Abstract
The South Asian states do not have proper conventions and laws for refugees, immigrants or stateless people. The borders of the states and their institutions are not strict in not accepting immigrants; rather the borders are more or less known to be porous in the region due to its sharing of boundaries with each other. It is in the neighbouring countries where stateless people seek asylum by entering through illegal ways or accepting them as asylum seekers. Once refugees or outsiders enter the asylum state then the laws and rights convene according to its constitution or international conventions signed by the asylum state. It is at the convenience of asylum state; whether it prefers to build camps or construct sites for refugees for their stay. However, refugees stay in a country for a longer time until the situation of their origin country comes back to normal and accepts them as citizens. This leads to a question that Hannah Arendt addresses of either repatriation or naturalisation. If any of these processes is accepted by states of either origin or state of asylum for the moment then the larger question still remains, how these states will comply with giving citizenship. It may again declare the same people as non-citizens or aliens and create them stateless, and perpetuates a vicious cycle of statelessness in South Asian states. The people living as stateless remain in camps for years and their situation never improves in the interplay of state and citizens. There are many counter arguments of cosmopolitan citizenship or democratisation of borders (Balibar), on the other hand a radical argument of eating others’ share (Ranciere). How then does one address the complicated situation of refugees like Chin living in India in camps, rented rooms and apartments with UNHCR identity? The refugees require certain rights and laws for existence rather than living as stateless or without any representation. It is in this regard that the nation-state is the authority in creation of stateless people (Arendt) and in contemporary times the only authority to accept them as citizens.
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Notes
- 1.
Man in the chapter is often used to denote both men and women; it is taken from Arendt and her repetitive use of the word ‘man’ signifying a political being. She borrows it from Aristotle to differentiate political being from other beings as species in biological terms. See pp. 182 paragraph 2 in ‘The Public and the Private Realm’. Baehr, Peter. 2002. The Public and The Private Realm. In The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. 182–230. Ontario: Penguin Books Ltd. Pg. 182–184. In this very section, author discusses the private and public realm that further clarifies her stance on the inclusion of both men and women in the discussion.
- 2.
Marshall, T H. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- 3.
UNHCR report states that the impact of statelessness is widely on the enjoyment of rights. http://www.unhcr.org/stateless-people.html.
- 4.
The idea that now there exists no supreme political community other than a nation-state has been brought out by Hannah Arendt. Ibid. Pg. 293.
- 5.
- 6.
Human being here is referred to a citizen following from the debate of man through Arendt’s framework on how a human being is a social and political animal.
- 7.
De jure and de facto statelessness are the two categories, but a political subject is created to mere subject and encounter similar kinds of economic, social and political problems. See Canafe, Nergis. 2018. Statelessness as Permanent State: Challenges to Human Security Paradigm. Conflict Transformation and Security: 1–14. And for difference made by Arendt where she finds de facto situation more precarious, see Parekh, Serena. 2014. Beyond the Ethics of Admission: Stateless People, Refugee Camps and Moral Obligation. Philosophy and Social Criticism (Sage Publications) 40, no. 7: 645–663. See UNHCR charter for their understanding on statelessness. See http://www.unhcr.org/stateless-people.html.
- 8.
The de facto and de jure statelessness are different due to their process of making stateless; otherwise their conditions or end result is stateless. De jure statelessness is when a person is not considered as national of any state. De facto statelessness exists when a person is unable to provide with valid legal documents for accessibility of nationality but poses a formal nationality. See http://www.unhcr.org/stateless-people.html.
- 9.
See http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Citizenship%20Law.htm. The major changes brought by the Burmese government against the ethnic and racial minorities of the nation.
- 10.
- 11.
India treats refugees and immigrants differently through enforcing various laws. See Bhattacharjee, Saurabh. 2008. India Needs a Refugee Law. Economic and Political Weekly: 71–75.
- 12.
See Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen and Jason Cons. 2014. Aleatory Sovereignty and The Rule of Sensitive Spaces. Antipode 46, no. 1: 92–109.
- 13.
Egreteau, Renaud. 2017. A Political History of Myanmar. In Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LII no. 39: 27–29.
- 14.
Banerjee, Paula. 2016. Permanent Exceptions to Citizens: The Stateless in South Asia, ed. Nasreen Chowdhory. International journal of Migration and Border Studies (Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.) 2: 119–131.
- 15.
Chin Refugees’ Indian Dilemma. 2014. https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/chin-refugees-indian-dilemma/ (accessed June 11, 2018).
- 16.
See Fraser on the limitations of social rights comprising within citizenship in Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda. 1994. Civil Citizenship against Social Citizenship?. In The Condition of Citizenship, ed. Bart Van Steenbergen, 90–107. London: Sage Publications.
- 17.
See Hobbes, Thomas. 1998. Of the First and Second Natural Law, and of Contract. In Leviathan, ed. G.C. A Gaskin, 86–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 18.
The argument is for porous borders and not diminishing in physical sense. See Introduction pp. 4–5 and section on crisis of territoriality in Benhabib, Seyla. 2004. The Rights of others Aliens, Residents, and Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 19.
See Gellner, Ernest. 2006. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell for arguments on Weberian state’s agency that has rights for legitimate violence.
- 20.
See Weinman, Michael D. 2007. Arendt and the Legitimate Expectation for Hospitality and Membership Today. Moral Philosophy and Politics: 1–23. Where he shows that UNHCR has no accurate number and only says approximately.
- 21.
This is specific to the case of Burma 1982 changes in citizenship laws. http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Citizenship%20Law.htm.
- 22.
The larger argument by that man by nature is a political animal and needs a political community for survival, and it is based on membership of nationality.
- 23.
Chowdhory, Nasreen. 2013. Marginalisation and Exclusion: Politics of Non-Citizen Rights in Post-colonial South Asia.” Refugee Watch A South Asian Journal on Forced Migration (Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group) 42: 1–16.
- 24.
Khan, Irene. 2004. Protecting the Rights of Refugees . In Peace Studies An Introduction to The Concept, Scope and Themes, ed. Ranabir Samaddar, 190–205. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
- 25.
Bose, Tapan K. 1997. Introduction. In States, Citizens and Outsiders: The Uprooted People of South Asia, eds. Tapan K. Bose and Rita Manchanda. Kathmandu: Union Press Pvt. Ltd., 1997. And Manchanda, Rita. ‘No where people: Burmese Refugees in India’. In States, Citizens and Outsiders: The Uprooted People of South Asia, eds. Tapan K. Bose and Rita Manchanda Kathmandu: Union Press Pvt. Ltd., 1997. And Singh, Deepak K. 2010. Statelessness in South Asia: The Chakmas between Bangladesh and India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
- 26.
See https://www.india.gov.in/sites/upload_files/npi/files/coi_part_full.pdf for the Constitution of India.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
The creations and engagement with the society is political Ibid 184. And Ibid 293.
- 30.
Arendt prefers this argument in the creation of a Jewish nation. Ibid. Pg. 295.
- 31.
See Baehr, Peter. 2002. The Public and The Private Realm. In The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr, 182–230. Ontario: Penguin Books. And Arendt, Hannah. 2017. The Decline of the Nation-state and the End of the Rights of Man. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt, 349–396. St Ives: Penguin Classics.
- 32.
Arendt borrows political not only in the sense of existence of a human being in a state rather from the man engagements with environment, activities in the material sense. Ibid. Pg. 182–184.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Benhabib borrows from Arendt and also departs with the idea of democratic iterations. My focus: ‘I want to suggest that the experiment of the modern nation-state could be analysed in different terms: the formulation of the democratic people with its unique history and culture can be seen as an ongoing process of transformation and reflexive experiment with collective identity in a process of democratic iteration’. Ibid. Pg. 64.
- 35.
Ibid. Pg. 175.
- 36.
Ibid. Pg. 179.
- 37.
The idea is clearly denoted with the context of South Asia though the claims from the centric-state perspective.
- 38.
See Human Rights Watch report https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/01/27/we-are-forgotten-people/chin-people-burma-unsafe-burma-unprotected-india.
- 39.
Ibid. Pg. 39.
- 40.
See Piang, L. L. Khan. 2013. Ethnic Mobilisation for Decolonisation: Colonial Legacy (the case of the Zo people in Northeast India). Asian Ethnicity Vol. 14 No. 3: 342–363. Pg. 344 elaborates the concern on bringing the Zo tribe together into one territorial space.
- 41.
- 42.
Ibid. Pg.
- 43.
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
See Bhaumik, Subir, and Bhattacharya, Jayanta. 2005. Autonomy of Northeast: The hills of Tripura and Mizoram. In The Politics of Autonomy Indian Experiences, ed. Ranabir Samaddar: Sage Publications: New Delhi. For its multi-ethnic nature and history.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
‘A constant state of fear’: Chin Refugee Women and Children in New Delhi. 2014. https://www.opendemocracy.net/rosalinn-zahau-rachel-fleming/%E2%80%9C-constant-state-of-fear%E2%80%9D-chin-refugee-women-and-children-in-new-delhi.
- 52.
Ibid. Pg. 214.
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Kajla, M. (2019). Nation-State and Its Production of Statelessness: A Study of Chin Refugees. In: Uddin, N., Chowdhory, N. (eds) Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2778-0_6
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