PRFDHR Seminar: Refusal as Political Practice: An Ethnography of Citizenship and Refugee Status, Professor Carole McGranahan
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. Tibetans therefore live in India and Nepal as refugee non-citizens, either undocumented or under-documented for multiple generations. In the last two decades, however, as Tibetans immigrate to North America, they are now gaining citizenship via political asylum, but simultaneously maintaining their belonging to the Dalai Lama’s refugee community headed by the exile Tibetan government.