Fay Gale Centre seminar

Bhutan’s Homeland Activists: The Ecosystem of Exile Politics. 

In this talk, Susan Banki will draw on the key themes of her recently published book, The Ecosystem of Exile Politics (published by Cornell University Press). Acts of resistance against a state conducted by homeland activists – i.e., those outside the borders of that state – take on particular characteristics shaped by physical location. Drawing on the experiences of Bhutan’s homeland activists over place and time, this seminar explores how physical sites function like a physical ecosystem, and are differentiated by what activists do, given their position relative to the homeland. Physical proximity, Banki suggests, offers sites through which the power to mobilize and engage in struggle against the state becomes more pronounced and visceral. At the same time, sites proximate to the homeland are spaces of risk and disempowerment, where homeland activists are rarely able to obtain secure legal and social protection. In an ecosystem of exile politics, there are circulating and dynamic expressions of power, expressions that emanate both from the state and from resisters to that state power. Power, in all its forms, is mediated through physical proximity to the homeland and its uncomfortably conjoined twin, precarity. In an ecosystem of exile politics, physical proximity is both a boon and a bane. 

Bio: Associate Professor Susan Banki studies the political, institutional, and social contexts that explain the roots of and solutions to human rights violations and social justice abuses. In particular, she is interested in the ways that questions of sovereignty, transnationalism, and citizenship/membership have shaped our responses to conflict and injustice, particularly examining institutions such as the international refugee regime, diasporas, and the humanitarian system. Susan's focus is in the Asia-Pacific region, where she has conducted extensive field research in Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Japan on refugee/migrant protection, statelessness and border control. Her current projects include: the work of diasporas in responding to acute crises at home; humanitarian responses to complex displacement contexts; and the role of creative arts in transnational activism.