Naiveté or Strategic Ambiguity? Examining Economic, Demographic and Security Narratives in India's Refugee Policy
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT The decadal transition in the Indian politico‐legal stance on refugees, from a human rights tilt to national security concerns, invites a close examination. India maintains a theoretical safe distance from the international legal framework on refugees by not acceding to the 1951 Refugee Convention, while on the ground, it extensively engages—politically and judicially—with refugee‐related domestic legal issues. In the absence of a dedicated legal framework, the refugees, categorised based on temporalities and spatialities, face a highly unpredictable executive and judicial discretion. The present work critically examines the validity of three purported claims that India frames as ‘obstacles’ in enacting refugee‐specific legislation, using a mixed method design—combining doctrinal analysis of Indian jurisprudence, Parliamentary questions, statutory law and Executive Policy Rules along with a review of demographic data and securitization aspects to draw some hints as real‐world inferences on the actual impact caused by refugees.
Source: International Migration
DOI: 10.1111/imig.70231
Authors: Setu Gupta, Swati Singh Parmar
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7221519852