Dispossession and Displacement: Notes from South Asia

ABSTRACT

Dispossession appears to be the irreducible “indivisible remainder” in a refugee's everyday life. The deprivation that causes them to undertake forced migration is the tangible outcome of their material dispossession of rights as a citizen of the state. The biased global protection framework for refugees inadvertently perpetuates their predicament by providing them protection, but simultaneously dispossesses them of their dignity. This article introspects substantively the material dispossession of rights of refugees and addresses the dispossession of dignity in a normative and metaphysical sense.

KEYWORDS:

• Forced migration
• dispossession
• displacement
• South Asia
• refugee subjectivity
• borderlands

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Thanks to Editor Prof. Paula Banerjee for the permission to adapt from the article Chowdhory, N. & Poyil, S. T., “The Global Compact of Refugees: A Viewpoint of Global South.” Refugee Watch -A South Asia Journal on Forced Migration 54: 1–14.