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Item Open Access Exit Rights, Seamless Borders and the New Carceral State(Cambridge University Press, 2024-12-08) Macklin, AudreyThe 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.Item Open Access Understanding the Plight in Ukraine: How Humanitarian and Food Crises Impact International Security?(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-12) Saha, Anuja; Ghosh, SubhranilThe 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.Item Open Access Mitigation, Recovery, and Response: Democracy in Post-Covid Central Asia(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Sengupta, AnitaThis 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.Item Open Access The Time of Becoming Resilient? Rohingya Women of Bangladesh Camps in Between Hopes and Waiting(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-06) Sengupta, SucharitaThis 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.Item Open Access A Cosmopolitan Race: Northeast Migrants in Delhi-NCR(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Gayari, AnasmaThis 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.Item 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, NergisIn 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.Item Open Access Migration as a Necessity: Contextualising the European Response to the Syrian Exodus(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2016-12) Canefe, NergisIn 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.Item Open Access Introduction: Syrians are Coming? Reframing the Syrian Refugee Crisis(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2016-12) Canefe, NergisIn 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.Item 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, NergisIn 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.Item 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, NergisAs 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.Item Open Access Book Review: Gravel Heart(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2021-12) Bhattacharya, SukanyaThis 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).Item 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, DebojoyIn 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.Item 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.Item Open Access The Conceptualisation of State Linguistic Policies and Education System Analysing Community Solidarity: A Refugee Protectionism(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2022-06) Saleem, AzeemahIn 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.Item Open Access "Recent Histories" of a Porous Border: Mobility Across the Indo-Bangladesh Borderland(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Das, BaidehiThe 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.Item Open Access Thakurnagar as a Political Location: Place Making Practices of Matua Refugees in West Bengal(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Sinharay, PraskanvaThis paper examines the making and transformation of Thakurnagar as a place that has evolved as the epicentre of Dalit refugee activism in contemporary West Bengal. Based on literary and ethnographic evidence, the paper looks at the place making practices of Namasudra refugees in and around Thakurnagar to show why and how did this place develop as a sacred, civic, and political location, and in turn, shape their community and identity in the post-Partition decades. In doing so, the paper reflects on the relationship between caste, refugeehood, and place making in postcolonial India.Item Open Access “Let’s Return to Our Own Home”: Muslim Return Migrations in Post-Partition West Bengal 1947–64(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) KHAN, NISHARUDDINFollowing Partition, a significant number of Muslims left West Bengal for East Pakistan for various reasons including communal riots, economic hardship, patriotic ideals etc. However, often, their initial decision to migrate changed and many Muslim refugees returned to West Bengal after a while. This paper focuses on the return migration of Muslims from East Pakistan to West Bengal in the aftermath of Partition and tries to understand the logic of the return migration: Why did they return? How did the West Bengal government and the Indian government perceive these returnees? How were their lives after returning? The story of this return migration to their “homes” is not only preserved in the government communication in the archives but also has been vividly detailed in the then newspaper reports and has remained as memories etched in the lived experiences of the returnees.Item Open Access (Re)Interrogating Camp and Refugees in Forced Migration Studies(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Chowdhory, NasreenAgamben points out that the camp situation reduces them to naked life, “absolute bio-political space…in which power confronts nothing other than pure biological life without any mediation,” yet refugees as residents of camps can reinterpret their existence in camps as politicised space. Most refugees located in North and South live separately from what is presumed to be normal and mainstream and their location beyond the city limits is an indication of their marginalisation and scant access to resources. Camp space becomes the paradigmatic of stratification on one hand, and diversification of membership prevalent in contemporary society. My paper will analyse the space within the domain of forced migration studies and suggest that like the refugees, camps too have become tools of society when it should have been rather a place of exception. The paper will engage theoretically with camps as loci within forced migration studies and critically addresses the following: a) the refugee-subject relation in developed and developing world, b) the interrelation between refugee subject and camp, and the usefulness of camp as an analytical tool to understand forced migration study.Item Open Access Partition, Politics, and the Quest for Bengali Identity: A Case of Barak Valley in South Assam(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Bhattacharya, JoyatiPrior to independence, Barak Valley was a part of Surma Valley. When Sylhet and Cachar, two Bengali speaking districts of the Bengal Presidency, were separated and combined to form Assam in 1874, Surma Valley administrative division was created. Until Sylhet’s secession to East Pakistan in 1947 Cachar district remained a part of Surma Valley. After Sylhet, Cachar district became the lone Bengali stronghold in Assam. In late twentieth century, Barak Valley became the name of Cachar district which included remnants of erstwhile Sylhet. Historically, Barak Valley has gone through partition twice- once in 1874 when it was severed from Bengal and again in 1947 when Sylhet voted to secede. In post-independent Assam, Barak Valley turned into an alien land. Subsequent actions of the leadership have significantly impacted the socio-political life and strengthened the sense of isolation of Barak Valley. The present study is intended to comprehend how Barak Valley has struggled to preserve its identity despite going through a serious existential crisis.Item Open Access “Interrogating My Chandal Life”: Manoranjan Byapari and the Silenced History of Bengali Dalit Refugees(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2023-12) Mondal, SumantaManoranjan Byapari’s autobiography "Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit" gives an intense first-hand experience of the violence and fragmentation brought by the catastrophic chains of reactions set off first by the Partition and later by the urbanisation in Calcutta. He gives an intense and in-depth description of the failure of the rehabilitation schemes by the government, the unfulfilled promises made by various leaders during the fervent 1960s Calcutta followed by the stormy decades of the 1970s, the violent repercussion of the militant Naxalite movement, the forgotten episodes of the Marichjhapi massacre in 1979 where thousands of innocent Dalit refugees were killed mercilessly by the government and finally the darker sides of the corrupt politics and the criminal world. It has been narrated from the perspective of a lower caste Namasudra refugee, something that has never been done before in Bengal’s mainstream literary world. Manoranjan Byapari uses literature as a weapon, almost like a sentinel for his conscience, gives voice to the voiceless and he is willing to fight bigotry. He is willing to wage a fight against the hierarchical society. Byapari's autobiography is a critique of the constant dehumanising social forces of a caste-ridden society that get buried in urban post-colonial settings. Through his autobiography, he vents the anguish and frustration of the Namasudras. Although his autobiography narrates his own predicament and the difficult journey of his life, it is universal in nature as it transcends the Namasudra community as a whole.