Fiona McConnell

Citizens and Refugees: Constructing and Negotiating Tibetan Identities in Exile

At the heart of the relationship between identity and the state is the construction of a binary between the citizen resident, in a bounded national community, and its archetypal “other,” the refugee. The case studied here fundamentally disrupts this dualism and the conventional mapping of citizen and refugee onto concepts of statehood and statelessness. With their own government structure operating within the state of India—albeit without legal recognition—exile Tibetans are simultaneously “Tibetan citizens” in the eyes of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, “refugees” in the eyes of many within the international community, and “foreign guests” in the eyes of the Indian state. Based on ethnographic research on exiled Tibetan political institutions and practices, this article charts the contradictory relationship between Tibetans in India and each of the two “governments” that identify, label, and document them. It does so by exploring both the legal discourses and bureaucratic administrations through which the identities of “refugee” and “citizen” are institutionalized, and the materiality of the identity documents issued by these polities. The negotiation of citizenship and refugeehood by a political community without sovereignty over territory thus opens up questions regarding the relationship among citizenship, statehood, and legitimacy, and the ambiguity and power relations inherent within the categories of citizen and refugee.

Governmentality to Practise the State? Constructing a Tibetan Population in Exile:

Drawing on the extraterritorial and nonstate centric form of power found in Foucaults notion of governmentality, I contribute to three emerging debates: the extent to which governmentality is a state or nonstate practice, the question of what is being governed, and the relationship between biopolitics and cultural politics. Focusing on the governance strategies of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGiE) based in India, I explore how ideas of governmentality inform an understanding of what kind of polity this is and, in turn, how this case both confirms and challenges understandings of governance practices and the construction of a population. As I examine the range of techniques used by TGiE to bring into visibility the exile Tibetan population, my attention focuses on the simultaneous totalising and individualising strategies of biopolitics, the importance of population given the lack of territory, and the intersection of exile realities with such practices of governmentality. Taking as a framework Hannahs three ‘moments’ in the cycle of social control—observation, normalising judgment, and regulation—I examine how TGiE seeks to know its population through technologies, imagines and normalises the population through discourses, and manages the population by regulating conduct. Finally, in analysing TGiEs creation of the ‘population’ as a strategy to legitimise its governance, I conclude by outlining how this study informs debates regarding the cultural context of governmentality and its relationship to territory.

The Fallacy and the Promise of the Territorial Trap: Sovereign Articulations of Geopolitical Anomalies’

The relationship between sovereignty and territory lies at the core of the territorial trap. For, underpinning the first and ‘particularly powerful’ of Agnew’s three ‘geographical assumptions that have led to the privileging of a territorial conception of the state in the first place’ is the realist conviction that ‘state territories have been reified as set or fixed units of sovereign space’. As Simon Reid-Henry notes, if we re-think what sovereignty is and how it is deployed in extraterritorial ways, then this offers a potential strategy for challenging the normative basis of the territorial trap. Indeed, contemporary re-conceptualisations of sovereignty within political geography, political anthropology and critical international relations (IR) in the years since Agnew’s paper was published have, in theoretical terms at least, provided effective ways of challenging the reductionist thinking of mainstream IR. Such alternative readings denaturalise and problematise sovereignty and conceptually unbundle its constituent elements of territory, authority and statehood. Agnew himself has provided a particularly useful critical reinterpretation of sovereignty regimes which eschews the presumption that there is a zero-sum-game with regards to territory and sovereignty, explores ways in which sovereignty is exercised beyond the territorial state and challenges the supposition that sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. Whilst drawing on and speaking to such re-thinking of sovereignty, I want to approach the intersection of sovereignty and the territorial trap from a particular angle. My intention here is to revisit the territorial trap through the lens of geopolitical anomalies. To date, the fallacy of the state as the principal container of society and sovereignty as absolute and invariably territorial has been thrown into stark relief through critical analysis of dramatic geopolitical processes and events. These include the context of post-soviet fragmentation in which Agnew

Leaky Geopolitics: The Ruptures and Transgressions of WikiLeaks

The unfurling of violent rhetoric and the show of force that has lead to the arrest, imprisonment, and impending extradition of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, serve as an exemplary moment in demonstrating state-sanctioned violence. Since the cables began leaking in November 2010, the violent reaction to WikiLeaks evidenced by numerous political pundits calling for Assanges assassination or execution, and the movement within the US to have WikiLeaks designated a ‘foreign terrorist organization’, amount to a profound showing of authoritarianism. The ‘Wikigate’ scandal thus represents an important occasion to take stock and think critically about what this case tells us about the nature of sovereign power, freedom of information, the limits of democracy, and importantly, the violence of the state when it attempts to manage these considerations. This forum explores a series of challenges inspired by WikiLeaks, which we hope will prompt further debate and reflection within critical geopolitics.

Democracy-in-exile: the ‘uniqueness’ and limitations of exile Tibetan democracy

A positive story of democracy in the Himalayan region is to be found in an unexpected place: in an exiled refugee population with an unrecognised government and no jurisdiction over territory. Based in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGiE) is a fully functioning representative democracy with voters in three continents franchised to elect forty-three Tibetan Members of Parliament. This paper examines the unique evolution of and rationale behind Tibetan democracy-in-exile, the limitations faced by operating in exile, and how this case can inform broader debates regarding the development and nature of democracy, and the functioning of democratic procedures in a territory-less polity.

A state within a state? Exploring relations between the Indian state and the Tibetan community and government-in-exile

Exiled Tibetans in India are an unusual marginalised community. With their own government structure operating within the sovereign state of India, albeit without legal recognition, they are both de facto refugees from the perspective of the Indian state and Tibetan ‘citizens’ in the eyes of the Tibetan government-in-exile (TGiE). Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the complex, dynamic and at times contradictory three-way relationship between this population and the two ‘governments’ which strive to identify, document and rehabilitate them. After sketching out the context of relations between India and (exile) Tibet, these interactions are explored through two key sets of state-population relations: the identification of individuals as citizens and refugees, and the provision of welfare. Interweaving ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ perspectives on such state–citizen and state–state relations, this paper juxtaposes the rhetoric of both ‘governments’ with Tibetan citizens’ micro-political interactions with these state structures and foregrounds the importance of scale for analyses of the state. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this case can offer a critical spotlight on broader understandings of the everyday state. It is argued that this case provides particularly valuable leverage in demonstrating the partial and processual nature of statehood and powerfully exposes the contingent practices which underlie the social construction of political power in so-called ‘normal’ states.

Liminality and the diplomacy of the British Overseas Territories: An assemblage approach

This paper examines diplomatic processes that compose our geopolitical world as dynamic and yet also seemingly affirm the status quo. It turns attention to the entrepreneurial creativity of individual diplomats, the transformations occurring at threshold moments, spaces and practices, and the materiality of diplomacy that exceeds human agency. The paper does so by forging an innovative dialogue between assemblage theory and the notion of liminality as developed in cultural anthropology, and by focusing on a hitherto overlooked set of diplomatic actors: British Overseas Territories. Three vignettes of Overseas Territory diplomacy are traced: an account of the liminal subjectivity of London-based Overseas Territory representatives, the 1982 Argentinian invasion that tipped the Falkland Islands into a state of greater autonomy, and the geophysical ‘tipping point’ of the 1997 volcanic eruption on Montserrat that made the island dependent for the foreseeable future. The paper concludes by noting potential avenues of future research that the synergy between liminality and assemblage may open up in the fields of Science and Technology Studies, anthropology, and geography.

Geography and Peace

Shortly after the Soviet Union’s 1979 southwards military intervention into Afghanistan, diplomat Mikhail Kapitsa warned Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko that this supposedly ‘limited’ deployment would embroil the USSR in a draining war similar to those fought by the British Empire. According to historian Artemy Kalinovsky, Gromyko retorted by asking whether Kapitsa intended ‘to compare our internationalist troops with imperialist troops?’ The latter is said to have replied that Soviet ‘troops are different — but the mountains are the same!’1

Certifications of citizenship: the history, politics and materiality of identity documents in South Asian states and diasporas

Experiences in the post-partition Indian subcontinent refute the conventional expectation that the ‘possession of citizenship enables the acquisition of documents certifying it’ [Jayal 2013. Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 71]. Instead, identity papers of various types play a vital part in certifying and authenticating claims to citizenship. This is particularly important in a context where the history of state formation, continuous migration flows and the rise of right-wing majoritarian politics has created an uncertain situation for individuals deemed to be on the ‘margins’ of the state. The papers that constitute this special issue bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to investigate the history, politics and materiality of identity documents, and to dismantle citizenship as an absolute and fixed notion, seeking instead to theorise the very mutable ‘hierarchies’ and ‘degrees’ of citizenship. Collectively they offer a valuable lens onto how migrants, refugees and socio-economically marginal individuals negotiate their relationship with the state, both within South Asia and in South Asian diaspora communities. This introduction examines the wider context of the complex intersections between state-issued identity documents and the nature of citizenship and draws out cross-cutting themes across the papers in this collection.

Working at the margins? Muslim middle class professionals in India and the limits of ‘labour agency’

This paper explores the work-lives of middle class Muslim professionals in Indias new service economy. While these workers have successfully negotiated labour market entry into the ‘core’ growth sectors of Indias globalising economy, they are simultaneously subject to different forms of social, cultural and political marginalisation. Strikingly, they also remain at the margins of both economic geography and development geography scholarship. The paper extends a growing development geography/economic geography ‘intellectual trading zone’ and enhances understandings of the complex relationships between labour agency, marginality and social inclusion. The paper draws on new survey data to document patterns of labour agency amongst Muslim professionals in New Delhi. This is augmented by interviews with Muslim professionals to show how different forms of marginality are experienced in their everyday work-lives and the strategies and agencies articulated towards (re)working those marginalities. The paper concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of these findings in relation to socially inclusive growth, the middle-class transformation of Indias Muslims and wider understandings of marginality and worker agency.