Seventh Annual Research & Orientation Workshop in Global Protection of Migrants and Refugees

Abstract

The dichotomous concepts of protection and punishment is cast within the mould of state sovereignty and power. For citizens, the institutionalized framework of both protection and punishment that they are subjected to, is by default determined by the sovereign authority and power of respective nation-states. Their right to be protected by the state is equally juxtaposed to the monopoly of the state to punish them, if they digress from the established ‘rule of law’. Punishment here, theoretically can be seen justified as retributive- that is to impose a deserved reciprocally sanctioned action or as preventive- so as to create a deterrence against such digressions (Cahill, 2010). Hence for citizens, while protection is embedded in their rights of citizenship, punishment signifies right of the sovereign, both though with qualifiers and conditions. For non-citizens like refugees and stateless, who sustain their “bare life” in the host-state, the dichotomy of protection and punishment manifests differently than for citizens. The causative factors that necessitated their exclusion and displacement from their country of origin more than often was for not fulfilling the criteria for inclusion in that state. Couched in the larger ambit of humanitarian protection, their subjectivity is reduced to that of ‘humans’ that mandate ‘protection’. Here the limited protection accorded to them signify only their “residual rights as human” (Mamdani, 2010: 54) and not the full-fledged protection guaranteed to the citizen by virtue of their citizenship rights. Punishment for them is at once both metaphorical and literal. Refugees and such forced migrants are segregated from the host population and live in make-shift camps in deplorable conditions, such that the protection accorded to them on humanitarian grounds transmute to a sort of punishment for being the excluded ‘other’. The crossing of geographical boundaries not just creates categories such as ‘us’ and ‘other’, but also have seen increasingly led to “criminology of mobility” (Aas and Bosworth, 2013 :9 ). Regulation and restriction of mobility hence produces novel forms of illegality and criminalization, apart from turning punishment and criminal justice structure as important apparatuses “guarding the gates of membership” (ibid.). The role of criminal law and policing has been to preserve the internal security, to establish the sovereign’s supremacy and the moral order of the society, in short to create a well- ordered and disciplined society (Foucault 1977; Simon 2007). The paper intends to look at the binary of punishment and protection of refugees from the view point of sovereign power of the state.

References

1. Cahill, Michael T. “Punishment Pluralism.” In Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy, edited by Mark D. White. Oxford University Press, Forthcoming, Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper no. 215, 2010. https://ssrn.com/abstract=1705682.

2. Mamdani, Mahmood. “Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 4, no. 1 (March 2010): 53-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/175029709035417211.

Abstract

‘Globalization’ has emerged as a catch-all category in the social science discourses of our time. It should be kept in mind in this context that any critical discourse on globalization should be connected with the global journey of capitalism.
In his magnum opus, Capital, Marx argued “how the production process can be transformed into a process of the technological application of scientific knowledge” under the capitalist mode of production (Marx, Capital, Vol. 1:775). He further observed: “…within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker; …they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they deform the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time…” (ibid: 799)
Technological innovations constitute an organic part of labour control under the capitalist mode of production. The contemporary moment of capitalism is accompanied by the neoliberal paradigm of governance in which digital economy/platform economy is becoming a hegemonic model. Making the workers footloose/ flexible is the logic of capital in the age of neoliberalism. In tracing the genealogy of the digital economy, Nick Srnicek argued: “…the digital economy is an increasingly pervasive infrastructure for the contemporary economy, … with a long decline in manufacturing profitability, capitalism has turned to data as one way to maintain economic growth and vitality in the face of a sluggish production sector. In the twenty-first century, on the basis of changes in digital technologies, data have become increasingly central to firms and their relations with workers, customers, and other capitalists”. (Srnicek, 2017: 9-11)
Capital-labour relations have witnessed transformations in the wake of birth of ‘Platform Capitalism’. Digital labour platforms have come into being to organize and control the labour processes in multiple sectors of the economy. How the labour platforms work? A recent survey of work and labour-relations in global platform capitalism observed: “Labour platforms can be divided into online and offline platforms. Online platforms connect a multiplicity of clients and individual workers through the internet, with work being done remotely. The scope of online platforms is global, transcending geographic boundaries and creating atomised global labour markets…Offline platforms connect clients and customers with workers who perform their tasks physically in a given geographic space…Offline platform work generally involves physical tasks like driving or cleaning; however, the workers are also continuously interacting through apps with the platform to receive orders or instructions, accept or decline tasks and receive evaluations. (Haidar and Keune, 2021: 1-2)
In mapping the global trajectory of capitalism, one should not lose sight of the fact that refugees and migrants are emerging as dominant subjects in the global economy. In fact, refugee and migrant economies constitute important segments of the global economy: “…one may argue that global experiences of refugee and migrant economies suggest a broad uniformity of pattern in the formation of the labouring subjects from refugee and immigrant populations, namely that they form a huge dispersed population of footloose labour whose products are linked to global market chains”. (Samaddar, 2020: 68)
The casualisation of employment with the neoliberalisation of economies in the recent times has been associated with the platform economy, where workers are being treated as self-employed, rather than as employees. If and when needed, the workers are deployed, or called in, and paid for their specific work. Digital platforms and more and more application of software have changed how people work in a range of services and industries. Classification as an employee is significant in determining who deserves the protections of labour and employment rights, including the right to organize, minimum wage, and unemployment compensation. The emergence of gig economy has raised concerns about new systems of algorithmic management exercised over workers and how these alter the structural conditions of their work. While questions of algorithmic injustice have received substantial consideration, very little attention has so far been paid to the question of how algorithms impact the freedom of workers. While gender inequality in the brick and mortar world remains as it is, it is also prevalent in world of the digital platform as female workers are now affected by the inherent bias of algorithms, and women are now being pushed more into precarious work.
The present module is planned to address the interface of globalization, digital/platform capitalism and refugee/migrant labour. In addressing the contemporary logic of Capital, the associated modes of capital accumulation and labour processes will be interrogated theoretically as well as through ethnographic research. A few geographical sites of resistance and modalities of protest of migrant workers will also be explored.

References

1. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, (Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1976).

2. Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, (Polity Press, 2017).
3. Julieta Haidar and Maarten Keune (ed.), Work and Labour Relations in Global Platform Capitalism: Introduction, (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2021).

4. Ranabir Samaddar, The Postcolonial Age of Migration, (Routledge, 2020).

5. Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy, University of California Press, 2019).

Abstract

Prof. B.S. Chimni’s characterization of India’s refugee policy as “administrative ad-hocism” is essentially a note on the various “executive orders” passed in India in its efforts to “legislate” the conditions in which refugees may stay in India. Whatever maybe the refugee “policy”, the entry and exit norms applicable to foreigners in India are governed by the Foreigners Act, 1946 and other related legislations, leaving little wriggle room for innovation by way of “administrative” or “executive” decision making that Prof. Chimni alludes to.
In the absence of legislative recognition of a category of migrants who may be called “asylum seekers” in India, no executive decisions or policies provide an unambiguous credence to the international law principle of the right to seek asylum or the right against refoulement. Underlying this international law norm is of course the principle of sovereign state. However, the story of human migration has also been a story of a people on the run, which essentially means that people with no or scanty documentation form a large chunk of those fleeing their countries of origin. There is thus something to be said about the effectiveness of “administrative ad-hocism” in constituting and defining India’s refugee policy.
This Module on the Law and Jurisprudence on Protection of Refugees and Migrants seeks to look “back” at India’s migration “policy” in this backdrop. The hypothesis is that while one may assume that there is a certain protection that is afforded by India’s “refugee” policy, events and legal developments in the past few years have created a schizophrenic state of affairs, which little clarity on what constitutes refugee “law”. Thus, even while UNHCR in India registers refugees and recognises them based on status determination interviews, the Government of India’s stand is in variance with the manner in which UNHCR defines “refugees”. The Ministry of Home Affairs’s circular of 2017 and 2018 (part of the reading list) is case in point. In 2019, an amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955 set in place a structure to grant citizenship to Hindus, Christians and Buddhists from Afghanisation, Pakistan and Bangladesh, setting off country wide protests and debates about its fallouts. And in related developments, the Detention Centre Manual published by the Government of India in 2019 also generated the discussion around detention centres, its constituents and its legal basis.
As the work of Calcutta Research Group has shown, the terminology “refugee” can no longer be understood in its classical 1951 Refugee Convention terms. Much has indeed changed, not only in the South Asian continent but also in other parts of the world and therefore, the question that CRG asked about a decade ago, “does the 1951 Refugee Convention need a rethink” is worth asking once again. But, even while we explore this question in the current times, it is equally worth asking, “is there a way to conceive of a refugee protection regime outside of the 1951 Refugee Convention”, so that there is no need felt to bear the enormous brunt of the historical developments that have made the 1951 Refugee Convention the way it has. This is relevant because even when countries such as India refuse to engage with any debate on any refugee policy (except to ignore even the most fundamental principles of customary international law that has been part of domestic jurisprudence), there are others who have acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention as recently as in 2021-2022.
This module on the law of refugees and migrants is an attempt to understand contemporary legal developments that affect refugees and migrants. Focusing on India, this Module seeks to analyse the impact of specific legislations, case laws and executive decision making on refugees and migrants. It is worth exploring the ways in which we may understand how “refugee law” has transformed over time and in what ways do laws and policies impact refugees and migrants.
References

1. The Foreigners Act, 1946

2. Citizenship Act, 1955

Abstract

Introduction

In a world of nation-states, it is ironical to see ‘stateless’ people. It is case of glaring omissions or contradiction at international level where several millions are denied citizenship or nationality. South Asia is riddled with such tedious challenges of statelessness. Globally at present there are around 80 million people displaced due to conflicts or due to situation of forced migration (according to UN Status Report 2019). Statelessness is a profound violation of human rights of an individual and remains to be one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of the twenty-first century. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly states that (1) “Everyone has the right to a nationality" and that (2) “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality (according to Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948)". Despite this guarantee, people in all parts of the world face the prospect of living without the nationality/ citizenship and its foreseen rights hence, lacks the security and protection under the state that usually citizens takes for granted.
At the outset, it is very important to distinguish between ‘statelessness’ and ‘refugee hood’ in order to avoid its overlap and apparent confusion it may cause. Well stateless is the one without any nationality or citizenship by law (according to Statelessness Convention 1954), whereas the refugee is the one who is fleeing to another country due to ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ (according to Convention on Status of Refugees 1951). South Asia is riddled with culture, history, colonial experience, migration, state succession, citizenship, birth registration, etc. with root causes of statelessness. As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes clear, everyone has a right to a nationality. Without nationality, individuals face an existence characterised by insecurity and marginalisation. Stateless people are amongst the most vulnerable in the world, often denied enjoyment of rights such as equality before the law, the right to work, education or healthcare (Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, UNHCR, Geneva 2014).
To use the access to justice (A2J) framework, everyone needs justice, but there are several barriers and impediments. Stateless and Refugees are the most marginalised and vulnerable groups. The following International laws and conventions are relevant here:
Convention on Status of Refugees, 1951 & 1967 Protocol
Convention on Statelessness, 1954 & Reduction 1961
UDHR- Articles-14 & 15: Right to seek Asylum & Non deprivation of nationality, respectively
ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966) - Articles 1 & 27: Right to self-determination & treatment of minorities
ICESCR (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966)- Article 2 (3) economic rights to non-nationals
SDG (Sustainable Development Goals, 2015) - Goal 16 talks about Promoting Just, Peaceful and Inclusive Societies
Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954 Convention) defines a ‘stateless person’ as someone “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” Statelessness arises in a variety of contexts. It occurs in migratory situations, for example, among some expatriates who lose or are deprived of their nationality without having acquired the nationality of a country of habitual residence. Most stateless persons, however, have never crossed borders and find themselves in their “own country”. Their predicament exists in situ, that is in the country of their long-term residence, in many cases the country of their birth. For these individuals, statelessness is often the result of problems in the framing and implementation of nationality laws (Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, UNHCR, Geneva, 2014). The Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations has affirmed the principle that human beings shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination. The 1954 Convention’s most significant contribution to international law is its definition of a “stateless person” as someone “who is not considered as a national by any State under operation of its law.” For those who qualify as stateless persons, the Convention provides important minimum standards of treatment. It requires that stateless persons have the same rights as citizens with respect to freedom of religion and education of their children. For a number of other rights, such as the right of association, the right to employment and to housing, it provides that stateless persons are to enjoy, at a minimum, the same treatment as other non-nationals.
To overcome the profound vulnerability that affects people who are stateless and to help resolve the practical problems they face in their everyday lives, the Convention upholds the right to freedom of movement for stateless persons lawfully on the territory, and requires States to provide them with identity papers and travel documents. The Convention also prohibits the expulsion of stateless persons who are lawfully on the territory of a State Party.
Because protection as a stateless person is not a substitute for possession of a nationality, the Convention requires that States facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of stateless persons. Like the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1954 Convention explicitly excludes individuals when there are serious reasons for considering that they have committed a crime against peace, a war crime, a crime against humanity, or a serious non- political crime.

Why is Nationality Important?

Recognition of nationality serves as a key to a host of other rights, such as education, health care, employment, and equality before the law, people without citizenship – those who are ‘stateless’ – are some of the most vulnerable in the world. That is why the inclusion of the right to nationality in Article 15 of the UDHR is pertinent component. UDHR as a whole was motivated by the impulse to respond to the atrocities committed during the Second World War, among them mass denationalisations and huge population movements. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who survived the Nazi-perpetrated genocide fled their home countries, while millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from eastern European states, and millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and other minority populations of the Soviet Union either were forcibly expelled or fled for their safety during aftermath of Soviet disintegration.

Types of Statelessness

There are two types of statelessness: (i) De jure Stateless and (ii) De facto Stateless. The 1954 Convention establishes the universal definition of a “stateless person” in its Article 1(1). Persons who fall within the scope of Article 1(1) are sometimes referred to as “de jure” stateless persons even though that term is not used in the Convention itself. By contrast, reference is made in the Final Act of the 1961 Convention to “de facto” stateless persons and there is an implicit reference in the Final Act of the 1954 Convention. Unlike the term “stateless person” as defined in Article 1(1), the term de facto statelessness is not defined in any international instrument and there is no treaty regime specific to this category of persons (the reference in the Final Act of the 1961 Convention being limited and non-binding in nature). Care must be taken that those who qualify as “stateless persons” under Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention are recognised as such and not mistakenly referred to as de facto stateless persons as otherwise they may fail to receive the protection guaranteed under the 1954 Convention (Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, UNHCR, Geneva, 2014). There is not only a lack of systematic attention given to collecting reliable statistics but also a lack of consensus on whom to include when counting stateless people. There is general agreement that people who are de jure (legally) stateless – those who are not considered as nationals by any state under its laws – should be counted. However, there are many millions of people who have not been formally denied or deprived of nationality but who lack the ability to prove their nationality or, despite documentation, are denied access to many human rights that other citizens enjoy. These people may be de facto stateless – that is, stateless in practice, if not in law – or cannot rely on the state of which they are citizens for protection (Indira Goris, Julia Harrington and Sebastian Köhn, Statelessness: what it is and why it matters? Forced Migration Review, Vol.32, April 2009).

Causes for Statelessness

It may result from various circumstances/ reasons. States may simply cease to exist while individuals fail to get citizenship in their successor states (as in the case of USSR and Yugoslavia). Political considerations may dictate changes in the way that citizenship laws are applied. An ethnic minority may be persecuted or being denied citizenship; or a group may live in frontier areas and frequently cross borders, causing states on both sides of the border to deny them citizenship as in the case of Bhils. There are individuals who become stateless due to personal circumstances, rather than persecution of a group to which they belong. Statelessness can arise from legal differences between countries, people renouncing one nationality without having acquired another or even, more simply, from failure to register the birth of a child. Added to this is a potential new category: small islands which, condemned by a changing climate to be swallowed by the sea, will see their entire populations become stateless. India’s neighbour, Maldives faces this challenge vis-à-vis climate change.

Two Types of Citizenship

Indeed, the two most commonly employed principles for granting citizenship operate at the moment of birth: in legal terminology jus soli and jus sanguinis, the ‘law of the soil’ and the ‘law of blood’ principles, respectively. One of the main reasons people are denied or deprived of nationality, and thus rendered stateless, is racial or ethnic discrimination.

Types of Statelessness in South Asia/ India

Despite advances in international law regarding the protection of stateless persons, India has been reluctant to incorporate them into national legislation. Thus, it is not surprising that there is a gap in the literature and data regarding statelessness in India (Asha Bangar, “Statelessness in India”, Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/02, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, June 2017).
(i) Decolonisation led to partition of British India and creation of two sovereign States: India and Pakistan. This caused a large scale mass migration of approximately 12 to 14 million people who became displaced on either side.
(ii) One such specific category as part of partition refugees are still called as ‘West Pakistan Refugees’ in Jammu and Kashmir, they are unable to get domicile status due to special laws followed in J &K vis-à-vis article 35A of Indian Constitution.
(iii) Decolonisation also affected the legal status of many Indian origin people in Sri Lanka during colonial times as plantation workers and were rendered stateless upon Independence in 1948.
(iv) Amongst them a section of them are in India named as Uphill Country Tamils among the Sri Lankan Refugees in India since 1983.
(v) Currently in the State of Assam, several lakhs of people are being rendered as stateless or ‘D’ voters (euphemism for doubtful voters) through the new census registration scrutiny. In addition the recent National Register Census has announced nearly 40 lakh people do not qualify to be citizens, in other words they are stateless people.
(vi) The Bhils are category of nomadic migratory tribal people trapped between borders of India and Pakistan.
(vii) Chakmas and Hejongs also face discrimination and are being in the state of statelessness.
(viii) People living in Indo- Bangladesh borders prior to Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) signed in 2015, lived in statelessness conditions and continue to face difficulties even after getting citizenship on papers.
(ix) Added to this is a potential new category of NRC and CAA related victims.
While India has a long-standing history of hosting a large number of refugees and stateless persons, it does not legally recognise them through legal framework, which creates problems of integration.

Gender Discrimination

Gender discrimination is also a crucial factor in creating and perpetuating statelessness. Many countries around the world still do not have gender-neutral citizenship laws; in the worst cases, women lose their citizenship upon marriage to foreigners, and are unable to pass on their citizenship to their children. In Swaziland, the constitution adopted in 2005 stipulates that a child born after the constitution came into force is a citizen only if his or her father is a citizen. In Africa alone, over 20 countries still deny women the right to pass on nationality to a foreign spouse. In Nepal the women cannot transfer the citizenship to her children directly. There are some positive developments too, for example, in Botswana in the early 1990s a challenge to the constitutionality of the country’s Citizenship Act on the ground that it discriminated on the basis of gender led to the Act being amended. “Women and men should enjoy equal rights to transmit nationality to their children”, according to CEDAW, Article 9 and CRC, Articles 2 & 7.

COVID Context

Now the on-going COVID-19 has caused tremendous challenge to the migrant labour, loss of livelihoods and pressure on the existing stateless population. The covid pandemic has posed more questions on statelessness issue, which we can address and discuss as follows:
(i) how new borders are formed due to pandemic;
(ii) are the migrant labours are treated as stateless population?;
(iii) How do we govern the stateless people in present covid context; and
(iv) Are they kept in perpetual statelessness by the authorities to exploit their labour which is a disenfranchised labour
(v) How does the inter-sectionality of gender, caste and religious fault lines operate/ function;
(vi) How do we look at international movements like #IBelong campaign by UNHCR and finally
(vii) How to map the stateless people and bring them under advocacy and solutions.

Abstract

The world-wide COVID19 pandemic is reported to have triggered mass migration mainly of three kinds in South Asia: (a) interregional migration of workers from their places of work; (b) migration of both the super skilled and manual labour from abroad particularly the USA and the countries of West Asia to India; and (c) the outmigration of rich and skilled labour from India partly out of safety concerns and partly for entertainment and recreation in ‘dull’ COVID times.
It is obvious that these three types of migrants are very unevenly placed on the scale of social vulnerability, if at all.
It is with the pandemic and the lockdown announced in its wake that we all on a sudden came to be aware of the presence of the migrant workers across the world. This has two implications: On the one hand, it is important to understand why and how they had remained invisible under the pre-pandemic, so-called ‘normal’ times. On the other hand, their surfacing in COVID times reflects why they are in desperate need of coming out into the open at a time when the society fears them most. They are suspected to be the dreaded carriers of the deadly pathogen in their bodies and therefore need to be kept isolated or sufficiently ‘disinfected’ before they are allowed to cross state borders, return home and mix with us.
Their sudden visibility became a cause of safety concern and many of the State efforts at the peak of the pandemic ranged from having to deny their presence on the road and rendering them invisible again through coercive means. If they cannot be rendered invisible, their bodies must be bared and disinfected with strong disinfectants to make sure that their infectivity is sufficiently reduced. In short, the retreat of the State was marked by the threefold response of an acute public anxiety over their surfacing and long walk back home, keeping them from the normal, healthy bodies and eventually turning them into the crucial bridgeheads for restarting the economy. Although it is largely agreed that migrants are crucial to the economic development of nations/regions, the continuous 'othering' of migrants by those who claim themselves as ‘natives’ complicate the migrants' lives.
The spectacle of migrants on the road, on bicycles with their children dozing off on and firmly tied to their rolling luggage boxes, struggling to board the train and undertaking all kinds of difficult journeys became the defining images of the pandemic in India. Amidst the chaos, confusion, uncertainty, and fear spreading across the country because of COVID-19, the migrants have been trapped in a highly tenuous situation. Due to the lockdown, they became unemployed, which resulted in a shortage of food and other essentials required for survival in the city. Most migrant labourers have a similar story. Social distancing and isolation are not an option for those residing in informal settlements and camps, with access to water and sanitation remaining a serious problem.
For decades, migrants' social rights and access to welfare have been critical issues within the global north and the south; however, with the latest spurt of 'migration crisis’, society and polity across the globe seem to have been very unsettled. Though welfare provisioning in the global south is relatively minimal, the figure of migrant is still posited as a burden on the state and its welfare and fuels societal anxiety. The rhetoric and contention of ‘burden’ increase manifold when one engages with the stateless and those migrants who encounter overt hostility. The conflict that underlies the experiences of migrants and refugees, who are essentially arrivals in another place, shapes and cuts through multiple dimensions of their relationships with those around them. Their legal status notwithstanding, they are treated as, and most often remain outsiders in several ways, with social rights and social citizenship being severely restricted. Entrenched in conditions of poverty, their conditions are dependent on social welfare and protection; they attain visibility as subjects of welfare provisioning and are directly impacted by social policies, schemes, and services.
With a neo-Malthusian spin, one may say that death, decimation and dispensability of sections of population are differentially distributed across the society. That such global pandemics threaten to do away with the imperatives of public health is being increasingly brought home in a number of reports and ethnographies conducted from time to time in times of public health crises. The neo-Malthusian spin in governing the pandemic is an anathema to the imperative of publicness of public health. While public health is expected to bring us together as one entity, neo-Malthusian governance turns health into an object of competition amongst differentially endowed individuals.
The retreat of the State has brought the imperative of social governance to the centre of the public agenda. Social governance takes governance a step further by transforming ‘society’ from an object of governance into one through which governance is conducted. We depend on a series of recently conducted ethnographies to bring home our argument of social governance.
The three keywords around which the module discussion is supposed to revolve are: visibility of the migrant labour, neo-Malthusian governance in COVID times and social governance.

References

1. Arnold, David (2015): ‘Disease, Rumour and Panic in India’s Plague and Influenza Epidemics, 1896-1919’ in Robert Peckham (ed.), Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Pp.111-130.

2. Canguilhem,Georges (1991): The Normal and the Pathological, trans. by Carolyn R Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen with an Introduction by Michel Foucault. New York: Zone Books.

3. Donzelot, Jacques (1979): The Policing of Families. Translated by Robert Hurley & Foreword by Gilles Deleuze, New York: Pantheon Books.

4. Engels, Frederick (1872): ‘How the Bourgeoisie Solves the Housing Question’ in Frederick Engels, The Housing Question – Part II. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm, accessed on 6 October 2021

5.Foucault, Michel (2010): Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-75. Edited by Valerio Marchetti & Antonella Salomoni, translated by Graham Burchill. New Delhi: Navayana

6. Samaddar, Ranabir (2020): A Pandemic and the Politics of Life. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Abstract

Ethics of care recognises that one can and should respond to marginalised and vulnerable community members with care and empathy. With the idea of rights, responsibility and humanitarianism, this module will explore and engage with the dimensions and complexities of ethics and care within the migration and refugee context. The power asymmetry, precarity, and temporariness that define the lives of refugees and migrants often make them susceptible to discrimination, exploitation, and risk. At a time when the forced movement of refugees, internally displaced persons, and migrants has been rising prominently, the safety, security, protection, and dignity of displaced persons routinely suffer. Examining ethical issues, therefore, requires paying close attention to the socio-economic and political conditions.
Philosophical understanding of human worth or human dignity (Kant 1993:36) informs us that persons should always be treated as ends in themselves and never simply as means (Kant 1993, 36) . What are the issues around means and end for the worth and dignity of varied categories of refugees and migrants? The ethics of care also requires identifying duty and responsibility bearers. Who should care for and protect the victims of genocide, internal displacement, and forced eviction? How should we identify and differentiate the responsibility of the state, humanitarian agencies and private public for ethical-moral commitment towards people affected due to ethnic, civic conflict, civil war, disaster situation, etc.? How should one engage with the meaning and manifestation of the life of lack- that defines the refugee situation? Do they automatically surrender their right to have rights? Everywhere we encounter numerous faultlines in ethics of care and protection: in the figure of ‘boat people’ in the Mediterranean or Naf, the visuals of the long march of migrants during a nationwide lockdown, in discussions of refugees at reception centres, and/or efforts for integration. Any honest approach to engaging ethically demands dignity, participation, and dialogue. It is premised on acknowledging and appreciating differences and diversity, the foundation of which is acceptance, empathy, and the absence of hierarchy.
The ethics of care and protection insists on undermining the existence of power in the public sphere. The question of life and death, border and border control, surveillance and security, care and welfare, etc., brings back the moments of power and assertion of authority. The differential value of life, manifested through migrants' circumstances, problematises comprehension of ideas and the practice of ethics.
While the complex nature of the life of lack, risk, insecurity, and vulnerability vis-à-vis refugees/migrants occupy the discourse, politics/networks from below also need closer examination. The ‘shock situation’ presents challenges and scope for liaison and social solidarity. What are the layers of such solidarity? Does such association and solidarity deal with ethical/moral compass in situations of crisis and conflict? How does it deal with and challenges the procedural aspect of care and management? Samaddar’s (2021:15) assertion that ‘collective adversity is an important factor in the chronicle of solidarity’ can be assessed in different situations and varied contexts. How does the state perceive and respond to registers of solidarity? Are there ethical concerns in the solidarity of subalterns and the state's response to solidarity action?
The module shall interrogate the complexities associated with the narrow confines of nationality, ethnicity, or religion that have consequences for the care and protection of refugees and migrants. It will attempt to examine and discuss several emergent issues of ethics of care and protection for refugees, asylum seekers, stateless, IDPs and migrants. Given the diverse contexts of the practice of humanitarian aid, care and protection, issues of ethics and solidarity are complex and need a nuanced examination. The canvas of state and civil society organisations with varying mandates and the powerlessness of disenfranchised populations builds a complex web of interface and relationships. It is within this that provisioning of care and protection and attempts at solidarity building take place. Examining the question of ethics embedded therein, poses a challenge - of basis and philosophical moorings, disciplinary boundaries and direction, and identifying practice components that manifest ethical practice or its lack.
The participants of the winter course can engage with some of these aspects through diverse situations and case studies. The conceptual and empirical engagement would enrich comprehension and complexities around the module's theme.

References

1. Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

2. PP 123. CRG. http://www.mcrg.ac.in/PP123.pdf

Seventh Annual Research and Orientation Workshop and Conference on Global Protection of Refugees and Migrants

Seventh Annual Research and Orientation Workshop and Conference
on
Global Protection of Refugees and Migrants