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Community in Refugee Resettlement COMMUNITY IN REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT An Ethnographic Exploration of Bhutanese Refugees in Manchester (UK) A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Nicole Ingrid Johanna Hoellerer College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences Department of Anthropology Brunel University February 2016 Für meine Familie “Mache alles so, als wäre es Dein Lebensziel.“ i Authorship Declaration I hereby certify that this thesis is the result of my own work except where otherwise indicated and due acknowledgement is given. Signed: …………………………… Date: ………………… ii Abstract After being expelled from Bhutan in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees were forced to reside in refugee camps in Nepal. Twenty years later, in 2006, a global resettlement programme was initiated to relocate them in eight different nations: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, and the UK. Since 2010, about 350 Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in Greater Manchester through the Gateway Protection Programme . This thesis is based on 14 months of ethnographic research with members of this community. This thesis analyses the complex relationship between forced migrants, social networks, and ruling, organisational entities, which facilitate refugee resettlement. This qualitative study looks at the structure, role and everyday utility of social networks amongst a small refugee community, and emphasizes that the creation of similarity and difference is an inherent part of community development. The research calls into question the assumptions of UK policy makers, service providers and academics alike, which hold that refugees are removed from their ‘original’ cultures through forced displacement, and thereafter strive to return to a state of ‘normalcy’ or ‘originality’, re-creating and re-inventing singular ‘traditions’, identities and communities. In response to these assumptions, policy makers and service providers in refugee camps and in the UK adopt a Community Development Approach (CDA). However, I argue that there is no fixed and bounded community amongst Bhutanese refugees, but that they actively reshape and adapt their interpretations, meanings and actions through their experiences of forced migration, and thus create novel communities out of old and new social networks. In the process, I juxtapose my informants’ emic understandings of community as samaj , with bureaucratized refugee community organisations (RCOs). This research shows that rather than a creating singular, formalized RCO to serve the ‘good of all’, the Bhutanese refugee community in Manchester is rife with divisions based on personal animosities and events stretching back to the refugee camps in Nepal. I conclude that RCOs may not be equipped to effectively deal with the divisive issues that arise due to refugee resettlement. The thesis is situated at the centre of anthropological investigations of forced migration, community, and policy, and uses interdisciplinary sources (such as policy documents, historical accounts) to highlight the complexities of forced migration and refugee resettlement. This critical research is also a response to the call to make qualitative, ethnographic research more relevant for policy makers and service provision, which is all the more important in this ‘century of the refugee’. Word Count (Thesis body and Bibliography): 103,185 iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................. iv List of Figures, Graphs, Images and Maps ..................................................... viii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................ ix Abbreviations.................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1 - Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Research and thesis focus ......................................................................... 5 Relevance of research ............................................................................... 7 Questions of definitions .............................................................................. 9 The Anthropology of Forced Migration ......................................................... 10 What is (forced) migration? ...................................................................... 12 Refugees as ‘abnormality’ ........................................................................ 13 A note on agency and hybridity ................................................................ 15 The Anthropology of Community ................................................................. 17 The problematic nature of community in Anthropology ............................ 17 Community as the creation of similarity and difference ............................ 21 Refugee communities .............................................................................. 25 Anthropology and Policy .............................................................................. 27 Methodology ................................................................................................ 30 Welcome to Manchester........................................................................... 31 Namaste ................................................................................................... 33 Limits of research ..................................................................................... 35 Thesis Overview .......................................................................................... 39 Chapter 2 – The Making of Bhutanese Refugees ....................................... 42 Narratives of history and conflict .............................................................. 44 From Nepalese Bhutanese to Bhutanese refugee ....................................... 46 Prabhashi Nepali ...................................................................................... 47 Bhutan's demography .............................................................................. 50 'Multi-ethnic' Bhutan and nation-building .................................................. 53 Nation-building: Bhutan’s sovereignty ...................................................... 57 Political activism amongst Nepalese Bhutanese ...................................... 60 “Unbecoming Citizens” : ‘One Nation, One People’ ................................. 62 iv Conclusion ................................................................................................... 68 Chapter 3 – Camp Life and Refugee Resettlement ..................................... 69 Bhutanese Refugee Camps in Nepal ........................................................... 71 Everyday camp life recalled in resettlement ............................................. 74 The Search for Durable Solutions ................................................................ 80 The long road to resettlement .................................................................. 85 Repatriation versus resettlement .............................................................. 86 The Gateway Protection Programme ........................................................... 92 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 4 – The Community Development Approach ................................ 96 Policy intervention .................................................................................... 99 Social Re-engineering in Bhutanese Refugee Camps ............................... 101 Community Development Approach in the refugee camps .................... 103 Liminality ................................................................................................ 107 COELTs ................................................................................................. 108 Community Development in Resettlement ................................................. 112 CDA in the UK ........................................................................................ 112 Functions of RCOs ................................................................................. 114 Critique of CDA .......................................................................................... 124 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 127 Chapter 5 – Bhutanese Refugee-ness ....................................................... 130 Bhutanese Refugee Identity....................................................................... 134 Hybrid identities ...................................................................................... 137 Hybrid identities and social networks ..................................................... 139 Refugee-ness ............................................................................................ 143 The use of the refugee-label .................................................................. 145 Bhutanese Refugee-ness as Ethnicity ....................................................... 151 The ‘dominant discourse’ ....................................................................... 152 Bhutanese refugees as an ethnic identity? ............................................ 155 An ethnic
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