Forced Migrants to Refugees: The Promises and Perils of Informal Categorization as Refugee Brothers and Sisters

• In Event: Beyond Asylum and Resettlement: Diverse Modes of Refugee Migration

Abstract

Much literature on refugee migration empirically focuses on how displaced migrants interact with formal humanitarian channels and national asylum systems, and theoretically prioritizes the importance of legal definitions of “refugees”. However, such assumptions overlook the local understandings of refugeedom that shape how displaced migrants are perceived by host society members and the array of opportunities and constraints that migrants face. Hence, I ask, what constitutes social understandings of “refugees” and how do these conceptions influence migrants’ everyday behavior and migration strategies? I employ the case of Chin forced migrants, a predominantly Christian ethnic minority group from western Myanmar, who are displaced in the Indian northeastern state of Mizoram. Based on 70 interviews and 6 months of ethnographic observations across 2 years, I find that social definitions of “refugee”, or “raltlan” in the Mizo language, fostered social and institutional inclusion, but tended to replicate assimilationist and paternalistic logics. Associations of displaced migrants with deservingness and ethnic affinity fostered social inclusion within Mizo institutions and allowed for informal access to legal rights, while associations with social crimes and drug trafficking exposed migrants to every-day discrimination and exclusion. Migrants internalized the range of these sentiments and strategically capitalized on informal allowances by strategically assimilating in Mizo society or by relying on existing migrant social networks. These findings imply that when migrant movement occurs outside legal channels, migrants may face informal, social definitions of refugeedom where inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same coin. Informality may allow for social and institutional inclusion but can also be the very tool that restricts movement and livelihood.

Author

• Swan Ye Htut, Stanford University