CRG-RWO discussion on Assam NRC

On 30th July 2018, the government of Assam , a state in the Indian North-Est, published a National Register of Citizens. Of its residents, 4,000,000 people and counting did not find their names on the Register.

Amid fears about the fate of these people, the real and increasing concern around statelessness, the modalities of having separate citizenship registers within a federal structure, and the history of the Assam Accord: CRG sought to lay bare the issues at stake in a roundtable discussion.

Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Distinguished Chair, Migration and Forced Migration Studies, was joined in a roundtable discussion by eminent journalist Mr. Subir Bhaumik, and Prof. Samir Das, Professor of Political Science at the University of Calcutta. Mr. Rajat Ray, senior journalist, moderated the discussion.

Find the video here.

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Mizoram Diary: Traversing the Frontiers

This paper is a researcher’s travelogue. It narrates Snehashish Mitra’s journey to some of the towns and markets along the Mizoram-Myanmar border. The stories, of travel through the hills and valleys and encounter with the people and commodities, depict the porosity of the Indo-Myanmar border. These stories also draw our attention to issues like cross border migration, overlapping ethnicities and the nature of frontier urbanization in Mizoram.

Bhalobashar Shohor: a filmic paean to modern everyday heroes

Indranil Roychowdhury’s  31 minutes long film City of Love was released for international audiences on youtube last year, tracking the journey of a young woman and her family between Kolkata (India) and Homs (Syria). Asmita Das reviews. 

Understanding migrant resource flows and its relation to ‘development’ of migrant sending regions: Evidence from South India

In this piece, Sanam Roohi critically explores the notion and praxis/implications of migrant led development in the country of origin, in this context India. Going beyond the dominant discourse of studying this process through remittances, she argues there is need to delve deep into the multifarious ways a migrant is associated to the place of origin. A transnational perspective thus entails a grasp on the complexities of migrant resource flows and exchanges.

‘As Mizo as I could be’: Territorial gatekeepers and the social suffering of Chins in Aizawl.

Lallian Thangsing complicates the idea of being a Mizo (a native of the Indian state of Mizoram) with the aid of the displaced people, the Chins.

Chandal Jibon: An Excerpt

Chandal Jibon (2009) is the story of Jibon, a boy born into the hitherto ‘untouchable’ Chandal (or Namasudra) community in East Bengal, whose parents flee from East Pakistan and arrive as refugees in India. The story of the boy’s journey to adulthood – is also the story of the experience of the subaltern Bengali refugee community and of caste oppression, humiliation and violence, providing a trenchant bottom-up view of post-1947 Bengal and of Calcutta in the turbulent Naxalite era. It is a tale of the indomitable human will to survive.

In this excerpt from Manoranjan Byapari’s novel, Chandal Jibon, the author writes about the abysmal and inhuman living conditions and treatment of low-caste refugees from East Pakistan in the early 1950s in the Shiromanipur camp in West Bengal. V. Ramaswamy translates.

Research and Orientation Workshop in Migration and Forced Migration Studies

Applications are invited for a Research and Orientation Workshop to be held in Kolkata from 25 November to 30 November 2018. The workshop will be held by Calcutta Research Group (CRG) in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. It will address the following themes:(a) Global compact on migration and refugees; promises and paradoxes;(b) Racialisation of migration: race, religion, gender, and other fault lines in the global protection system, (c) Power and responsibility in the protection system ( global, regional, and national) in the context of mixed and massive population flows; the need to redefine the “responsibility to protect”;  (d) Migrant and refugee labour and immigrant economies, camps, and urban refugees; privatisation of care and protection(e) Statelessness, international conventions, and the need for new initiatives; (f) Refugee crisis in Asia, in particular South Asia: common features with the European scenario; and (g) Perspectives on the need for New Global, Regional, and National Responses (with special reference to Asia).

The Inhuman Face of Climate Change: Climate Refugees, Their Status and Protection

 

Anshika Srivastava gives an overview of contemporary research on climate refugees, locates international laws as well as makes suggestions for improving the Indian context.

Images from a Rohingya Camp: Camp Ohn Taw Chay, Sittwe, Myanmar

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Marko Szilveszter Macskovich, Researcher on Forced Migration and Identity Management

Photographs taken on December 20, 2017