protective bond.Many women (expectant and new mothers and physically fit women without pregnancy and infant) from high-and middle-class households who participated in the study agreed with border guards' institutional discourses and actions.They link border protection to their own lives, demonstrating a good sense of the protection logic of border guarding practices.To illustrate this idea, the author offered the narrative of respondent C8 (fit, no pregnancy or infant, from a high-income household), who voiced allegiance to border guarding procedures by imagining her protection as a borderland resident: Yes, I don't detect anything negative about border guard interrogations or body searches.I think it's excellent since they're safeguarding my border security.
Thus, however, it is difficult to avoid the patriarchal relations promoted by border guarding practices between border guards and borderland women; the current study provides an intriguing insight.The embodied differences in women's experiences with border guarding tactics affect the binary gendered control over mobility linked with border protection logic.This study aimed to explore how different women's bodies are affected by border guarding activities, such as dichotomous gendered control over mobility, thereby causing a difference in women's experience with border guarding practices.

Conclusion
This case study of border guarding practices in Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh, contributes to feminist political geography and political geography, in general, as well as border studies by reflecting on the types of gendered dominance that border guarding practices entail.This study examines the daily lives of border-dwelling women with economic and bodily differentials.It revealed the dichotomy in gendered control over mobility derived from the practices of border patrol.driven by the increasing interest of feminist geographers in using the body as an analytical tool, this study tried to show one thing: how embodied experiences of women were differently shaped by the administrative process of mobility control in the Chapainawabganj border.The author examined border guarding practices to answer this question.This study drew on the narratives of border guards, the experiences shared by women participants, and observation of border guarding practices as well as the everyday lives of three embodied categories of borderland dweller women to examine how border guarding practices introduce a different pattern of dominance.
Although under the apparatus of guarding the border, the nexus between border protection and control over border dweller women's mobility was evident.The border guards' exercise of power over mobility control seems different due to the women's embodied differentials and economic statuses in the borderland.Border guards do not question or interrogate physically challenged women, regardless of their household income status, and they do not check their bodies because they believe they cannot commit a crime that could harm border security.Regarding high-and middle-class household income, border guards are less suspicious of pregnant and new mothers and physically fit people without a pregnancy or infant.So, border guards do not even limit their spatial mobility.Border guards are skeptical of women who come from poor households with the same physical traits.Thus, they are serious about controlling their mobility by interrogating them and checking their bodies.From the border guards' narratives, it is clear that the exercise of cohesive power originated from the entanglement of protection and control paradigms within the framework of border guarding practices and reflects compelled border guarding practices.Such coercive border-guarding practices immobilize specific categories of women in the name of border protection, revealing how the protection/control nexus is essentially gendered.If these two categories of women are subject to various sorts of intervention based on the perception of border guards, they are more likely to risk border security.The patriarchal power handed to border guards for border protection materialized in unique authority controlling women's mobility.The current study examined how border guarding methods, framed by border protection and mobility restriction, led to gendered control over mobility that affected women's bodily experiences differently.As stated in the preceding section, some women were forced to answer where they intended to travel and allow border guards to search their bodies, while others were not.
To recapitulate, the two main themes, as described in the two sections above, were meant to help us think critically about border guarding practices and how they can have distinct effects on women with different body types beyond a focus on border guards' individual opinions about their intervention in borderland women's everyday lives (Casolo and doshi 2013).

Map 1 .
location of the study area (inset: the orange color indicates the location of the study area in the Map of Bangladesh (Source: Banglapedia 2021).

Table 1 .
time frame of semi-structured interviews, FGds and direct observations.