At the margins

Abstract

The bio-political space within camps reveals one of the pertinent aspects of ‘bare life’ of ‘Homo sacer’ as conceptualized by Agamben. Agamben perceive camps from ‘Schmittean state of exception’ – a spatial construct, which pose a potential menace against the pre-mediated permanency of the sovereign political order. While comprehending the bio-political body as the site of sovereign power intrusions, the idea is to understand the differential impact of body in terms of gender among the refugee subjects. Even with an end to the Sri Lankan civil war that caused the Tamil refugee influx, the ground reality of the camps that shelters these refugees remain the same or have deteriorated. Ousted from the political space of the state and occupying the ambiguous space of camps, women are the most vulnerable among the already marginalized refugee population. Using the empirical data from various Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, the chapter examines the following questions: how does the limited mobility and social interactions over an extended duration of their life during exile in camps impact the subjectivity of refugee women? How do the socio-economic welfare policies of the government aid them in navigating the state of exception in camps? Also, does it enable the refugee women to assert their ‘right to have rights’?