Outlining a Dialogic Framework of Difference: How do Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees in India Constitute and Negotiate Difference?

Abstract

This essay answers the call for intersectional examinations of difference constitution/negotiation. I outline a dialogic framework of difference, actively accomplished via communication in conjunction with material conditions of object, site and body. The essay draws from an ethnography with Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India. It finds that the refugees use dialogic domains of segregation–assimilation, safety–risk, and agency–passivity to make sense of their tenuous social position as outsiders within. The project adds to our understanding of difference as multi-layered, simultaneously straddling agency/structure, and discourse/materiality.