How are your papers? ”ེད་ི་ཡིག་ཆ་འིག་སོང་ངམ།• Documentation, Legal Status, Migration and Identity Construction of Tibetan refugees in India Master Thesis University of Amsterdam Contemporary Asian Studies Supervisor: Dr. Tina Harris Gedun Gyatso ID: 10862145 1 Pic. No: 1 (The Multi documents held by Tibetan refugees in India. This shows the importance of political identity construction through paperwork and what this thesis will be exploring is the difficulties of documentation and legal status of Tibetan refugees in India. Tibetan Green Book, Registration Certificates, Identity Certificate and Chinese travel documents. Photographed by Gedun Gyatso, 2015) 2 ABSTRACT According to the Tibetan Demographic Survey of 2009, there are more than ten thousand “Tibetan Refugees” residing in India today and these refugees have unique characteristics compare to other refugees in the world. They are both stateless and document-less, which I call “Double less-ness”. Tibetan refugees in India do not hold any legal status. However, they are labeled according to different criteria: “Tibetan Citizens” in the eyes of Central Tibetan Administration in India (an unrecognized political community), “Refugees” in the eyes of many western countries, “Foreign Guests” in the eyes of Indian state, and “Overseas Chinese” in the eyes of Chinese government. In this context refugees are referred as political refugees, the foreign guest should understand as foreign residents according to Indian state and the overseas Chinese are referred as Chinese Citizens from the time when Tibetan refugees have family registration records in China (McConnell: 2011: 968). Based on ethnographic research on Tibetan refugees in India, this thesis discusses the legal status, difficulties of documentation, its processes, expectations of Tibetan migrants and different concepts regarding state, citizen, migration, status, mobility and documentation among three different generations of Tibetans in the exile communities. During the research, data was collected by the methods of (1) informal conversations with Tibetan refugees of different generations, backgrounds and life styles, (2) observations with Tibetan refugees planning to migrate from India to the west or return back to Tibet, (3) structured interviews with Tibetans come from Tibet and born in India,(4) formal interviews with Indian and Tibetan officials regarding legal status and rights of Tibetan refugees in India. The results show that Tibetan refugees in India do not hold any legal statuses except for being labeled as “foreign Resident” and there is no uniform or standardized policy towards Tibetan refugees from the government of India. There are thousands of Tibetan refugees residing in India, as foreigners by holding false documents, making them feel insecure and excluded from Indian societies. This unfitting or outcast feeling from Indian societies becomes the push factors for Tibetan refugees to migrate from the exile communities in India to another place again for a better life. This chain of outflowing Tibetans from India generates a new migration approach: migration is not always the case of high valued wages, regional development and natural disasters. It is a result of difficulties of documentation in the exile communities where people migrate in order to get proper credentials and legal status. The processes of documentation of stateless people create a new concept that is of a “citizen” and it challenges the theory of national citizen, of which we generally understand as citizens within a bounded territory that legitimated to only one sovereign state. However, in contrast, Tibetan refugees are holding different documents and carrying multiple labels out of fear and insecurity within the host state. More surprisingly, it is argued that citizenship and commitment to a state is not about geographic territory, but it is about the security and safety of people. Key words: LegaL status, difficuLties of documentation, citizen, refugee, state, migration and mobility 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Tina Harris. I appreciate your seemingly endless patience and support during the many rewrites of this thesis. Your countless comments and ideas are adding immeasurable values to my research. I could have not done this research without your genuine encouragement, advices and emails. You have helped me beyond your role as a supervisor. I am very grateful to you from bottom of my heart. Secondly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Erasmus Mundus scholarship for my master studies and given me this golden opportunity to study and explore the outside world. Without this scholarship I would never have made this far. I also would like to thank deeply to all my informants and all other people who I talked to in India and abroad. I felt extremely special to be let into your life stories of sweet and sour. Lastly, I would like to thank to my second reader Dr. Gerben Nooteboom and Dr. Barak Kalir for their precious time. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………2 List of TabLes and Pictures………………………………………………………………………6 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………6-8 1.1 Research Question and Objectives…………………………………………………….8-9 1.2 Motivation and Relevance………………………………………………………………..9-10 1.3 Thesis Outline………………………………………………………………………………….10 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1 The roles of documentation in migrants’ lives……………………………………….10-12 2.2 Difficulties of documentation and state-citizen theory …………………………...12-14 2.3. Roles of difficulties of documentation in migration ……………………………….14-16 Chapter 1: Indian PoLicy toward Three Major Tibetan Migration Waves 1.1 Migration1959-1987…………………………………………………………………………….16-18 1.2Migration 1987-2003…………………………………………………………………………….18-19 1.3Migration 2003-2015…………………………………………………………………………….19-23 Chapter 2: DifficuLties and processes of obtaining documentation 2.1 Registration Certificates (RCs)………………………………………………………………23-28 - 1959-1987 -1987-2003 - 2003-2015 Special Entry Permit (SEP) - Students - Pilgrimage - Others 2.2 Identity Certificates (ICs)……………………………………………………………………28-29 Chapter 3: Indian Citizenship and Deportation 3.1 Citizenship: a legal battle for Tibetan refugees…………………………………29-33 Chapter 4: Expectations of Tibetan Returnees to Tibet and Migrants to the West 4.1Tibetans who are migrating to the west.………………………………………………33-38 4.2Tibetans who are returning back to Tibet……………………………………………38-43 5.Chapter 5: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………......................................43-44 6.BibLiography……………………………………………………………………………………..44-48 7. Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………….48-50 5 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGTURES Table 2.1 Categories of RC holders, published by FRROs/FROs for various visa related services: 16th September 2014) Pictures 1. Pic. No: 1 The Multi documents held by Tibetan refugees in India………………………..2 2. Pic. No: 2 Tibetan Registration Certificates……………………………………………………25 3. Pic. No: 3 Registration Certificates Extension Form……………………………………………29 4.Pic. No: 4 Tibetans born in India and stayed 20 over years in India are given 5 years “Stay Visa”………………………………………………………………………………………32 5. Pic. No: 5 Tibetan new arrivals have to extend their Registration Certificates every year………………………………………………………………………………………………..33 6. Pic. No: 6 Tibetan political prisoners are allowed to stay for a longer term on SEPS “others” but they are not given refugee status……………………………………………………...35 7. Pic. No: 7 Identity Certificate “ An Indian travel document issued by the Indian government for foreign residents in India”…………………………………………………………..36 8. Pic. No: 8 Chinese Travel document issued by Chinese government for the Tibetan Returnees. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………...45 9. Pic. No: 9 the application Receipt from Chinese Embassy for Tibetan returnees………………………………………………………………………………………………………………45 10. Pic. No: 10 Current Situation of Tibetan refugees in India 2015. Published on Arunachal Times by AAPSU……………………………………………………………………………………..51 6 1. Introduction “Tibetans are issued Foreign Registration Certificates not Refugee Certificates in India. ” Tibetan Parliament Speaker Penpa Tsering: (17/03/2015) There are nearly one hundred thousand Tibetan refugees living in forty five formal settlements, in ten different states including Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Sikim, Ladakh and many others living outside of these settlements in India (TDS: 2009). All these Tibetan refugees entered into India during three major waves of Tibetan migration1. Tibetans in India do not hold any legal status. “They are living in a state of legal limbo and do not qualify as refugees in any legal sense” (TJC: 2011: P 12, Moynihan: 2012: P 4). They are facing immense difficulties in India regarding legal status and documentation, majority of them are either undocumented or illegally over staying on false documents with multiple identities. The difficulties of documentation and legal status introduce the main aspects of the Tibetan refugees in India, which will be the focus of this thesis. This thesis is based on three months of qualitative fieldwork in Tibetan exile community in Dharamshala HP2 and Delhi, during which twenty-two members of Tibetan refugees were interviewed. In this thesis, I will show how difficulties of documentation and lack of legal status are related to Indian foreign policies towards Tibetan refugees, the processes of illegal documentation activities, Tibetans’ notions of regarding state and