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Refusal as political practice:
Author(s) -
McGRANAHAN CAROLE
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12671
Subject(s) - refugee , citizenship , sovereignty , politics , state (computer science) , political science , situated , gender studies , sociology , law , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
Is it possible to be both a refugee and a citizen? For six decades, Tibetan refugees have refused citizenship in South Asia as part of their claims to Tibetan state sovereignty. They have lived in India and Nepal as refugee noncitizens, either undocumented or underdocumented, for multiple generations. But as Tibetans migrate to the United States and Canada, they gain citizenship through political asylum while maintaining their belonging to the Dalai Lama's refugee community. This shift in political practice is as situated in specific histories as it is in geographies. Tibetan citizenship practices in exile are not claims for recognition or forms of resistance; they are, rather, a refusal of international norms through a present‐day insistence on past and future political sovereignty.