Refugee Watch Online

Migration is one of the most important, multifaceted, and sometimes controversial issues of our time, and films are a great way to delve deeper into these topics and engage people in open dialogue. Debasree Sarkar put together this collection of long and short films that highlight many aspects of migration. This is the second installment of the collection.

The Politics of Representation in Films: Documenting Displacement and Visualizing the Vulnerable (Part II) Film is one of the most powerful means of conveying stories as well as reflecting, shaping and challenging people’s perceptions and beliefs. Visual representation of a particular situation is able…

Film is one of the most powerful means of conveying stories as well as reflecting, shaping and challenging people’s perceptions and beliefs. Visual representation of a particular situation is able to immerse viewers in both shared and unfamiliar narratives in an unparalleled way. Migration is one of the most important, multifaceted, and sometimes controversial issues of our time, and films are a great way to delve deeper into these topics and engage people in open dialogue. Sarkar put together this collection of long and short films that highlight many aspects of migration. This is the first installment of the collection.

The Politics of Representation in Films: Documenting Displacement and Visualizing the Vulnerable (Part I) Film is one of the most powerful means of conveying stories as well as reflecting, shaping and challenging people’s perceptions and beliefs. Visual representation of a particular situation is able…

This article aims to assess Kerala society's perception of inter-state migrant workers and the role played by Malayalam media in shaping this perception. The media's portrayal is seen as a reflection of societal attitudes, creating a reciprocal relationship. The article centres around a tragic incident in Aluva on July 29, 2023, where a five-year-old daughter of a migrant labourer from Bihar was brutally beaten and tortured to death by another migrant labourer from Bihar. Initially, the incident received standard news coverage, including event details, the criminal's background, police investigations, and evidence collection. However, in the subsequent days, most Malayalam media departed from factual reporting and delved into biased reporting. Much of the content placed the blame for various troubles in the state on inter-state migrant labourers. It often contained subjective opinions and emotions of the reporters rather than objective facts. This trend was not limited to a single newspaper but was pervasive across local newspapers for over a week, with some outlets even publishing news series, special features, and editorials.

Problematic Portrayal of Migrant Workers in Malayalam Print Media: An Analytical Reading Throughout its history, the southern Indian state of Kerala has been distinguished by significant migration, both inward and outward. This phenomenon has evolved over the centuries and played a vit…

Two incidents, separated by a few days, brutally depicted the inequality meted out to the lives of human beings. On 14th June,2023, a trawler carrying migrants from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine capsized off the coast of Pylos in Greece. 400 to 750 people were crammed into the vessel, with 104 migrants rescued and 78 bodies retrieved while many remain missing and presumably, dead. Four days later, the Titan submersible, operated by an American tourism company named OceanGate, en route to view the wreckage of Titanic, imploded in the North Atlantic Ocean. On board the submersible were 5 people who had paid $250,000 for a ticket to deep dive into the depths of historical ruins and unfortunately never return. Supratik Sinha writes.

Titan Submersible and Greek migrant boat disasters: Media coverage unmasks the inequality of lives Two incidents, separated by a few days, brutally depicted the inequality meted out to the lives of human beings. On 14th June,2023, a trawler carrying migrants from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanis…

In Nights of Plague we see the narration of history, on a crumbling old regime and the birth of a new one, based on personal letters. Neither the individual nor the state are dispassionate collectors of evidence in this crime fiction. The individual is swayed by memories and dreams, the state is sullied by the machinations of History itself which puts in question the disinterestedness under any despotism. Shafeeq Valanchery reviews

A Lasting Laugh on the Last Word: A Review of Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague Mohamed Sahfeeq Karinkurayil reviews Orhan Pamuk’s latest, Nights of Plague. Finished during the pandemic, Pamuk’s historical fiction is rife with contemporary relevance, about a world …

Shubhashini Debi doesn’t exactly remember when she had come to India. After a lot of struggling and jostling with her memory, she manages to say that it was a few years before the time when people got infections in their eyes. She was referring to the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971, a time when many suffered from conjunctivitis as a result of being exposed to artillery dust. Her family, in fact, the entire village and the ones nearby, migrated at the same time to come and settle down in Sonbeel, a place that is both land and water depending on which season one is living there.

Floods, Papers and a Survival Strategy While discussing about environmental calamities, we talk about destruction, damage, loss – of lives and of property, relief, and donations. These information mostly come to us through televised new…

Along with the recent Ukrainian Refugee Crisis 2022 which is a result of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, an increasing number of people are being forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters, droughts, rise in sea-level, and other weather events such as the global climate crisis. In the case of South Sudan, this is on the verge of becoming a new normal. Those individuals who are unwillingly displaced out of their country of origin or habitual residence are frequently referred to as “climate refugees.” Though this emerging concern is directly addressed in the Global Compact on Refugees, which was ratified by the UN General Assembly in December 2018, wherein the fact that, “environmental degradation, disasters, and climate change increasingly intersect with the forces driving refugee migrations,” is acknowledged, both the international treaties and laws do not define anyone who has been forced to leave their homes owing to the effects of climate change as “refugees” (Ida 2021).

Optimism Bias: A Major Challenge in Refugee Responsibility Sharing At the end of 2021, 89.3 million people were forcibly displaced across the globe as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or other major disturbances of peace. The i…

The Itihashe Hatekhari books are important contributions to the history classroom. Through their anecdotal narrative structure that renders lucid their serious content, they not only introduce often foreign concepts to children, but also urge them to think for themselves. They are laudable attempts at bringing before its readers alternatives to popular statist histories, by writing histories of common people, histories of displacement, of violence, loss and non-belonging, for the young and the old.
Sohini Sengupta writes.

Three history books for children: Desher Bhasha, Desher Manush, Deshvaag ‘Can you gather a sense of history simply by being perceptive to your surroundings? How to attain an awareness of history?’ – such are the fundamental questions that lie at the heart of the ‘…

"Qatar, with a population of a little more than twenty nine lakhs. was given twelve years to build the required infrastructure for a tournament as big as the World Cup. This infrastructure included massive stadiums, with in-built air-condition due to Qatar’s extreme heat, new roads and railways and accommodations for the estimated 1.2 million visitors during the span of the tournament. Thus an extensive programme recruiting migrant workers from different parts of the world was unleashed in Qatar with Nepal, Bangladesh and India as its prime targets. Though accused of under-reporting, Qatar is known to have recruited some 2.2 million migrant workers."

Arimitra Debroy writes in this opinion piece.

The Blood- Stained Cup: Migrant Workers in Qatar As we move towards a spectacular finale of the 2022 Qatar World Cup Football, which has already garenered a staggering viewership the world, Arimitra Deb Roy reminds the readers of the violent and …

In Jammu and Kashmir, the bi-annual migration between the pastures of Kashmir and Ladakh takes place during summers, and between the plains and Pir-Panjal ranges of the Jammu region during the winters. With Jammu and Kashmir witnessing extreme weather events like the earthquake in 2005, flash floods and landslides in 2010, and the massive floods of 2014; the Bakkerwal population is finding it difficult to continue the centuries-old practice of transhumance pastoralism.

Pallavi Sareen reports.

Transhumance Pastoralism in Kashmir: Case of the Gujjar- Bakarwals Pallavi Sareen presents an overview of the multiple hazards faced by pastoral transhumance communities in Kashmir in the wake of climate change. Sareen was a participant in CRG and Commonwealth Jou…

Thousands of football fans from around the globe will stay, November 20 onwards, in the neighbourhood where the hundreds of migrant workers lived. The airports, railway tracks and roads they will use to travel to the seven world class football stadiums have been built by migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and elsewhere in Asia and Africa. What they will not know is how they were treated, their working conditions or how many died to make the tournament possible. Bharat Bhushan writes.

Migrant worker deaths: The dark underbelly of Qatar Football World Cup Two weeks before the football World Cup begins in Qatar, the forcible eviction of migrant workers from dozens of buildings in Doha’s Al Mansoura neighbourhood made headlines. The evictions were a b…

Soon a group of seven youths from the village—Kalimuddin Seikh, Manowar Hussain, Mazidul Ali, Farizul Haq, Abul Hussain, Samiul Seikh and Ainul Haq accompanied Reazul for their new destination.

This group was joined by thirteen more from Manikpur in Bongaingaon district, also arranged by Rezaul for West Bengal. But no one from the group had the idea that their journey to West Bengal was actually a part of a business of slave trading. The whole team of twenty people were transported to another unknown place by two more persons: Roham Ali and Abdul Quddus, besides Reazul. Instead of taking the group to West Bengal, they took them to a remote corner of Arunachal Pradesh on the Indo-China border where large infrastructure works are on. Farhana Ahmed reports on trafficked workers from Assam and their ordeal.

The not so Great Escape: Assam’s trafficked workers’ horrific account of forced labour in Arunachal Pradesh Farhana Ahmed reports on the horrific ordeal of workers from the Indian state of Assam who were lured by traffickers and trapped in a Border Roads project camp, from which, only a few could escape …

"From 1970-1990 Noakhali, a district of Bangladesh, was the most disaster vulnerable area. 50-60% of people of this locality were under the poverty line. They were displaced in many areas of Bangladesh. But things changed when the international labor migration program started officially in Bangladesh. To survive and for income, they shifted abroad. The report of the Bangladesh statistical bureau said nowadays, the district-based poverty of Noakhali is 9.6% only." Participant of Calcutta Research Group​'s Climate Change and the Media workshop, Fatema Abedin writes about the perils of climate migration and the prospects of labour migration in Bangladesh.

Labor Migration A prospect for Bangladesh Fatema Abedin provides an overview of climate and labour migration in Bangladesh. Abedin looks at the present and future of environemtnal migration in Bangladesh, and the economic contribution of l…

Calcutta Research Group media fellow in 2021, Shuvankur Ghosh, created this photo essay on navigating cyclones and Covid 19 in the Indian Sundarbans.
Through photos of people and buildings, Ghosh highlights the precarity and resilience of the Sundarban-dwellers.

LOW/HIGH: Navigating Cyclones and Covid 19 in the Sundarbans Shuvankur Ghosh was the media fellow for Calcutta Research Group (CRG) in 2020, for the project titled ‘What Happened to Refugees and Migrants in the COVID Year of 2020?’, organized by CRG, in coll…

[I]t means little to say India “respects and follows” the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees as India is not a signatory to it or its 1967 Protocol. Earlier, India had refused to house the nearly 100,000 Nepali-speaking citizens or Lhotshampas expelled by Bhutan between 1988 and 1993. India being the first country of refuge should have given them shelter if it respected the UN Convention on Refugees. India pushed them instead into Nepal from where they were eventually relocate. d to Canada, Australia and other countries.
CRG member Bharat Bhushan writes on the Indian Government's stand on Rohingya migrants in India.

PR botch-up: Detention Centre presented as EWS housing for Rohingyas For a few hours it seemed the government had had a change of heart towards Rohingya migrants with Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri’s announcement that 1100 Rohingya migrants li…

Tamoha Majumdar writes: For years, the people of the Indo-Bangladesh enclaves have continually suffered due to the complex geopolitical situation of the land they inhabit. Forced to become refugees in their own land, they have been denied access to basic human rights and dignity for a long time. Yet the pages of history books have almost nothing to say about them. The common knowledge is that due to a hasty Partition of the Indian subcontinent, some areas of the border became a point of contention because they were marked to be a part of another nation while existing within one nation. These odd fractions of land are called ‘chits’ or ‘chitmahals’- where ‘chit’ means a small piece or remnant and ‘mahal’ means land.

Refugees in Their Own Land: The Forgotten People of the Indo-Bangladesh Enclaves The Chitmahals are pockets of lands located in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam and Meghalaya, as well as in Bangladesh, which owed their political allegiance respectively to Bangla…

"In case of India, in the context of populist politics and the Indian freedom struggle Samaddar asked, what is the purpose behind choosing political representatives? Giving the example of the Indian National Congress, he viewed that the populism underneath the party has always been a farce. For example, Maulana Bhashani observed in the 1920s that INC and even the Muslim League did not take up the cause of the oppressed, landless Bhashani immigrants from East Bengal. In that Bengal, Congress was based on the Elitist Kolkata culture and none of those elitist leaders talked about the Muslim farmers. He was thus the first populist leader who pointed out that majoritarian democratic politics always excludes the ordinary people." Sreetapa Chakrabarty reports on a special lecture by Ranabir Samaddar of Calcutta Research Group, on the occassion of the 50 years of Department of Political Science, RBU.

Special lecture on “Democracy and Populist Discourses in the 20th Century” by Ranabir Samaddar The Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, as a part of its Golden Jubilee celebration, organized a special lecture on ‘Democracy and Populist Discourses in the 20th…

[T]his considerable work is not without importance as it is an archive of unheard voices, a repository of memories and personal histories where the language of the past coalesces into the present and is sustained for the future. Aanchal Malhotra in her endeavour to preserve and chronicle the intergenerational inherited memory or post-memory, becomes the custodian of the legacy of loss, trauma, perseverance, and regeneration. Medhasree Talapatra reviews 's of

In the Language of Remembering: An Archive of the Passage of Memory Medhashree Talapatra reads Aanchal Malhotra’s In the Language of Remembering, to understand intergenerational memories of the parition and the practice of their recollection.

People's Film Collective organised eighth Kolkata People's Film Festival ( ) 2022 saw the screening of an array of films dealing with socially and politically relevant discourses around migration, pandemic, marginalisation, discrimination, gender and communal violence in India and South-East Asia. Out of the many captivating fiction and documentary films that were screened in the festival, Tamoha Majumdar writes about three films that centred around the themes of migration, displacement and loss of identity.

Three films on migrant workers: a view from KPFF 2022 The Eighth Kolkata People’s Film Festival (KPFF) 2022 held between 31st March to 3rd April at Uttam Mancha, Kolkata, India, saw the screening of an array of films dealing with socially and politica…

Webinar on ‘The Chinese Heritage of Bombay’ as a part of ‘Uncovering Urban Legacies’ On 24 March, 2022, at 6 pm, the fourth edition of ‘Uncovering Urban Legacies’ was held exploring ‘the Chinese Heritage of Bombay’. The live session tried to investigate how the Chinese Pre-British …

I wonder what ‘better’ means, when one is so accustomed to persecution, it becomes a question of degree, more or less safety, and not simply safety. Perhaps this is what Mahmoud Darwish meant when he said ‘The keys to my house are not with me’ (“Do I love you or not”, 1994), because exiled from your homeland, survival is not synonymous with the freedom to thrive, and safety is not in your hands anymore. Pallavi Baraya writes a photo essay on the women in Delhi's refugee colonies.

Hide and Seek: A Brief Look at Women in Delhi’s Refugee Colonies [Cover photo: A picture of the author’s grandmother’s family in pre-Partition Punjab.] Pallavi Baraya’s reflective photo essays situated women in Delhi’s refugee colonies am…

As part of the ‘Seminar Series on Forced Migration’ organized by Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG); hosted at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Prof. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury delivered a lecture with the title: ‘Governance of Forced Migration in South Asia: Need for a Decolonial Approach’? Prof. Basu Ray Chaudhury teaches at the Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and is the Honorary Director of Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. Rishiraj Sen reports on the online lecture held on 5th April, 2022.

Report: Online lecture on ‘Governance of Forced Migration in South Asia: Need for a Decolonial Approach’ As part of the ‘Seminar Series on Forced Migration’ organized by Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG); hosted at the Department of Social …

The construction of immigrant masculinity has not received significant scholarly attention in the past. However, with interest in gender studies growing over the decades, masculinity, and especially the construction of immigrant masculinity has started gaining some attention. Madziva (2018) demonstrates how names, religion, bodies and nationality are employed in identity-building during the asylum process in the United Kingdom. Stereotypes have a significant impact on them. The War on Terror post-9/11 and the rise of Global Jihad have brought in certain changes in the immigration laws and the construction of immigrants as potential terrorists (DasGupta, 2019).

‘They’re Violent, Uncultured and Need Western Education’ – Masculinity of Asylum Seekers and its(?) Impacts in the West Swakshadip Sarkar enquires into the role the perceived ‘masculinity of male asylum seekers play in the construction of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

Tamoha Majumdar reports on the launch of Alakananda Nag's book Armenians of Calcutta, at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata.

Book Launch: Armenians in Calcutta, by Alakananda Nag On Tuesday, 15th of March 2022, Alakananda Nag’s book Armenians of Calcutta was launched in Kolkata. Nag’s book of photos, archives and text documents the forgotten lives of the Armenian community …

The idea of citizenship in a country like India often intersects with the idea of nationality and nationalisms. A citizen in India often has a two-fold identity: one, where he identifies as a member of the Indian Union, and second, where he identifies as the member of a state. Rishiraj Sen writes about the instances when a person may be perceived as a non citizen in India.

The Perceived Non-Citizens: The Citizenship of Perception Kolkata protests against NRC- CAA, in 2019. Photo by Debalina Majumder. In this introspective essay, Rishiraj Sen enquires into the many ways in which a member of a community may be perceived a non…

Prof. Dolan started with an introduction to the concepts of sexual violence and forced migration and what they imply for and during teaching. He emphasized that sexual violence is omnipresent in all conflicts and incidents of displacements globally, yet it seems like they only happen in certain conflict areas due to biased media portrayal. He also mentioned that there exists an embedded set of assumptions, stereotypes and misrepresentations and that it is critical to get below the surface while teaching. Sukanya Bhattacharya reports.

Report on ‘A Lecture on Migration and Sexual Violence’ by Chris Dolan Sexual violence is an inevitable part of conflicts and forced migration but it is characterized by a persistent silence around it. Consequently, it becomes difficult and even more necessary for res…

Leonard Marcus (2008) has statistically shown a rise in the production of books with child protagonists in America after the American Civil War, which he calls ‘Wonder in the Wake of War’. A similar case can also be witnessed at the aftermath of the Holocaust, the World War II and the Partition of India. A case in point is Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man (1991). In this context, Atin Bandyopadhyay’s Neelkontho Pakhir Khonje (1971) successfully voices the concerns of the children during the Partition through his protagonist Sona. Shreya Das writes.

Child Narrators and Their Displacement: With special reference to Neelkontho Pakhir Khonje In 1947 the independence of India came at the cost of a bloody and brutal partition of the territory. Contrary to the claims of the contemporary n…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

The Refugee Watch Online blog (https://refugeewatchonline.wordpress.com/) is currently accepting contributions: original research, photo essays, news reports, reviews about politics, displaced people and processes of marginalization.

Submission guidelines:
1. The article/report should be between 1200-1500 words.
2. The article should follow a proper citation style and not be plagiarized.

Email your submissions to [email protected] or contact for further queries!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

The Refugee Watch Online blog (https://refugeewatchonline.wordpress.com/) is currently accepting contributions: original research, photo essays, news reports, reviews about politics, displaced people and processes of marginalization.

Submission guidelines:
1. The article/report should be between 1200-1500 words.
2. The article should follow a proper citation style and not be plagiarized.

Email your submissions to [email protected] or contact for further queries!

refugeewatchonline formerly hosted at refugeewatchonline.blogspot.in

For Mujtaba Ali, the land of Kabul is beautiful land of gardens, bazaars, and multilingual interactions. The border therefore is a colonial construction haunted by senseless paperwork but the code of friendship and hospitality with people who share a kind of linguistic similarity, cultural and historical backgrounds is what Ali tries highlight in his work. Tamoha Majumdar reports on this exciting lecture by Banerjeee

“Frontier Dreams: Afghanistan in the Bengali Literary Imagination” with Mou Banerjee The Center for the Humanities of University of Wisconsin- Madison organized a virtual Friday lunch event titled, “Frontier Dreams: Afghanistan in the Bengali Literary Imagination” with Mou Banerjee…

Migrant Lives, by Radhika Chopra Senior journalist Rajat Roy reviews Radhika Chopra’s new edited volume, Migrant Lives, a book of photographs visualising migrant workers and their livelihoods.

Debashrita Dwivedy reports on a public lecture by Elaine Chase and Amy North, about the nexus between education and development. Read on Refugee Watch Online

Report on Exploring the Education Development Nexus Through a Migration (Im)mobility Lens Even though the connections between education and migration are not always explored thoroughly, education, migration, and development connect and interact at the local, national, and worldwide leve…

Nirajana Chakraborty reports on a roundtable on the pedagogy of migration studies, with Anju Mary Paul, Joyce C H Liu and Natalija Perisic, organized by the Calcutta Research Group.

A Report on Pedagogy of Migration Studies: A Roundtable Migration Studies, in the light of the COVID19 pandemic, has been faced with newer questions of public health-with the intertwining of both livelihood and health concerns, especially in the context…

The discussion featured Asha Singh from the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, and Aparna Eswaran from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi who respectively talked and fascinated the audience with their insights on Bhojpuri Oral Folk Song Tradition and the Tamil Poetry in Sri Lanka amidst the civil war.

Report on ‘Women, Migration and Cultural Production: A Panel Discussion’ As a part of the Second Two Days Teachers’ Workshop on Syllabus Making and Research Methods in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, organized by the Calcutta Research Group in collaboration with…

Being a Princely state, the Jammu and Kashmir was not divided along the lines of Bengal and Punjab in 1947. The state changed its political stance and joined the Indian Union after communal violence broke out in the month of October 1947. People fled across the borders on the basis of religion. I grew up hearing stories about Partition because my neighbourhood has a large number of POJK displaced people who migrated to Jammu in 1947. However, due to a lack of documentation, little is known about the magnitude of their pain and sufferings. It was in 2017 that I was chosen as a Story Scholar with the 1947 Partition Archive where I conducted interviews with survivors of the 1947 event in the region of Jammu. With the assistance of relatives and friends I search the people to learn how they remember the event after seven decades. Marvi Slathia writes.

Survivors of 1947 partition are true ambassadors of peace and love in these divided lands Marvi Slathia writes about her experiences of working with the 1947 Partition Archives. Her work of collecting memories and narratived of the partition of British India helped her realise the messa…

“I had never imagined that I would be sitting one day in such an air-conditioned room, such a prestigious place and speak in front of so many people”, said Adhir Biswas. He talked about being the person who had always been outcasted from the society, people’s houses, places of worships and ceremonies for his financial status, caste and appearance. His subject of writing has always been about, “What I see around me… of myself and my family”, said Adhir Biswas.

Report on the book launch of Memories of Arrival: A Voice from the Margins by Adhir Biswas The launch of Adhir Biswas’s much anticipated book Memories of Arrival: A Voice of the Margins translated by V. Ramaswamy and jointly published by Sage Publications and Stree-Samya Books took place…