Research papers produced out of the programme on Forced Migration continue to be published in the Journal “Refugee Watch” and CRG research paper series (Policies and Practices), both of which are distributed widely to all significant educational institutions and united nations institutions. As part of its follow up programme of the Winter Course, CRG has been organizing short courses on any of the modules in collaboration with various universities and research centers in India. Research scholars, activists working on human rights, forced migration and displacement issues, have attended these workshops. Needless to say that the alumni network of the Winter Course have played a key role in collaborating with various institutions. This year CRG in collaboration with Department of Social Work, Loyola College, Chennai organised a three day workshop on “Ethics and Practices of Care and Protection: Refugees and IDPs in South Asia” from 26 to 28 February 2009.  Apart from this, we have Indo – Finnish Research Fellowship Exchange Programme under which two Indian Winter Course participants were selected to visit Finland for seven days and a young Finnish Research Scholar was invited to CRG for fifteen days. Tampere Peace Research Institute has been hosting participants from India.  

Research and Publications 

The winter course programme is designed to provide vital inputs to CRG’s ongoing research. But, more important, the course material is based on CRG’s original research work. Some of the term papers of the Sixth Winter Course participants were selected for the publication – Refugee Watch Issue No. 31. Elizabeth Snyder’s article “Build Back Better: Hurricance Katrina in Socio-gender context” examined the issues of race, class and gender in the U.S. government Response to Hurricane Katrina. She investigates the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and analyses the socio-gender dimensions of the three key FEMA activities: evacuation, resettlement, and recovery. In this article she highlights the fascinating account of the African American women’s sustainable initiatives for post- Hurricane recovery. Another Fifth Winter course participant, Elizabeth Williams in her study on “ The Criminalisation of Asylum Seekers in the UK” revisits the UK Government’s new strategy for refugee status determination though “ Detained Fast Track” or Super fast Track” which envisages that the claimants would remain in detention centers until there were granted asylum, humanitarian protection, discretionary leave or removed from UK.  

CRG also published some of the works on climate change and its impact on forced displacement, international norms and camps, growing IDP crisis and situations of protracted displacement- case study of Sri Lankan Tamils.  

Some of the papers by Faculty members were published in: 

A) Refugee Watch Issue No. 31 June 2008  

• The Growing IDP Crisis in the Southern World- Tasks from a Rights and Development Perspective by Jeevan Thiagarajah
• The Protracted Refugee Life of the Sri Lankan Tamils in India by Gladston Xavier
• Relief to Rehabilitation: Towards Policy on Development Planning, Displacement and Rehabilitation by Madhuresh Kumar
• Making Sense of Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and Displacement: A Work in Progress by Elizabeth G. Ferris

B) Refugee Watch Issue No 32 

• On Governing Population Flows by Ranabir Samaddar
• Gender, camps and international Norms by Asha Hans

C) The book The Fleeing people of South Asia: Selections from Refugee Watch Edited by Sibaji Pratim Basu, Anthem Critical Studies: 2009 was released during the Sixth Winter Course on Forced Migration.   

D) The research papers of Tinna Kanninen, Sanam Roohi and Ishita Dey recipients of the Second Indo Finnish Exchange Programme will be published shortly. Two research papers on Cooper’s Camp, West Bengal (one of the oldest transit refugee centres post partition) by Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury and Ishita Dey have already been published. 

Fellowships  

This year three fellowships were given under this segment.  Alina Pathan from Finland spent fifteen days in Kolkata working on the theme on impacts of climate change to human displacement in India. Two Indian participants, Geetisha Dasgupta and Sahana Basavaptna were hosted by Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere for a week. 

Report by Alina Pathan, CRG Junior Research fellow from Finland 

Alina Pathan is a development studies student from the University of Helsinki and an environmental consultant at Gaia Consulting Ltd.  

Research Fellowship Report  

My Research Fellowship was part of the Indo-Finnish exchange segment in the Sixth Winter Course on Forced Migration. I would like to thank Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG) and the Finnish Government for enabling me an opportunity to gather information for my Master Thesis in Kolkata.  

During my visit in Kolkata, I did research for my master thesis on impacts of climate change to human displacement in India. My first week consisted mainly of literature review and writing and the second week of conducting interviews. At the end of the research fellowship, I gave a presentation at CRG about information I had gathered during my stay and common themes which arose in the interviews I conducted.  

I interviewed altogether 11 people from seven organisations. I interviewed Saswati Sen and Subhro Sen from WWF India, Bodhisattva Gupta and Sonali Bhattacharya from Greenpeace India, Dr. Abhijit Mitra and Dr. Kakoli Banerjee from the University of Calcutta (Marine Science), Prof. Sugata Hazra (Oceanographic studies) and Prof. Joyashree Roy (Economics) from Jadavpur University, Prof. Kalyan Rudra from the West Bengal Pollution Control Board, Mr. Debal Ray from the Government of West Bengal and Mr. Subir Bhaumik from BBC World Service.  

Climate change will indeed be a severe question for India in the future. Labouring people on coastal regions will above all be the ones suffering the most. Land and housing will be a problem in the future but the main problem will be finding a livelihood in changing circumstances. Extreme weather events, rising sea level, among others, will diminish agricultural potentials and threaten livelihoods. Thus, especially farmers and fishermen will face severe challenges. Poorest people will also have the least means to migrate and will keep trying to cope with climate change impacts in their habitat areas. According to the interviews, actions from different actors are needed. Climate change is too big of an issue to be placed only in the government’s hands. Grassroots level as well as NGOs and corporate and governmental actions are needed to tackle some of the worst climate impacts in India. Interviewees emphasized especially the vulnerable situation of the Sundarbans, where some islands have already submerged and people have had to migrate to nearby islands.  

Report by Geetisha Dasgupta and Sahana Basavapatna

Sahana Basavapatna  

Sahana Basavapatna is a lawyer by training and works as the Coordinator- Burmese Refugee Desk, The Other Media, Delhi 

Implementation of the Finland’s Alien's Act, 2004 in the context of the European Common Asylum Policy 

As a Junior Research Fellow, I visited Finland from 25 February to 4 March 2009. My area of research was on the Finnish asylum policy and in an attempt to understand this, I had mainly two central and interconnected questions. The first is to understand the implementation of the provisions of the Finnish Alien's Act, 2004 to asylum seekers, the framework of rights enshrined therein and the ongoing discussions and proposal to amend certain provisions as applicable to asylum seekers.  

In doing so, I also intend to contextualize the legislation within the larger European Common Asylum System (or CEAS as it is normally referred to), the process for which goes back to the 1990s and earlier, when European countries began the process of harmonizing policies towards a single market economy. While the first phase of the CEAS, which concluded in 2004 involved the adoption of minimum standards of refugee protection throughout Europe, countries are expected to harmonize their domestic policies with this common asylum policy in the second phase, which is currently underway. While it is hoped that countries across Europe would harmonize asylum policies, one can expect that they would also face challenges in the actual implementation in their national policy. 

The second central question, related to the first is to do with the extent of relevance of the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees in the European context considering that historical and political developments have changed not only the context in which we witness population flows, but also the European response to it. Seen in this context, to what extend does the Finnish asylum policy keep up with the spirit of the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, a document considered to be one of the pillers of international refugee law. While some Finnish organizational representatives argue that the 1951 Convention is still relevant as it is the basis for refugee status under the Alien's Act, 2004, others note that the spirit of the 1951 Convention is being watered down. It would be useful to keep in mind the changing character of refugee protection and the several categories created across countries such as “refugee status”, “subsidiary protection” and “temporary protection”. These categorizations would be analysed in the Finnish context.  

For convenience, I wish to take the Somali refugee community and its experience of refugee protection as an example throughout, for two reasons. It is not only the second largest refugee community in Finland after Iraqis but the fact that Somali nationals claim refugee status in India is also an opportunity to look at the protection situations in these two countries as a comparative study. 

Geetisha Dasgupta  

Geetisha Dasgupta is a student of Political Science and working at the Calcutta Research Group as a Research Associate. She visited Finland on a Junior Research Fellowship under the Indo Finnish Exchange Segment of the Sixth Annual Winter Course on Forced Migration, 2008. 

Select Immigration Experiences of Highly Skilled Migrants from South Asia to Finland 

First and foremost I thank Dr Ranabir Samaddar, Dr Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, Dr Samir Kumar Das and Dr Paula Banerjee and everybody else at CRG for giving me this wonderful opportunity to visit Finland for a short study of Select Immigration Experiences of Highly Skilled Migrants from South Asia to Finland. I also must express my gratitude to all the people in Finland who extended their support to make the study visit fruitful. Finland was a great experience and my first window to the Nordic world. 

I met Professor Peter Krauss, Professor Sirpa Wrede and Ms Sanna Saksela from Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN), Helsinki University, who were very helpful in letting me understand the take off period of highly skilled immigration in Finland, which is the area of migration I am committed to look in to for this brief period of study. CEREN was helpful throughout.  

I met two trade union bodies like the AKAVA and the SAK. The first one deals specifically with highly skilled migrants, while the second one has the blue collared job holders as their affiliates. STTK is the umbrella union body of professionals and has a midway path to follow. But time constraints could not fit an appointment with them in my schedule. Discussions with the first two have been very fruitful and they were very interested about ways in which South Asia is increasingly making its presence felt on the economic pulse of Finland. The office of Ms Annika Forsander at the Human Resources Centre, Immigration Division in Helsinki has also kindly agreed to answer all our queries over email since we missed the scheduled appointment on account of flight delay. 

I must mention our presentation at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) with warm memories. The coffee table discussion on subjects from India was, if I may say so, well received. I presented a paper on Right to Food situation in West Bengal with special reference to the Dooars as a case study. Food rights violation and the tea economy were discussed over a number of questions from the audience. I am grateful to Eeva Puumala, Unto Vesa and Anitta Kynsilehto for having answered my queries specific to my own research interest for this fellowship programme. 

Follow up Workshop on “Ethics and Practices of Care and Protection: Refugees and IDPs in South Asia”  (26-28 February 2009) 

CRG over the past few years have been  organizing short courses in collaboration with willing centers and departments of universities and research institutions across India as a follow up activity. This year CRG in collaboration with Department of Social Work, Loyola College, Chennai is organising a three day workshop on “Ethics and Practices of Care and Protection: Refugees and IDPs in South Asia” from 26-28 February 2009. This workshop was an outcome of the ongoing and past work by the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG) and its collaboration with different universities in South Asia, particularly in the context of forced migration, over the last six years. A select number of university students from southern India, in particular, from Tamil Nadu, participated in the workshop and the resource persons were selected by the Loyola College in consultation with the CRG. We had research scholars from University of Hyderabad, ISEC Bangalore and IIT Powai, activists from ADRA, Chennai. Participants were given reading materials in advance for each of the sessions.  

The three-day workshop started on 26 February 2009 at the MRF Hall of the Loyola College. Francis Adaikalam welcomed the resource persons and participants on behalf of the college. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, Course Coordinator, CRG, and Professor, Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, introduced the workshop. 

The main aim of the workshop was to introduce and familiarize the participants regarding the complexities that entail ethics and care of protection with regard to refugees and IDPs in South Asia. The colonial legacy of the Indian subcontinent has had a bearing on the present situation and the peasant rebellions has been argued in the subaltern literature as a first step towards contesting colonial powers. The three-day proceedings began with the lecture by Prof. Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Senior Member, CRG, and Additional Director, Police Archival Wing, West Bengal State Archives where he highlighted the protection measures in late colonial India in the context of outbreak of famines. During discussion, Ranabir Samaddar, Director, CRG, indicated that, in fact, two conflicting demands of the colonial administration could be easily discernible: one policy was encouraging people to be footloose, and the other tring to settle or resettle them at a certain territory. Samir Kumar Das, President, CRG, and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta chaired the session. 

In the next session, there was a panel discussion on “Protection Measures: Experiences of the Sri Lankan Tamil, Tibetan and CHT Refugees in India”. The panelists were A, Chandrasekhar and Ramesh from the Department of Rehabilitation, Government of Tamil Nadu, Tunga Tarodi, ISEC, Bengalooru, and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury. The first two panelists pointed out how protection measures are in operation in 114 refugee camps spread across the state of Tamil Nadu sheltering the Sri Lankan Tamils. They also pointed out that how despite possible links of some of the displaced persons with the rebel groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and despite this being a quite sensitive issue in the state and the country, as a whole, the refugees were taken care of by the state administration in collaboration with the Government of India, UNHCR and a few non-governmental organizations, like the Jesuit Refugee Service, ADRA India and OFERR. They indicated that the NGOs were mainly assisting the government in providing primary education, health care and sanitation. Tunga described the situation of the Tibetan refugees who have been in India over five decades. Sabyasachi showed how the refugees from CHT, Bangladesh, appeared to be strategic pawns between two neighbouring countries, India and Bangladesh at certain points of their stay in the camps in south Tripura between 1986 and 1998. He argued that, the lack of national legislation in India with regard to the protection and care of refugees was partially responsible for a hierarchical and discretionary treatment of treatment of refugees in spite of an overall hospitable condition for the cross-border displaced persons. As India is a not a signatory of either the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or the 1967 Protocol, the legal obligations are very few so far as India’s refugee policy is concerned. He also pointed out that, against this backdrop, sometimes there is a securitization of the refugee issue particularly when the Indian State is dealing with the conflict-induced displacement. In the discussion that followed, Itty Abraham, Director, South Asia Institute and Associate Professor, Department of Government and Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA, pointed out that, one of the key reasons for India and other South Asian countries not signing the UN Refugee Convention and/or Protocol was that while these international legal mechanisms, emerging in the situation of the immediate post-war Europe, recognize the right to return to the land of origin, such right was rather difficult to recognize in the context of the partitions of the Indian subcontinent. While searching for a durable solution to the cases of protracted displacement of people, one also has to understand that, in many instances, the citizenship laws and the national legal instruments, like the Foreigners’ Act, are major hindrances apart from other concerned issues, Itty opined. Bernard D’ Sami, a teacher of the Department of History, Loyola College moderated the entire discussion. 

Another aspect of protection measure is the initiation and adoption of various polices by the funding institutions and Governments. How effective are these policies? CRG has played a key role in organizing consultations of National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy. In this session Madhuresh Kumar from CACIM and Ishita Dey from CRG gave a historical overview of the Government of India National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2007. The politics of the post colonialism had its impact on the formulation of the bill and the post-colonial ambitions of a top-down development process instead of participatory approach was cited as one of the main limitations of such a policy. Samir Kumar Das President, CRG and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta moderated the session. Samir Kumar Das invited the participants to share their views on development and whether policies are ways of manufacturing consent. The participants cited various instances to show the limitation of a “national” policy as it has failed to address some of the key issues in relation to gendered needs and indigenous groups. They also discussed the cases of anti-SEZ (Special Economic Zone) agitations in different parts of the country. During discussion, Tunda Tarodi indicated that, the displaced persons are not always a homogeneous category. She cited the case of a project in Karnataka, where some groups of people became quite richer than earlier through the compensatory measures adopted. She also asked why the social movements and media are mainly raising their voices against the forced displacement of people and why a political constituency is still not developing in India in view of large-scale development-induced displacement. Manish Kumar Jha of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, argued that, in contemporary India, while resettlement of the displaced persons is a reality, their rehabilitation is still an ideal, a distant dream. It was also mentioned by a participant that the resettlement without prior planning can lead to more socio-political complications, and in this context, the claims of women refugees and IDPs need to be taken into special consideration.  

This was followed by the keynote address of the workshop on the theme "Humanitarianism in Context" by Prof. Itty Abraham, Director of the South Asia Institute and Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. This was a public event and was attended by faculty and members of Loyola College and Stella Maris College. In his lecture Itty Abraham highlighted how the very nature of “humanitarianism” has undergone a change in the context of 21st Century due to the political violence. In this context, the refugee camps have become the liminal zones.  

Day 2 session began with the lecture on Gender dimensions of forced migration by Paula Banerjee, Secretary, CRG and Department of South and South East Asian Studies, University of Calcutta. Violence- physical, mental and disguised forms have dominated women’s experiences of forced migration. State and non-state actors have not only used women’s bodies to perpetuate this violence as in the case of partition but also in ethnic conflicts when women have been hired as frontline warriors. Women have played a pivotal role in South Asia in the resistance and peace movements in case of development induced displacement and conflict ridden areas particularly North East India. Women have to negotiate with the private and public domain and are subject to violence and are often trafficked post displacement. She argued that the gender dimensions of forced migration in the South Asian context is overridden with violence. 

The panel discussion on “Violence, Trafficking and Forced Labour, Perspectives on durable solutions” highlighted specific cases. Mr. Hariharan from ICWO discussed how women were trafficked into sex work. Ms. R. Geetha, Secretary of the Unorganized Worker's Federation spoke on the bonded labour situation in the country and raised concerns over the protection mechanisms available to the women in the unorganized workforce. Bernard D Sami, Faculty Loyola College, Chennai discussed the Arunodhyay Migrants Initiative’s work with the low-skilled migrant workforce in Middle East and other countries. He was critical of the Government of India’s emigration policy and also the proposed Internal Migration Policy. 

This was followed by the two parallel group discussions. Participants were divided into two groups. Manish Kumar Jha, Faculty, Tata Institute of Social Sciences moderated the session on Lessons of Tsunami- Disasters and the task of protection. In this group the disaster management efforts undertaken by the Central Government and state governments with international monitoring mechanisms were discussed in detail.  The other parallel group discussion focused on Legal and juridical practices of Refugee Protection in South Asia. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury moderated this session and one of the key arguments that the group agreed upon is that that should be regional mechanisms of protection; an all pervasive international protection mechanism could be the guiding force but can never safeguard the rights of the people who are forced to migrate or displacees.

Day 2 session ended with the Reports from Kodapakam, Nallur IDP settlements by Students from Department of Social Work and a mime show depicting the plight of the displaced. 

In the opening session of Day 3, Pradip Kumar Bose, Eminent Sociologist and Retired Professor of Sociology, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta in his lecture on “Ethics of Care and Protection” in the opening section discussed various arguments and reasoning around ethics of care and protection with particular emphasis on: 1) Rights-based arguments; 2) Community-based arguments; and 3) Humanitarian arguments. In the second part, he discussed ‘trust’ as foundation of ethical principle in refugee care and protection. The ‘trust’ that is explored here is not a conscious state of awareness but its opposite, what Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’ or what Heideggar called ‘Being-in-the-world’. Commonly in the reporting and narrative of refugee experience conflict and violence are highlighted, but the collapse of culturally constituted trust is another important aspect that this lecture wishes to explore.   

This was followed by the roundtable discussion on “Camps and the voices of the IDPs and refugees” where Mr. Chandra Hasan from Offerr shared the experience of Sri Lankan refugees and highlighted the significant role of the Indian Government played in the refugee care of the Sri Lankan refugees.  Mr. Vallan from ADRA highlighted the sanitation and hygiene of the camps which deserves special attention. Ishita Dey from CRG shared the gendered experience of partition through an ethnographic study of the permanent liability camp in Nadia District- Ranghat Women’s Camp.  

This was followed by the panel discussion on “Protracted Displacement Situations and Durable Solutions”. Gladston Xavier, Faculty, Department of Social Work, Loyola College, Chennai, Pavanthi Vembulu, Lecturer cum Asst. Director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy M.S. University and K.M. Parivelan, TNTRC/ UNDP highlighted the various aspects of protracted displacement. Gladston Xaviers discussed in detail the protracted refugee life of Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees and K M Parivelan highlighted the complex nature of “durability” of durable solutions”. Mr. Vembulu offered a historical account of the nature of protracted displacement and its implications in the humanitarian context. 

In the panel discussion on Media and Forced Displacement: Right to Communicate Krishna Anand, TSS Mani and Mr. Gopalan highlighted that the control of the market forces and how the content is driven by the demands of the market. Corporate conglomerates and political groups have been the backbone of media in Tamil Nadu. The objectivity of the media to cover issues of forced displacement and migration; rather the inter subjective nature which links right to information and right to communicate is dying owing to the nexus of political and corporate forces in the print and audio- visual media. The discussion focused on how the alternative media is now seen as the source for legitimate information regarding issues of forced displacement rather than mainstream media. The session was moderated by Amal Raj, Faculty, Department of Media Studies, Loyola College Chennai. 

The three-day session ended with the Valedictory address by Mr. Vidjea Bharati, Asst. Repatriation Officer, UNHCR, Chennai who discussed in detail the work of UNHCR in India. Prof. M.R. Arul Raj, Head of the Department of Social Work, Loyola College, Chennai congratulated the organizers and encouraged the participants to engage in such discussions. The session was chaired by Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, Member of CRG & Honorary Coordinator of the Sixth Annual Winter Course on Forced Migration, and Professor, Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.