Rethinking spaces of exception: notes from a forced migrant camp in Jammu and Kashmir. (2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Datta, Ankur
• Is Part Of: International journal of migration and border studies. Volume 2:Number 2(2016)
• Page Start: 162
• Page End: 175
• Publication Date: 2016
• Subjects: state of exception -- internal displacement -- space -- place -- Jammu -- Kashmir -- South Asia -- forced migrant camps -- migrants -- anthropology -- displaced persons; Emigration and immigration -- Periodicals; Border security -- Periodicals; 304.805
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1755-2419

Abstract

In recent years, the camp has emerged as a paradigm of social and political phenomena. This article seeks to engage with the camp as a fact of life and as a framework in the South Asian context. I will first draw on perspectives that have emerged from studies on forced migration and camps in South Asia. I will then draw on anthropological fieldwork I have conducted among Kashmiri Pandits displaced by conflict in the Kashmir valley since 1990, who lived in a displaced persons camp colony in the city of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir until its closure in 2011. I will try to compare the notion of the state of exception with perspectives from the everyday lives of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, focusing on space and place. I argue that a theoretical framework for studying camps will benefit by paying attention to how forced migrants inhabit a space of 'exception'.