ABSTRACT
South Asia serves as a unique site of inquiry for understanding the complexities surrounding citizenship and belonging today. South Asia’s already complex migration landscape is further complicated by rapid urbanization, political Islamophobia, and inadequate policies on migration and citizenship. Nowhere is this complexity thrown into sharper focus than the porous borderland where India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal meet, where refugees and stateless persons from Nepal and Bhutan regularly join economic migrants from Bangladesh and newer refugee streams from Myanmar. They move with relative freedom across unguarded swathes of terrain, into Indian tribal and urban ethnic Bengali communities that are targets of Islamophobic rhetoric and communal violence. The unresolved histories of shifting borders have led to decades-long territorial disputes and depatriated populations in this region, and most South Asian countries lack opportunities for long-term and permanent legal migration. This chapter explores the emerging migration realities in the northeastern corner of South Asia as a case study of unauthorized migration in regions with limited-to-no migration management infrastructure. Ultimately, the chapter considers what citizenship and belonging mean in a global era.
