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responsible for protecting migrants, and retain
the right to determine who is admitted to their territories, and who has
the right to work.
The Convention recognizes the global scale and permanence of migration,
and starts by protecting the rights of migrants themselves. That's where
an immigration policy based on human rights begins.
This is more than a refugee situation that is legally defined and
assumed. The new mix of
forced and unwanted population flows and the inadequate appreciation of
the new phenomenon in refugee studies raises the problem of method.
While forced population movements have been hitherto studied from
economic and demographic angles, its link with the politics of
citizenship is still inadequately appreciated. Similarly, the notion of
forced is so narrowly defined, that the structural violence continuously
producing aliens escapes our attention, though violence and coercion are
considered as benchmarks in determination of refugees.
Module A is the beginning. But the module should offer enough
glimpses of the problems in the issue of refugee protection today, so
that the following modules in this course can be appreciated better.
And, one must not forget that in all instances and phenomena cited above
gender stays as the most deeply inscribed category of discrimination and
difference, if discrimination and difference are taken as the key
opening words. A good beginning means an anticipation of the problems
that will arise at the end.
Term Paper
Module B (Gender
dimensions of forced migration, vulnerabilities, and justice) Core faculty: Meghna Guha Thakurta |
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How does the
privileging of majoritarian, male and monolithic cultural values in the
nation states deny the space for women refugees / displacees in
situations of forced migration?
OR
Critically discuss whether the policies pursued by national and
international actors have been adequate in addressing the specific issue
of women refugees / displacees.
Module Note
Over one percent of
the total world populations today consist of refugees.
More than eighty percent of that number is made up of women and
their dependent children. An
overwhelming majority of these women come from the developing world.
South Asia is the fourth largest refugee-producing region in the
world. Again, a majority of
these refugees are made up of women. The sheer number of women among the
refugee population portrays that it is a gendered issue. This module is
meant to portray that undoubtedly both displacement and asylum is a
gendered experience. At least in the context of South Asia it results
from and is related to the marginalisation of women by the South Asian
states. These states at
best patronise women and at worse infantilise, disenfranchise and de-politicise
them. It is in the person of a refugee that women’s marginality
reaches its climactic height.
The nation building projects in South Asia has led to the creation of a
homogenised identity of citizenship.
State machineries seek to create a “unified” and
“national” citizenry that accepts the central role of the existing
elite. This is done through privileging majoritarian, male and
monolithic cultural values that deny the space to difference.
Such a denial has often led to the segregation of minorities, on
the basis of caste, religion and gender from the collective we.
One way of
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