Abjects or agents? Camps, contests and the creation of ‘political space’

The 'Urdu-speaking population' in Bangladesh, displaced by Partition in 1947, and made 'stateless' by the Liberation War of 1971, exemplify some of the key problems facing uprooted populations. Exploring differences of 'camp' and 'non-camp' based displacement, this paper represents a critical evaluation of the way 'political space' is contested at the local level and what this reveals about the nature and boundaries of citizenship. Semi-structured and narrative interviews conducted among 'camp' and 'non-camp' based 'Urdu-speakers' found that citizenship status has been profoundly affected by the spatial dynamics of settlement. However it also revealed the ways in which 'formal' status is subverted - the moments of negotiation in which claims to political being are made. In asking how and when a 'stateless' population is able to „access‟ citizenship, through which processes and by which means it reveals the tension, ambiguity and conceptual limitations of 'statelessness' and citizenship, unearthing a reality of partial, shifting and deceptively permeable terrain. In doing so, it also reveals the dissonance and discord (constitutive of an 'us' and 'them' divide) upon which the creation of 'political space' may at time rely. Citizenship functions to exclude and, therefore, it is very often born of contestation