The politics of dispersal: Turning Ugandan colonial subjects into postcolonial refugees (1967–76)

This article examines the role of postcolonial diasporic refugees, particularly East African Asian expellees, in international migration policy. It explores similar concerns with postcolonial diasporas and postcolonial identity issues in the homogeneous imagination of the decolonized nation states. Though the focus is on the creation of a global Ugandan Asian diaspora, developments in Kenya, as well as in Britain, and India are crucial keystones of this international history. The desire of these countries to reduce their responsibility for former colonial subjects eventually led to shifting conceptions of citizenship and international dispersal of postcolonial refugees. The Ugandan Asian expulsion became framed as a matter of international concern, rather than a purely British postcolonial problem. This paper claims that the internationalization of refugee resettlement served to cut through ties between the former colonial diaspora and the metropole (Britain) on the one hand and the diaspora and the motherland (India) on the other.status: publishe