Citizens and Refugees: Constructing and Negotiating Tibetan Identities in Exile

Abstract

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.