Research and publications

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Scholarship and research submitted to the Forced Migration Research Archive.

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Open Access
Gender, Development Induced Displacement, and Resistance: Women Uprooted by River Erosion in West Bengal and Bangladesh
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2016-06) Sen, Sreya
Approximately three quarters of the world refugee and IDP population is comprised of women and children. Due to numerous factors, including restricted access to employment, resources and education, inadequate reproductive health care, and exclusion from matters of decision making, women constitute one of the most vulnerable categories among the internally displaced. In South Asia particularly, the power of the state is always weighted largely against women, and women often end up being the worst victims of the phenomenon of displacement. In spite of their victimisation, displaced women are often seen to create and organise movements for seeking justice. Hence, displaced women should never only be viewed as victims, as doing so would be a negation of their experiences and agency. Recurrent river erosion on the banks of south western Bangladesh in areas such as Khulna has resulted, since early 2000, in a massive displacement of the local population due to different development projects, for example, shrimp farming. Simultaneously, the slow but steady erosion of the river Ganges, owing to the construction of the Farakka Barrage in the district of Malda in West Bengal, India, has resulted in the people residing in the area losing their homes. This paper will draw upon archival sources of data – national and state government reports on policy and planning, district human development reports, reports generated by non-governmental organisations (both local and international) working in the river erosion affected areas of Malda and Khulna, the UN Charters on Internal Displacement, news material from national and sub-national dailies, and local newspapers published in Malda and Khulna – to examine the impact of river erosion induced displacement on the lives of women. It will also explore how these women have emerged as forces of resistance to the process of displacement instead of being victimised by it. In what ways do women depend on resettlement policies undertaken by the government and other organisations for their wellbeing? How do they cope, and what are the means by and through which they combat the phenomenon of displacement?
Open Access
Invisibilization of the unwanted Others? Feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives on the 1951 Refugee Convention’s drafting
(Elsevier, 2024-09-18) Krause, Ulrike
The 1951 Refugee Convention represents the legal cornerstone of today’s global refugee protection, which is supposed to apply to all refugees regardless of their origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation. But did the Convention’s drafters have such a complex approach in mind? This paper analyzes the Convention’s drafting at the United Nations and the final conference in the late 1940s and early 1950s from feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives. By drawing on subalternity and absence, and using interpretive analysis of historical sources, the paper focuses on politics—who was (not) involved in debates—and policy—who was (not) considered under the refugee definition. The analysis reveals pervasive asymmetries, with western androcentrism inherently shaping the drafting. The western, white, heterosexual man was the standard filter for the powerful decision-maker and the protection subject, whereas women, LGBTQ+ and colonized people were neglected in politics and policy. Their exclusion was not merely a side effect of the political landscape at the time but reflects the reproduction of western androcentric power, which ultimately invisibilized the subaltern Others in the creation of international refugee law.
Open Access
Surviving Exile. Queer Displaced People’s Lived Experiences of Aid, Risks and Coping in Kakuma
(Springer Nature, 2024-10-12) Krause, Ulrike; Segadlo, Nadine
This paper examines the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ displaced individuals in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Drawing on situated knowledge and relational agency, it delves into how queer people experience the humanitarian-aid system on-site, what risks they encounter, and how they exert agency to cope with the prevalent challenges of day to day life. Findings reveal that, in a country context where same-sex relations are illegalized and queer people criminalized, those displaced face heightened risks. They are confronted with the heteronormative paradigms inherent to the humanitarian-aid system, ones resulting in their neglect and denied access to much-needed assistance and protection. Structural and physical violence such as discrimination, exclusion, harassment and threats of murder exacerbate unrelenting fears and tangible risks in the camp. To navigate these challenges, they employ diverse individual and especially collective coping strategies, creating safe spaces for mutual support, exchange and hope.
Open Access
Making sense of peace in exile? Displaced people’s intersectional perceptions of peace
(Taylor & Francis, 2024-11-12) Edler, Hannah; Krause, Ulrike; Segadlo, Nadine
This article enquires into how people with lived experiences of conflict and displacement make sense of peace in exile. For the analysis, the article focuses on displaced individuals in Kenya and Germany and theoretically complements the varieties of peace framework, situated knowledge and an intersectional approach. Findings reveal multifaceted perceptions revolving around the three dimensions of structural, collective and individual peace, outlooks shaped by gender-specific experiences, religious beliefs and familial relations. Interlocutors associate structural peace with experiences of sociopolitical, economic and legal conditions in exile, collective peace with support systems and harmonious interactions in communities, and individual or inner peace with desires for and feelings of happiness, hope and healing. Although analytically distinguishable, these three dimensions are inherently intertwined in interlocutors’ daily lives due to their lived experiences prior to and once in exile.
Open Access
‘We are creating peace’: everyday peace practices of displaced women in Kenya and Germany
(Taylor & Francis, 2024-11-15) Edler, Hannah; Krause, Ulrike; Segadlo, Nadine
This article explores how displaced women contribute to everyday peace in exile. While research debates largely focus on the nexus of conflict and displacement, peace and specifically displaced women’s peace practices have been widely overlooked. Drawing on Mac Ginty’s concept of everyday peace and Lister’s approach to agency, the array of practices displaced women use to foster everyday peace in their immediate environments in Kenya and Germany are examined. The findings reflect how they leverage their agency both individually and collectively in seeking to establish, sustain and reinstate peaceful conditions despite and indeed due to oftentimes precarious conditions in exile. They actively get out of dangerous situations in search for everyday peace in exile and get by challenges through establishing a form of peaceful normalcy. They further employ collective strategies in getting organised to contribute to peace and engage with activism to get back at injustices and restrictions.
Open Access
Exit Rights, Seamless Borders and the New Carceral State
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-12-08) Macklin, Audrey
The human right to leave any country protects an intrinsic interest in free movement and is also a vital pre-condition to seeking asylum. The right to leave attracts little academic interest, but it is quietly being eroded. Exit restrictions in States of origin or transit have become an instrument of extraterritorial migration control for European Union Member States seeking to prevent the arrival of unwanted migrants. This article first explores the revival of exit restrictions, focusing on agreements between European destination States and select African States of departure. It argues that the adoption of exit restrictions from one State to prevent entry to another creates the paradox of seamless borders, where regulation of exit and entry are harmonized and fused to serve the singular objective of preventing entry to the destination State. The article further argues that the political and discursive coupling of anti-smuggling and search-and-rescue regimes occlude the rights-violating character of exit restrictions and enables breach of the right to leave to hide in plain sight. Additionally, current approaches to jurisdiction and State responsibility in regional and international courts render the prospect of destination State liability uncertain in circumstances where the destination State does not exercise legal and physical control over enforcement. The article draws on ‘crimmigration’ and border criminology literature to identify the common element of carcerality that connects confinement of migrants to the territory of departure States with migrant detention inside the territory. Beyond lamenting the erosion of exit rights, the article concludes by querying whether the erosion of the right to leave is symptomatic of a larger trend toward the regulation of mobility itself.
Open Access
Understanding the Plight in Ukraine: How Humanitarian and Food Crises Impact International Security?
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-12) Saha, Anuja; Ghosh, Subhranil
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has set off a chain reaction whereby the already fragile post-pandemic geo-economic order has come under enormous strain. The economic devastation coupled with the humanitarian crises has sent shockwaves throughout the region and the world, whereby the possibility of food shortages and migrant crises can lead to global instability. The following sections will go into a detailed analysis of this issue and its subsets.
Open Access
Mitigation, Recovery, and Response: Democracy in Post-Covid Central Asia
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Sengupta, Anita
This article, therefore, begins with an understanding of the civil society discourse in the region with a focus on Uzbekistan where regime continuity has been a given factor of politics since Independence. It then moves on to examine two instances of protest in two of the most stable states in the region, one in Uzbekistan and another in Kazakhstan, that challenged existing regimes and the counter-narratives through which these were managed by the ruling regime. A key difference between the two is that Kazakhstan has powerful bureaucratic elites with economic interests whereas Uzbekistan has a security sector that wields substantial power with its commercial sector. However, in both, a second generation of post-Soviet leaders had promised a “New” state where the voices of the people would be heard, an assurance that remained largely on paper. The final segment looks into a combination of external factors, including security backing from Russia and economic assistance from China, that has allowed for regime continuity.
Open Access
The Time of Becoming Resilient? Rohingya Women of Bangladesh Camps in Between Hopes and Waiting
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-06) Sengupta, Sucharita
This article probes an ethnographic account into the lives of Rohingya women in Bangladesh camps. The dispossession of the Rohingyas from Myanmar and their subsequent marginalisation and deracination is widely known across the globe in contemporary times. Their forced migration resulting from their lack of citizenship status or statelessness has led them to live in Cox‘s Bazar of Bangladesh in huge numbers, which I shall describe later. Any discussion on dispossession, refugeehood or statelessness necessitates us to study the borders and migration from a feminist perspective because women are most often the worst sufferers of any displacement, ethnic persecution, violence, conflict or war. Refugee women are also subjected to myriad gender-based violence like trafficking, rape and sexual abuses. The usage of the term 'gender' loosely refers to the social construct surrounding roles of men and women in society.
Open Access
A Cosmopolitan Race: Northeast Migrants in Delhi-NCR
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Gayari, Anasma
This paper attempts to critically investigate the lens of cosmopolitanism that is often used to represent migrants from the Northeast region in Delhi. Such cosmopolitanism attributed to the migrants from the Northeast emanates from their racial and cultural otherness from what is generally considered as India “proper” or the 'mainland'. Along with the spatial relegation of the migrants in cosmopolitan mohallas or neighbourhoods, their typecasting into certain skill sets in consonant with the needs of the neoliberal labour market add to their further 'otherisation' as racial outsiders.
Open Access
Post-Colonial State and Violence: Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa Outside the Blindfold of Area Studies
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2015-06) Canefe, Nergis
In the final analysis, this paper provides an overall assessment of migration before and after the uprisings in the Southern Mediterranean. In particular, it reviews state policies regarding forced migration in the MENA region. Notably, migration (forced displacement as well as voluntary flows) to Europe has not been accelerated by the Arab Spring, apart from a short-lived movement from Tunisia, but has simply continued along previous trends. In sharp contrast, migration within the Southern Mediterranean as a region has been deeply impacted by the events as outflows of migrants and refugees fleeing instability and violence in Libya and Syria. This is a noteworthy phenomenon in terms of understanding and deciphering global migration flows in the Global South and constitutes fertile grounds for comparison between the Middle East and other regions living under the aegis of post colonial/post-imperial states such as South Asia.
Open Access
Migration as a Necessity: Contextualising the European Response to the Syrian Exodus
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2016-12) Canefe, Nergis
In this vein, I trace the regional and global underpinnings of what I call ‘migration as necessity’ that is currently engulfing Europe with reference to the Syrian crisis. My aim is to develop an idiom of collective moral responsibility as a strong alternative to the dominant political discourse of surveillance and security in the area of forced migration. Developed in particular to explain the migration of those who suffer in search of either sheer survival or a way of rebuilding lives, the concept of migration as necessity draws renewed attention to the right to life above and beyond the migration studies framework. This angle allows us to demonstrate the limitations and constraints of the traditional takes on migration relating it either to individual choice or to labor mobility. In particular, existing political debates bracket forced migration as a distinctly temporary phenomenon, and the emphasis is put on its management and when possible, curtailment. Instead, in the following pages I argue that we must re-engage with debates concerning structure and agency to make a case for the recognition of histories of migration, and in particular cases of exodus. Only then could we attend to the social and political meanings and new realities created through mass movements of population.
Open Access
Introduction: Syrians are Coming? Reframing the Syrian Refugee Crisis
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2016-12) Canefe, Nergis
In response to this ongoing state of crisis that marks the turn of the 21st century, "Refugee Watch" hosts this special issue on the plight of the Syrian people, with particular emphasis on those living as stateless people in neighboring countries across the Middle East. As millions of Syrians continue to be displaced due to the ongoing conflict in their home country, it is essential that a critical account of the global perception and reaction to this en masse refugee crisis is offered by engaged scholarship. The expert articles brought together in this issue discuss various aspects of the Syrian refugee crisis in an attempt to contextualize it in historical and global terms. Local and international human rights researchers, advocates, and organizations pertaining to the handling of Syrian crisis, local and international jurisprudence on the subject pertaining to the tinkering with the refugee law to keep Syrians out or to make them into cheap labor/second class citizens, deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean sea and their banal perception, and, local, regional and international advocacy efforts and sources for support are among the subject headings covered in the following pages with a distinct emphasis on debates within the Global South. The issue provides a timely analytical intervention on the changing nature of the global refugee and immigration regime in response to the Syrian crisis.
Open Access
Rohingya Refugee Crisis and Ethno-Religious Conflict in South East Asia: From Burma to Bangladesh and Back
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2018-12) Canefe, Nergis
In this article I examine the regional as well as nation-state level dynamics that shaped the transformation of the Rohingya issue from an assumed internal ethno-religious conflict to a regional refugee crisis. The combination of humanitarian impulses, international pressure and the normative principle of popular sovereignty in Bangladesh led to difficult decisions concerning the Rohingyas who made their way across the border. Consequently, developing a policy of containment and enforcement of the right of return became a national priority. In the following pages, I will briefly trace the historical roots of the Rohingya problem in Burma/Myanmar, provide a summary of the current refugee crisis, and conclude with the challenges and responsibilities neighbouring countries face when inundated with the mass arrival of Rohingya refugees, in particular concerning the role played by Bangladesh.
Open Access
Methodological Quandaries of Studying Post-Soviet Displacements: An Invitation to Consider ‘Global Postcoloniality’ in Forced Migration Studies
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-12) Canefe, Nergis
As an alternative, this commentary is written in part as a preamble to this special issue of the "Refugee Watch" to facilitate and expand collaboration and innovative thinking by bringing together critical approaches to Afghan and Ukrainian refugee crises under the aegis of postcolonial conditionalities of forced migration studies and with specific reference to post-Soviet geographies of displacement. Part of the present historical task is to reveal and trace the textured histories of imperial and neoimperial legacies in the post-Soviet spaces of identity, belonging and survival. It is high time that we begin to envisage a ‘global postcolonial’ condition and systematically expand our understanding of postcolonial spaces of migration and dispossession.
Open Access
Book Review: Gravel Heart
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2021-12) Bhattacharya, Sukanya
This is a review of "Gravel Heart" by Abdulrazak Gurnah, London/Oxford/New York/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing 2017, pp. 272, ₹270. ISBN 978-1526603692 (Paperback).
Open Access
In Search of Other Worlds: The Dalit in De Facto Statelessness in Avinash Dolas’s "The Refugee"
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2021-06) Chanda, Debojoy
In this article, I discuss the position of the dalit citizen of India as one of de facto statelessness. To embark on my discussion, I delineate the dalit body as primally marked by the absence of the materiality of intimate touch from the caste-Hindu. This absence of touch allows me to locate the dalit body within social distance, that is, in empty space as the site facilitating the pure existence of humiliation. The humiliation, I allude to stems from the habitation of the dalit body in a perpetual state of alterity, given the absence of the warm touch of the other encasing it. This framework of humiliation stains the body in corporal lowness— a lowness in which the ruins of the consciousness inhabiting the body are trapped. Such a state of entrapment may lead these ruins of consciousness to go to great lengths to do violence to their bondage in social distance, as I demonstrate through my reading of the suicide letter written by dalit doctoral student and activist Rohith Vemula (1988-2016). Seeming to drift as the dalit body does in the perennial liminality of social distance, Marathi dalit writer and activist Avinash Dolas portrays the figure of the dalit as akin to that of a refugee in the Indian nation-state. Through a reading of Dolas’s short story “The Refugee,” I aver the untenability of this portrayal. Indeed, the dalit can, I suggest, perhaps be said to occupy a position which is closer to that of an internally displaced person— a person disowned by Brahminical touch and recognised in her internal displacement as a figure that the United Nations would term an ‘invisible citizen’ of India. This state of invisible citizenship, I argue, situates the dalit in de facto statelessness within an international juridical regime of human rights. Though the dalit’s claim to these human rights will not ensure that her body is liberated from the humiliation of social distance, her voicing of such a claim will set a tussle against caste privilege in motion. This tussle, as I show in broad strokes, bears the possibility of ending with the dalit being able to articulate her human rights as political rights.
Open Access
Enigma of ‘Brus’ in Mizoram: Displacement, Repatriation and Livelihood
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-06) Bijukumar, V.
The construction of ethnic identity and perpetuation of ethnic consciousness among various communities of India‘s Northeast often legitimises the dominant position of some communities in exercising control over resources and accessing government jobs and thereby depriving the marginalised ethnic communities of their basic needs and survival. Territorial concentration and the making of ethnic boundary enable the dominant community to assert their rights over the smaller communities and put a strong demand for the homeland through Autonomous District Councils (ADCs). The simmering discontent and recurring tensions between the major and the minor communities often lead to violent conflicts resulting in the displacement of the latter and migration to neighbouring states as refugees. However, the government‘s failure to ensure safe repatriation for refugees who are fearing retaliation from the majority community hampers the process. The ethnic conflict between the Mizo ethnic majority and Brus minority in Mizoram is a classic example of how assertion and mobilisation of the majority and their access to political power and resource control leads to violent conflict, inhuman displacement and deprivation of the minority from the homeland.
Open Access
The Conceptualisation of State Linguistic Policies and Education System Analysing Community Solidarity: A Refugee Protectionism
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-06) Saleem, Azeemah
In the wake of the Arab uprising and the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis became apparent in contemporary international politics. Germany's 2015 "Welcome Policy" introduced by Angela Merkel opened up borders for millions of refugees, specifically from Syria, escalating the debate of integration into German society. With the intake of refugees, the host societies regulated their state policies to achieve successful integrations. However, the multicultural identity of the refugees and the host societies made the social, cultural, political and economic integration of refugees complex. Taking the case study of Syrian refugees in Germany, within the multicultural approach, language is the key source of all interactions, communications and integration; and a key indicator of economic, social and educational advancement in the host society. The introduction of compulsory language programmes to adapt to the host society seems to be a way forward in integrating the refugees. Nevertheless, the methods and inculcations of language training created layers of complexities between the refugees and the host society, exploring further the central arguments of this essay.
Open Access
"Recent Histories" of a Porous Border: Mobility Across the Indo-Bangladesh Borderland
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Das, Baidehi
The narrative of the “outsider” that has expanded over the years in scope was my first entry point in this research: Who were these allegedly provocative outsiders? How did they transgress the increasingly militarised Bengal border? How did guarded unfenced borders in North 24 Parganas eventually develop into the question of entry and conflict in this region? Taking the case study of Dukhali, this report tries to answer some of the complex questions as to how the “recent histories” of the mobility narrative that had developed in the village since 2014; and how these mutations of movements have led to the emergence of unique routines and processes of mobility that remain unseen in the longue durée of movement (like entry and exit) across Dukhali.