Dilemmas of Diaspora: Partition, Refugees, and the Politics of “Home”

The following paper explores the idea of “refugee diasporas” by focusing on a case study of the Hindu Bengali exodus from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) following the 1947 British Partition of India. The author begins by problematizing and historicizing definitions of diasporas in general and refugee diasporas in particular and then uses the case study to illustrate the diversity in experiences that different groups that emerged from the Partition encountered. This focus on the lived experiences of flight, resettlement, integration (or lack thereof), and the rebuilding of lives helps to unravel some of the embedded and obscured meanings that terms such as “refugee diaspora” might otherwise contain.L’article explore la notion de « diasporas de réfugiés » qu’il illustre par l’exode d’hindous vers le Bengale depuis l’est du Pakistan (qui deviendra le Bangladesh), à la suite de la partition britannique des Indes de 1947. L’auteur commence par poser la problématique et l’historicité des définitions se rapportant aux diasporas en général et aux diasporas de réfugiés en particulier. Il se sert ensuite du cas cité pour mettre en lumière la variété d’expériences auxquelles ont été soumis les divers groupes issus de la partition. Cette focalisation sur des expériences vécues de déplacement, de réétablissement et d’intégration (ou de leur absence), de même que de reconstruction de vies permet de dénouer quelques-unes des significations implicites ou moins évidentes que des expressions comme « diaspora de réfugiés » pourraient autrement connote

Is This What an Environmentalist Looks Like?

Somewhere on the streets of Seattle, on a brightwinters day in 1999, someone called me an environmentalist. I still haven’t quite recovered from the shock

The narrow focus on climate change in Bangladesh often reproduces exploitation and vulnerability rather than addressing it

Climate change has become the dominant frame for development thinking in Bangladesh, pushing aside almost every other environmental and social issue in the country. As a result, the structural causes of vulnerability are often internalised, normalised, and taken for granted. Meraz Mostafa and Pablo Bose write that rather than just “climate proofing” development efforts, the country needs to tackle contextual factors that produce vulnerability and marginalisation in the first place

Taste of Home: Migration, Food and Belonging in a Changing Vermont

In this paper, we look at the question of food and migration in the context of both rural and urban Vermont. In the case of the former, we focus on the situation of foreign-born migrant farm workers on dairy farms and orchards and their search for familiar flavors and ingredients. We examine in particular the food supply chains that bring desired foodstuffs to workers on isolated farms and the paradox of desiring and purchasing the tastes of Latin America and the Caribbean while living and working in the midst of apparent bounty. In the case of urban Vermont we focus on newly resettled refugees from diverse regions of Africa, Asia and Europe and examine the ways in which newcomers have attempted to adapt new ingredients to familiar recipes or recreated old dishes to maintain a connection to a distant homeland. For both rural and urban newcomers, we also examine the possibilities of growing familiar and foreign crops as well as learning local food preservation practices on community and personal plots. The paper is based primarily on qualitative research with several migrants and newcomers relating their own experience with the food and migration dynamic

Introduction environmentally induced displacement and forced migration

Disappearing coastlines, fields and homes flooded by rising waters, lands left cracked and barren by desertification, a snowpack shrinking in circumpolar regions year by year—these are only a few of the iconic images of climate change that have evoked discussion, debate, and consternation within communities both global and local. Equally alarming has been the threat of what such degraded and destroyed landscapes might mean for those who depend upon them for their livelihoods—as their homes, as their means of sustenance, and as an integral part of their cultural and social lives. A mass of humanity on the move—some suggest 50 million, 150 million, perhaps even a billion people1—the spectre of those forced to flee not as the result of war or conflict but rather a changed environment haunts the imaginaries of national governments, international institutions, and public discourse alike. Are these environmental refugees? Should they be granted the same protections and support as those who can prove their fear of and flight from persecution? Do the sheer numbers contemplated by the scale of the events and factors threaten to overwhelm the international refugee system

What Constitutes Environmental Displacement?: Challenges and Opportunities of Exploring Connections Across Thematically Diverse Areas

As the nascent RRN began to take shape its leadership, including then-director of CRS Susan McGrath, observed a consequential and somewhat surprising gap. While many of the other major thematic areas regarding refugee research—international legal regimes, policy analysis, educational opportunities, and integration initiatives among them—were key thematic areas for the network, environmental issues represented an important new area of both conceptual and practical concern, and largely fell beyond the realm of refugee research proper. As a result, she sought to draw together scholars in this emergent field to help create a new research cluster with an emphasis on networking, interdisciplinarity, and knowledge generation. In this chapter, we explore the successes and challenges of the Environmental Displacement Cluster with a particular focus on four areas—1) the origins and structure of the networking model; 2) making the case for “environmentally induced displacement” as a substantive conceptual field and our main organizing concept; 3) how our cluster enabled other interventions into knowledge production concerning our main organizing concept; and 4) reflections on what has worked in this model and what remain as challenges moving forward

Environmental Displacement in the Anthropocene

This intervention invites more substantial scholarly attention to human displacement in and of the Anthropocene—this current epoch in which humans have become the primary drivers of global environmental change—and sets out an initial framework for its study. The framework is organized around three interrelated contributions. First is the recognition that displacement is driven not just by climate change but also broader forms of environmental change defining the Anthropocene, including biodiversity loss, changes to land and water resources, and the buildup of nuclear debris, along with their intersections. Second, the framework parses out three distinct moments of displacement in the Anthropocene: displacement as a consequence of, prerequisite to, and active response to environmental change. Third, the framework rejects environmental (neo)determinism by showing how displacement across these distinct moments and drivers is more than environmental: It is the articulation of environmental and sociopolitical–economic factors, which are routinely shaped by inequality and play out within a broader series of crises and crisis narratives that drive displacement and hinder viable solutions. We ground these interventions in examples of political conflict, anti-immigrant politics, the posttruth and colonial politics of knowledge production, and the Anthropocene itself as crisis requiring displacement to clean up its mess. Although each example is quite distinct, a common thread stitched across them is colonialism, highlighting a recurring extra-environmental driver of displacement. Taken together, these dynamics underscore that displacement is not an unfortunate by-product of the Anthropocene but woven into its very fabric