Citizens and Refugees: Constructing and Negotiating Tibetan Identities in Exile

At the heart of the relationship between identity and the state is the construction of a binary between the citizen resident, in a bounded national community, and its archetypal other, the refugee. The case studied here fundamentally disrupts this dualism and the conventional mapping of citizen and refugee onto concepts of statehood and statelessness. With their own government structure operating within the state of Indiaalbeit without legal recognitionexile Tibetans are simultaneously Tibetan citizens in the eyes of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, refugees in the eyes of many within the international community, and foreign guests in the eyes of the Indian state. Based on ethnographic research on exiled Tibetan politicalinstitutions and practices, this article charts the contradictory relationship between Tibetans in India and each of the two governments that identify, label, and document them. It does so by exploring both the legal discourses and bureaucratic administrations through which the identities of refugee and citizen are institutionalized, and the materiality of the identity documents issued by these polities. The negotiation of citizenship and refugeehood by a political community without sovereignty over territory thus opens up questions regarding the relationship among citizenship, statehood, and legitimacy, and the ambiguity and power relations inherent within the categories of citizen and refugee.