In this module we contend that both citizenship and migration rests on a triad that was constructed through the axis of race, religion and resources and gender remains the unspoken fourth. So migration and forced migration studies become meaningless if these volatile issues are not considered in their proper perspectives. Race and religion create the alien body that is then forced to move and cross borders. But once the migrant is forced to cross the border the very act of border crossing creates more borders. Therefore, without understanding the ramifications of race, religion, resource and gender one cannot understand forced migration and such analysis fail to give forced migration studies its proper credence.

Forced migration is a fairly recent field in pedagogy. It began in the global north after the Second World War as refugee studies. As it became clear that modern state formation was often accompanied by large scale population displacements resulting in large population groups becoming refugees suddenly there was an upsurge in interest on who these people were. When it became evident that these people were racially and perhaps even by religion different this population movement came to be recognised as a crisis. But the end of colonialism witnessed partitions that often went hand in hand with hordes of people moving in the global south who were non-white. Many of these people had aspirations to move to the global north because they correctly associated their marginality with colonial rule that made race the bedrock of acquisition of benefits such as citizenship, power sharing and attainment of material benefits and resources. So countries in the global north marked such movements as crisis that necessitated policies and laws that gave the authority to respective states as to who should be taken and who shunned. Because more people were stopped from entering the northern borders policies and laws were formulated and the hordes that were moving were homogenised as faceless, nameless mass and in no way were they humanised in the narratives because the moment they appeared as individuals their claims for rights and resources could not be legitimately ignored. At the centre of resource sharing was the question of citizenship and who belonged was a conscious decision made by the ruling elite. Those who were considered as unworthy of being recognised as a citizen were either to be tolerated as a precarious group who might provide cheap labour or they were to be forced out joining the ranks of the “nowhere” people.

If one looks at the question of citizenship from the perspective of South Asia once again the issue of race rears its head. When one looks at India’s northeast in the colonial period the issue becomes even more clarified. To understand how differences were made that was ultimately racialised and then nationalised one needs to look at colonial administration and the creation of differences as was done in the northeast of India in the eighteenth century. The colonial administration had introduced in that period the notion of “racial difference” between the plains and the hill thereby inadvertently giving some autonomy to the hill people. But this was not done because the hill people were more advanced but rather because they were considered as barbaric and so they needed to be kept away from the plains people who were directly under the colonial administration. By the time the Indian constitution came to be framed, political exclusion of the hill areas (including Manipur and Tripura which had evolved along different historical lines) was out of question. The end of political exclusion meant also the end of autonomy. In free India the race card regarding northeast was played to deprive rather than to include.

As for gender according to Carolyn Merchant while debate over how certain groups were perceived as aliens was on going there was another debate on the nature of women in Europe. During this debate, women were considered as essentially emotional and fragile and they needed firm control to guide them just as nature’s disorder necessitated order, her chaos presaged control, and that which was wild needed to be tamed. Merchant argues that the mastery of women coincided with the mastery of nature in European society. In this way Merchant argues women became the emotional resource for men but this resource needed to be harnessed. They were at once considered property of the men, and while their “owners” could use them, their bodies were also considered as symbols of honour of their men. So attacks against a community were almost always accompanied by attacks against its women. Therefore when a community was to be displaced the women were “dishonoured.” Thus all acts of displacements were accompanied by abuse of women’s sexuality, which was considered the possession of their men. Thus, forced migration always had gendered ramifications.

In the context of South Asia forced migration was closely related to race, religion and gender. We have already discussed the issue of race now let us discuss the issue of gender. Thus, modern states that are built on gender differences develop a precarious relation with its women. Women became both subjects of the state as well as its other. In pluralistic societies such as those found in South Asia “the modern projects of national independence, state building, and economic development have had distinctive gender implications and outcomes.” The nation building projects in South Asia has led to the creation of a homogenized 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 further segregation of the marginalized, on the basis of caste, religion and gender from the collective “us”. As a refugee a woman loses her individuality, subjectivity, citizenship and her ability to make political choices. As political non-subjects refugee women emerge as the symbol of difference between us/citizens and its other/refugees/non-citizens. Refugee women become the material for the symbolic construction of the nation’s boundaries. By studying women’s displacement in South Asia authors came up with these theoretical assumptions and more. In discussing women’s experiences of displacement they portrayed how as dislocated subjects women negotiate spaces to retrieve agency in the face of institutional apathy.

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