From earthquake victims to citizens: dependencies and precarious claims on the state in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic research after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-controlled Azad Kashmir, this article uses ‘disaster citizenship’ as a conceptual lens focusing on how people renegotiated their relationships with the state in the context of political interventions for reconstruction. The promise of relief encouraged the poor to make new claims on the state as disaster victims and needy citizens deserving material assistance. Given the social and political inequalities and limited democratic rights in post-disaster Azad Kashmir, people pursued a politics of citizenship that resisted both notions of liberal rights and neoliberal politics of self-responsibility, seeking instead rightful material dependence on the state. This dependence was ambivalent and precarious as the poor were often deprived of the material rights they claimed. Therefore, disaster citizenship remained deeply entangled with social dependencies, and people had to resort to favors, bribes, and submissive patron-client relationships to access state resources and counter their political neglect.