Title: Forced migration situations as exceptions in history?

Authors: Ranabir Samaddar

Addresses: Calcutta Research Group, GC 45, Sector 3, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700106, India

Abstract: In refugee studies and the general literature on forced migration, the refugee condition or the condition of forced migration is considered exceptional. Yet, one can enquire in colonial and post-colonial context, if the theory of exception does not ignore concrete post-colonial conditions, which are both exceptional as well as part of the general history of democracy and human rights, and if does not assume the liberal-democratic condition as universal to which refugeehood would be the supposed exception. This paper seeks to conduct this enquiry by reviewing and examining the context in which ideas and concepts of refugeehood and forced migration have emerged in a post-colonial country like India, and the ways in which post-colonial political sense has combined rights, ethics, and law in generating the specific ideas related to forced migration.

Keywords: refugeehood; colonialism; post-colonial context; exception; partition; globalisation; labour; problematisation; rights; ethics; legal pluralism; law; forced migration; refugees; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2016.075579

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2016 Vol.2 No.2, pp.99 - 118

Received: 04 Mar 2015
Accepted: 21 Jul 2015
Published online: 28 Mar 2016 *

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