Existential Refugees

An Insider Ethnography of the Being of Refugeehood among Malayaga Tamils in India

Abstract

This article addresses the urgent need to reconceptualise refugeehood in contexts where existing legal categories fail to account for lived realities of displacement. It examines the Malayaga Tamils in India — descendants of indentured plantation labourers displaced during the colonial period — who continue to live in refugee camps despite their historical and ancestral ties to India. Their case highlights the inadequacy of conventional definitions of ‘refugee’ and ‘stateless person’, particularly in protracted situations of displacement and contested citizenship. Using an insider ethnographic approach, this study introduces the concept of the ‘existential refugee’ to describe the condition of communities caught in legal ambiguity, historical displacement and ontological insecurity. Fieldwork was conducted with 26 respondents (19 women and seven men), whose narratives reveal how everyday experiences of abandonment, estrangement and unbelonging shape their understanding of identity and belonging. By foregrounding the concept of the existential refugee, this article contributes both conceptually and empirically to debates on refugeehood, statelessness and citizenship. It invites policymakers, scholars and practitioners to rethink refugee protection frameworks by paying attention not only to legal recognition but also to the existential dimensions of belonging that define displaced lives.