Temporalities of Resettlement: Date‐Waiting for an American Future in a Bhutanese Refugee Camp in Nepal

Abstract

ABSTRACTNepali‐speaking southern Bhutanese citizens, who resisted cultural homogenization policies of Bhutan in the late 1980s, were expelled from Bhutan and forced to live in United Nations–managed refugee camps in Nepal. After nearly two decades of camp living, Bhutanese refugees found themselves in the middle of a large‐scale resettlement project where the majority would eventually be relocated to the United States. The relocation process put refugees in a unique position to concretely imagine life outside of a protracted camp situation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Bhutanese refugees awaiting resettlement, I explore refugee anxieties about their “American futures,” as they prepare for their own travel and learn about resettlement from their relocated friends, relatives, and “cultural orientation” classes. This article extends recent anthropological debates on displacement to show that resettlement for Bhutanese refugees is less about imagining a hopeful future and more about critically apprehending one's marginal position within the US and global labor economy, revealing how disillusionment with resettlement precedes their arrival in the United States. [temporality, uncertainty, futurity, refugee camps, refugee resettlement]