ABSTRACT
Borders or borderlands describe a space which separates two countries or regions. They are also considered as “transitional zones” with specific territorial and spatial facets with transnational mobility and movements. This chapter looks at contested citizenship and displacement among cross-border migrants locally referred to as “Pakistani-Hindus” who occupy these borderlands. Simply identified as Hindus with a Pakistani nationality, they belong to the Bhil tribe and were the original inhabitants of Tharparkar area in Sindh. The Pak-Hindu migrants are caught between the politics of two nations trying to negotiate mobility, space, and securing citizenship in India. I argue that it is a case of a location and identity conflict that the Pak-Hindu Bhils encounter which eventually turns them into cross-border migrants with an unstable citizenship status. The chapter contests the dominant discourse of the State and brings focus back on the “migrant” transcending the South Asian borders as immigrants, refugees, or simply as displaced persons. The complexity and marginalization faced by the community is put forth with the support of oral narratives exploring their “lived experiences” recorded at Kaliberi and refugee camp sites in Jodhpur within multi-sited ethnography.
