Migration Question in Assam

Abstract

newline ABSTRACT newline The research examines the present Indian state of Assam, which has been witness to ongoing newline contestations around binary identities of native/indigenous, outsider/migrant identities, or the newline legal/illegal. This contestation stems from a narrative of illegal migration from Bangladesh, newline relative histories of deprivation, the paradoxical nature of interests between indigenous and newline migrant groups, and a popular and politically-economically founded fear of shrinking land and newline economic resources. These are overarching facets of the electoral-political trajectories in Assam newline since colonial times. These contestations have inevitably determined contingent legitimacies of newline residents, through an admixture of societal and statist determinants, wherein one became newline reflection of the other. The thesis grasps the volatility of the citizenship discourse in South Asia, newline particularly accounting Assam as a locale that has been at the centre of debates around legitimacy newline of residence and inhabitants. newline The research is carried out in a qualitative paradigm. Field work was carried out in Assam, in newline locations which are in proximity with the international border shared with Bangladesh. The newline respective locations in the borderland districts have determined complex questions around newline suspicion, conviction, the insider-outsider and migrant-foreigner dynamics, visibility and newline territorial stigmatisation, and legality. Both primary as well as secondary data has been taken into newline consideration. Primary data was received through in-depth unstructured and semi-structured newline personal interviews, group discussions, informal discussions, and oral narratives for deep newline qualitative understanding. For secondary data, sources included online articles, newspaper newline reports, online reports on migration, that included memorandums, interim reports, and archival newline sources. newline The research mainly explores three thematic domains. Firstly, it locates the migration question in newline the region, understands the inconsistencies in dichotomous native-migrant categories, in careful newline consideration of people s vocabularies, imaginations, and self-imageries, as well as newline discontinuities and lack of a persistent legality framework. Secondly, the research explores the newline imagination of state as is lived in the everyday through the culture of fear, struggles, negotiations, newline disenfranchisement, betrayal, and conundrum. This conceptualisation aids in understanding state newline with its contextual underpinnings in the political and social spheres, manifested in the everyday. newline The third thematic focus of the chapter concerns with the notions of mistrust and doubt shaping newline conceptions of the legal and the illegal in the everyday, and a paradoxical willingness, hope, and newline aspiration on part of the people to belong to the state as citizens.