Belonging in exile and "home" : the politics of repatriation in South Asia

My dissertation discusses refugee rights and post-repatriation integration in South Asia in the context of debates over "citizenship." Postcolonial state-formation processes in South Asia have profoundly shaped questions of belonging and membership. As a result, official citizenship has become an important marker of group inclusion and exclusion in South Asian states. Using the literature on citizenship, I discuss the "belonging" claims of non-citizens (refugees) and argue that in practice this "belonging" extends beyond the state-centric "citizenship" view of membership. In doing so, I address two sets of interrelated questions: what factors determine whether or not refugees will be repatriated in South Asia, and why do some repatriated groups re-integrate more successfully than others in "post-peace" South Asian states? I answer these questions through a study of refugees from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who sought asylum in India and were later repatriated to their countries of origin. The politics of postcolonial state-formation and subsequent discriminatory policies on language in Sri Lanka and non-recognition of the Jumma people in Bangladesh encouraged many citizens to flee to India as refugees. I argue, first, that India's state-centric politics of non-recognition of the two refugee groups contributed to their later repatriation. In the absence of rights and status in exile, refugees turned to "home" as a place to belong. I then analyze the post-repatriation variations in accommodation in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as most refugees attempted to reclaim the lost identity and "citizenship" at "home" through the process of repatriation. However these countries pursued strategies of limited accommodation, which led to the minimal or partial re-integration of the two returnee-refugee groups