Internal Displacement: Simplifying a Complex Social Phenomenon

The magnitude of the social phenomenon of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is a daunting humanitarian challenge with upwards of twenty-eight million people around the world, currently in displacement.  This is despite the fact that it is not always easy to count all those displaced, as the stigma of displacement pushes many into hiding, thus escaping the registration process.

Consequently, the issues of the IDPs remain less examined in comparison to the issues of other displaced populations, such as the refugees or the asylum seekers, owing to the internal nature of such crisis.  The multi-faceted issues of internal displacement, so far,  have been studied as stand-alone issues, from the perspectives of policy, business, economics or anthropology.  The resulting knowledge has been successful in providing an understanding of this multi-pronged phenomenon, only in a piecemeal manner.

My goal here is two-fold:  first, to provide a holistic understanding of this phenomenon and second, to situate this phenomenon as a complex conflict issue.  Any approach towards an understanding of internal displacement must consider the complexity of this phenomenon in order to respond appropriately.

This article, based on my multi-dimensional inquiry into the displacement of the Kashmiri Pandit (KP) community, displaced from Kashmir Valley in 1989, (Rajput, 2012) will guide the Conflict Resolution (CR) practitioners, policymakers, and scholars to systematically decipher, a complex web of displacement issues, into digestible terms.  Based on the narratives of participants from over a dozen IDP camps of Jammu, Delhi and Srinagar, home to the largest number of those displaced, this article unfolds the political, social, cultural, and the psychological dimensions of this displacement, embedded within the official “Migrant” identity.  To illustrate the interwoven nature of the issues, Dugan’s Nested Model (Dugan, 1996) is used to organize these issues, thus yielding a holistic understanding of this daunting phenomenon.

This understanding is key to societal reform and community building and encourages the design of appropriate local interventions into similarly displaced communities.  An inadequate or a half-hearted understanding of the overlapping nature of the issues faced by the IDPs is dangerous as it leads to ill-suited or marginally applicable policies and practices.

The following sections touch on the research background, systematically explore the issues of the KP community, and then appropriately position the phenomena of displacement as a complex conflict issue.  Guidance for appropriate analysis and the handling of such communities will become apparent from this systematic discussion.

Research Context

In the interest of situating the issues and the challenges of those displaced, in appropriate context, it is important to have an understanding of the KP community and the reasons surrounding this displacement.

In the aftermath of the militant uprising in the Kashmir Valley in 1989, the KP minority community, given their reluctance to conform to the radical ways of the Islamic militants, became the chief target of the militant attacks.  The KPs were specifically targeted among the mosaic of other minority groups, as they were perceived to symbolize the Indian presence in the Valley by professing a different faith and refusing to conform to the Islamist ways as other minorities had done at some point in time.

Consequently, many were threatened, abducted, and killed.  Those who fled now form the pool of 250,000 displaced KPs, officially dubbed as “Migrants”.   Despite the displacement of this community, generally recognized to be the harshest reality of the overarching Kashmir issue, only a handful of issues affecting this IDP community had been explored until now.  As a result, even after twenty-three years of displacement, only selected issues have received the attention of CR practitioners and the policymakers.

In the summer of 2011, I launched a multi-pronged field research into this community, conducted through semi-structured interviews with the top level policymakers, NGOs, members of the host communities, and the IDPs.  The IDP challenges that surfaced through the process represent a range of sentiments of those living in self-sustaining Migrant communities or in semi-integrated communities and those who never stopped dreaming of returning to the Valley, and those who find it humiliating to return to the same place that took away their identity and forced them out.

Issues and the Challenges of the Kashmiri Displaced Community

As displacement touches and adversely magnifies all aspects of those displaced, such as, the individual, social, economic, legal, and political, it is instructive to engage Dugan’s Nested Model, used in social sciences to analyze events occurring at various interactive levels.  This model helps us understand the highly overlapping dimensions of displacement.  Accordingly, the issues and the challenges of the IDPs revolve around the specific issue, and are complicated by the relational as well as the sub-system issues, all which are deeply embedded into the systemic issues as explained below.

Specific Issue: The issues emerging from this protracted displacement are numerous and multi-faceted. The narratives of the KP families suggest that the most important feature of their displacement was being forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homes (as a result of running for safety in fear of persecution), yielding the phenomenon of homelessness.  Similar to other displaced communities around the world, homelessness represents a specific issue for this community.  In 2003, the Norwegian Refugee Council explored the relationship between displacement and house; the latter symbolizing material, cultural, economic, and political dimensions of displacement.  In this study, house was perceived to represent a physical structure, property rights, shelter, security, and the symbols of belonging and identity.  In the ‘Home Here and Home There’, Achieng  (2003) explains ‘home here’ as the actual place of lived experience, where contestations and negotiations take place, which is different than ‘home there.’  ‘Home there’ was explained as a metaphorical space of personal attachment (‘how things used to be’) defining the relationship between ‘home here and home there’ as trans-local.  For the KPs, their forced eviction signaled more than a loss of a physical abode, it represented the loss of the way of life.

Relational Issues:  Other crucial issues faced by the IDPs include: the dissolution of the family, loss of one’s social and cultural ties, and the search for one’s place in a new society.  These relational issues refer to how the displaced manages their fit into a new society.  Accordingly, such issues touch on the issues of trust, dignity and the like, directly impacting the IDP/Host dynamic. Research on other displaced communities suggests that the added pressure of supporting the IDP communities generally results in local resentments and hostilities towards the IDPs.  In addition, Calderon (2010) suggests that displacement often brings diversity in a new community that the host may not necessarily welcome.  The arrival of the KPs added a new ethnic mix to their local communities.  The narratives of the host community suggest that the arrival of the Migrants had diluted the ethos of their communities.  Consequently, some communities made a case to push the IDPs out of their community, as was done in Delhi’s Bapu Dham camp.

Sub-System Issues:  The relational aspects, that is, the ability to communicate and integrate into a new society, are impacted by the differences in language, education, and the social upbringing of those displaced.  These sub-system issues lead to inadequate access to participation in a new society, generating feelings of deprivation and discrimination among the displaced.  Non-participation comes to be perceived as the anti-social behavior of the IDPs.  In addition, the official labeling of Migrants assigned to the KP community has impacted their social standing, as the locals use the same label to assign identity descriptions on the IDPs that suggest that they are inferior, less educated, and greedy.

Systemic/Structural Issues:  Structural or systemic issues of displacement refer to the overarching economic, legal, and political structures accessible to the displaced.  Depending on how the overarching structures of economy, law, and politics are set up, these structures or institutions can either facilitate the lives of those displaced or oppress them further as explained below.

Economic structures:  The Nested model suggests that the relational aspects of the IDPs are embedded within broader economic challenges, such as access to jobs and education.  Inadequate access to these services often results from the discriminatory IDP policies, such as benefits available to those who can furnish their past residential or school records.  Restrictive policies, impact the socio-economic standing of the IDPs by limiting them to the informal sector, where they become victims of local and police harassments.

Legal structures:  Legal structures represent the institutions for IDP protection, property rights, land restoration, and the overall systems for their justice.  With the fate of their return in limbo, several members of the KP community remain attached to their properties in the Valley.  However, the families fear that since their property was “grabbed by the militants”, there may not be any legal recourse to reclaim that property.

Political structures.  Issues that are embedded in the political structure of a country overlap the economic and the legal issues, as the political policies affect provisions of social services, housing, employee assistance programs, and avenues for legal recourse.  Political issues also include issues of return, state censorship of the IDP issues and political participation.  The issue of return for this community is highly embedded in the political policies of the country as it is impacted by negotiating with the opposition, eradicating militancy, and ensuring security for this minority community.

As illustrated here, the plethora of issues facing those displaced impact every dimension of their lives and magnify the complexity of their displacement experience.  The issues are enmeshed and embedded within other issues, thus defying the categorization of the IDP issues as strictly political, social, economic, or psychological.  Consequently, it is imperative that the IDP phenomenon be understood as a comprehensive system, where issues come to germinate, multiply, complicate, and even keep the phenomenon of displacement alive for decades.

Displacement: A Complex Conflict Issue

As illustrated through the web of issues, the concept of internal displacement can now be appropriately understood as a complex conflict issue.  It is a systemic issue, resulting from the forceful eviction of people.  Internal displacement involves the plight of those displaced, the victims of the conflict, traumatized by the break-up of families, loss of identity, home, and belonging.  In addition, it involves a complex dynamic of inter-group relations between the displaced and the host community.  This dynamic often brings about inter-group prejudices, discrimination, stereotyping, and power relations, dominated by the host group.

Moreover, contributing to the complexity of this phenomenon is the fact that the displaced are often crowded into urban slums, where crime and violence are already prevalent.  The host community’s resentments manifests as competitive group dynamics where the IDPs begin to retaliate by polluting and breaking the laws. Consequently, the day-to-day interactions between the host and the displaced triggers conflicts of small and medium intensity.

Additionally, competing claims for finite resources, such as land required to build settlements, can elevate IDP/Host tensions to complex levels (Ferris, 2011), similar to what happened in Delhi’s Bapu Dham camp.  The locals began to reclaim their community halls, which were being used to house the KP community, pushing their political leaders to relocate them in the outskirts.  Issues, such as these, plus the fear of being uprooted again have discouraged the KP community from reaching out to the wider community, resulting in parallel communities of the locals and the IDPs.

Unfortunately, the issues for those displaced extend beyond the IDP/Host relations and the resulting group dynamics.  The eventual return of the IDPs exposes them to new sets of challenges triggering conflicts of a territorial and political nature.

Appropriate Analysis and the Handling of Displaced Communities

An understanding of the phenomenon of displacement as a complex conflict issue paves the way to perform an accurate analysis of such communities.  Consequently, such an analysis should reveal the underlying psychological processes, roles of personalities, cultural context, positioning of actors, and the intricate group dynamics.  A holistic understanding of not only the phenomenon of displacement, but, more importantly, understanding the significance of the spillover effects, as illustrated in this article, is key for CR analysts, practitioners, policymakers and community builders.  Engagement of the conflict analysis and resolution tools, such as the Nested Model, has provided the guidance needed to understand the subtleties behind the positions of actors.  For instance, tracing the sources of inequalities and discriminatory policies to systemic issues of the phenomenon should point to policy reform.

Similar to the articles contributing to the knowledge-base of the refugee phenomenon, my intent here has been to advance an understanding of the growing phenomena of internal displacement in the context of the displacement of the Kashmir Pandit community.

By empowering the readers with a systematic tool required for unfolding the embedded issues of displacement, I hope that displacement can now be understood as a comprehensive system as opposed to a stand-alone issue that occurs at a given time, resulting in a single outcome that requires a single solution.  Any approach towards an understanding of internal displacement must consider the complexity of this phenomenon in order to respond appropriately.

Works Cited:

Achieng, R.  (2003).  Home here and home there: Janus-faced IDPs in Kenya. Researching Internal Displacement: State of the Art. Conference Report, February 2003, p. 17.  Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

Calderon, M. (2010).  Internal Displacement: Recent History, Visions for the Action Ahead . ISP Collection. Paper 838, SIT Graduate Institute.  Retrieved January 2011 from: http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/838.

Dugan, M. (1996).  A Nested Theory of Conflict.  Women in Leadership 1, (1) Summer 1996.

Ferris, E. (2011). Resolving Internal Displacement: Prospects for Local Integration (editor). The Brookings Institution, June 2011.

Rajput, S. (2012). Displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits:  Dynamics of Policies and Perspectives of Policymakers, Host Communities and the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). (Doctoral dissertation) George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.