Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Refugee displacement in Northeast India is shaped by complex interactions of border politics, citizenship regimes, ethnic diversity, and prolonged forms of social and legal exclusion. Within these conditions, refugee women experience displacement in gendered ways that affect not only their legal and material security but also their sense of identity, belonging, dignity, and social recognition. Existing scholarship has examined refugee movements, citizenship, and protection in India, but comparatively less attention has been given to how refugee women’s identity is negotiated across different displacement contexts in Northeast India. This paper addresses this gap by examining identity crisis among refugee women as a multidimensional process produced through the interaction of forced displacement, legal uncertainty, gendered vulnerability, social exclusion, cultural dislocation, and contested belonging. The study adopts a qualitative critical literature-review approach based on the analysis of peer-reviewed scholarship, books, institutional and humanitarian reports, policy documents, and relevant refugee-related literature. Feminist and postcolonial perspectives are used to analyse how gender, power, citizenship, bordering practices, and processes of social “othering” shape documented experiences of refugee women. Rather than treating refugee women as a homogeneous category, the paper considers differences across major refugee communities in Northeast India, including Rohingya, Chin, Chakma-Hajong, Tibetan, and other displaced populations, while identifying common mechanisms of exclusion and identity disruption. The analysis shows that identity crisis extends beyond the absence or uncertainty of legal status and is reproduced through social discrimination, economic insecurity, cultural displacement, restricted access to rights, and gendered forms of vulnerability. At the same time, refugee women demonstrate agency through livelihood activities, community networks, cultural preservation, adaptation, caregiving, and everyday strategies of negotiating belonging. The paper argues that refugee women’s identity should therefore be understood as a continuously negotiated social and political process rather than a fixed legal condition. It concludes by highlighting the need for differentiated, gender-sensitive, and rights-based approaches to refugee protection and social inclusion in Northeast India.
Source: Geopsychiatry
Authors: Irshad Khan, Iftekhar Ahmad Ansari
Institution: Aligarh Muslim University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,500
OpenAlex ID: W7203971270