DELHI, INDIA A Case Study of Refugees in Towns Protiti Roy Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 1 APRIL 2018 Contents About the RIT Project 3 Location 4 Introduction 5 Methodology 6 Overview of Refugees in India 7 Overview of Refugees in Delhi 7 Mapping the Refugee Population 8 The Urban Impact 9 Food as Livelihood 9 The Choice to Cook 9 Making Ends Meet 11 Ingredients and Innovations 11 The Refugee Experience 12 What the Cooks Eat at Home, and What They Miss From Home 12 Conclusion 13 References 14 Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 2 About the RIT Project This report is a case study of Refugees in Towns (RIT), a research project that aims to promote understanding of migrant and refugee experiences with integration—both formal and informal—in urban settings in the U.S. and around the world. Our case studies are ground in local knowledge. They are designed, conducted, and written by refugees and locals, capturing their voices and the perspectives of the communities in which they live. The project was conceived and is led by Karen Jacobsen, and is based at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. It is funded by the Henry J. Leir Foundation. Our goals are twofold 1. First, by gathering a range of case studies we are amassing a global data base that will help us analyze and understand the process of immigrant and refugee integration. These cases reveal global differences and similarities in the factors that enable and obstruct integration, and the different ways in which migrants and hosts perceive, co-exist, adapt, and struggle with integration. We draw our case studies from towns in resettlement countries (e.g. the United States); transit countries (e.g. Greece), and countries of first asylum (e.g. Lebanon). Our long-term goal is to build a global, grounded theory of integration. 2. Second, the RIT project seeks to support community leaders, aid organizations, and local governments in shaping policy and practice. We engage policymakers and community leaders through town visits, workshops, conferences, and participatory research that identifies needs in their communities, encourages dialogue on integration, and shares good practices and lessons learned. Why now? The United States—among many other refugee-hosting countries—is undergoing a shift in its refugee policies through travel bans and the suspension of parts of its refugee program. Towns across the U.S. and globally are responding in a range of different ways: some are resisting national policy changes by declaring themselves to be “sanctuary cities,” while others are supporting travel bans and exclusionary policies. In this period of social and political change, we need deeper understanding of integration and the ways in which refugees, other migrants, and their hosts interact. Local perspectives on these processes are not well represented in the scholarship on integration: our RIT project seeks to draw on–and give voice to—both refugee and host communities in their experiences with integration around the world. For more on RIT On our website, there are many more case study reports from other towns and urban neighborhoods around the world. Keep in touch: we regularly release more reports as our case study projects develop. There is also more information available about RIT’s researchers, goals, practical local outcomes, and theoretical analyses. www.refugeesintowns.org Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 3 Location India Delhi, India Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 4 Introduction Refugee Localities in Delhi Driving through Delhi, you can identify localities taste-buds, and pretend they are spending their by the communities that live there, and the food. money on charity of some form. It is exciting to Descendants of the Mughal Dynasty live in the post on Instagram or Facebook a picture of a area surrounding Jama Masjid, so a visitor will plateful of Afghani roth or Burmese sprouted be told: “Go to Jama Masjid for the best biryani!” peanuts and say “#refugees #yummyinmytummy A large Bengali community lives in CR Park, so #oneworld.” Whatever one may think of all this, a visitor will be told: “Go to CR Park for the best the demand from upper-middle class Delhi to sweets!” As refugees from Afghanistan and Burma indulge in global cuisine is seen as an opportunity have settled in Delhi, new food locations have by long-time refugees who have skills but very emerged: “Go to Lajpat for Afghan food,” or “go few assets at their disposal. This paper looks to Khirki for Somali food,” are common refrains. briefly at the history of refugee integration in Delhi, For upwardly mobile young professional Delhiites, the livelihood, economic, and social integration this is an opportunity to show solidarity with opportunity that ethnic cuisine provides, and the the “less privileged,” indulge their experimental association of food with emotional resilience. Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 5 Methodology When the Refugees in Towns project was restaurants was not easy. I had imagined I would announced, I thought back to an incident in saunter into restaurants, order a plate of exotic May 2014. I was then a practicing human rights food, and then start chatting with the chef. That’s lawyer and had walked over to the Child Welfare what journalists seemed to do, and a lot of my Committee’s office in Lajpat Nagar to handle a preliminary research was based on newspaper case. I found myself for the first time in a locality reports and documentation of refugee chefs. where everyone looked different from the regular But I found restaurant owners reluctant to talk. Delhi crowd, and spoke a different language. Even Indian attitudes have become hostile to Muslims the signboards on shops were in a script I did not in general and Muslim refugees specifically, recognize. I had walked into the Afghan colony in whom the government has branded as “illegal Lajpat Nagar. It seemed imperative to me that the immigrants.” Trust, therefore, was hard to earn. Refugees in Towns project should include Delhi. Ultimately, I approached ACCESS, a UNHCR Growing up in Delhi, I have always been able to partner organization, to introduce me to the access cuisine from different parts of the world. Afghan women whom they had helped form a Initial desk research showed that food is often culinary enterprise called ILHAM. This required a binding factor between migrants and hosts. In getting clearance from UNHCR, which was a Delhi, there is much disdain between different straightforward but comprehensive process. communities for each other’s cultures, but there is ACCESS had connections with many refugee a current of enthusiasm for cross-cultural cuisines. groups and were forming more culinary enterprises like ILHAM. I was thus able to interview A UNHCR Delhi report told about a group of members of ILHAM, but also a group of Somali Afghan refugee women who turned into food women, and a Chin Burmese woman and young entrepreneurs and improved their standard of man. living, I was drawn to studying culinary services as a means of livelihood, a source of emotional While most of the Afghan community could speak resilience, and potentially a promoter of refugee- or understand Hindi, language was a barrier for host integration. However, studying refugees’ other communities. ACCESS provided a translator Interview Sampling Chart Men Women Number of individuals 4 8 Age range 19-40 25-45 Chin Burmese Chin Burmese Nationalities Afghan Afghan Somali Number of key informants 1 2 ACCESS Main organizations of key informants UNHCR Delhi, India / A Case Study of Refugees in Towns 6 for the Chin Burmese cooks, but the only person ACCESS office to talk to me. Between extreme in the Somali group who spoke English was the heat and extreme rain, I felt I was adding to the twelve-year old son of one of the respondents. burdens of a group of people who already had This made it difficult for me to ask direct questions more work than would fit in a day. I interviewed about discrimination and economic hardships, one Indian restaurant owner who was the business but fortunately the respondent was comfortable partner of the Afghan owner, and had preliminary with her son knowing their life conditions. Still, conversations with two servers in two other it was beyond the child’s vocabulary to put restaurants. Later in July and August, I interviewed discrimination-induced job inequality into coherent small-scale entrepreneurs who were forming sentences and required some interpretation and culinary service groups with the help of ACCESS. contextualization. I met the Chin Burmese cooks in the Vikaspuri office of ACCESS in West Delhi, and the Afghan In July, I began by visiting well-established, and and Somali groups in the Bhogal office of ACCESS easily identified Afghan restaurants in the Lajpat in South Delhi. Nagar area of South Delhi. July and August were bad times of the year to ask people to take time IRB clearance for this project was obtained in May out of their daily schedules and come into the 2017 from Tufts University. Overview of Refugees in India India has been home to refugees from the atrocities were exceptionally brutal (De Sarkar, time of its independence in 1947. Beginning 2017). Yet, India usually treats its refugee with families that crossed over during Partition, population well. They are allowed to integrate followed by the Tibetan community in 1956, India with the local population and apply for long- is presently home to about 200,000 refugees term residency and work visas (UNHCR, 2014). and persons of concern, from over nineteen In January 2013, Anotonio Guterres, then countries (UNHCR, 2017).