Third Critical Studies Conference

"Empire , States and Migration"

Name of the Session VII: Migration and Issues of Justice

Pearl Harbor Echoes: Of War, Relocation and Documentation of the Japanese American Internment Experience - Somdatta Mandal
 
Strengthening Policy Responses to Migrant Smuggling and Human Trafficking - Ravi Tripathi
 
Critical Climatics, Forced Migration and Social Justice - Arun G. Mukhopadhyay
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Pearl Harbor Echoes: Of War, Relocation and Documentation of the Japanese American Internment Experience - Somdatta Mandal  [Full Paper]      

Abstract

Every year on the 19th of February, some Americans get together to celebrate the Day of Remembrance. “Is it like any other calendar day earmarked for some social event?” one might ask. Not really. The incident that triggers this occurred on the 19th of February 1942 when President Roosevelt issued the infamous Executive Order 9066 enabling the U.S. Army to forcibly remove any and all persons of Japanese ancestry from areas of strategic importance on the West Coast of the United States and send them to the numerous internment camps. Truly speaking, the Japanese internment experience during World War II is a subject that has not received adequate attention in India, although a significant amount of work has been done on it in the U.S. and Canada.
My proposed paper will contextualize and briefly reiterate some well-known historical facts behind this incident and its aftermath.  On December 7, 1941, the country of Japan bombed the United States military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As a result the United States entered World War II against Japan, Germany and Italy. Though the people of Italian and German ancestry were allowed to remain, those of Japanese ancestry were required to leave their homes in California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. Thus from 1942 to 1945 began an epochal American tragedy when the United States incarcerated behind barbed-wire fences almost an entire ethnic group living within its continental borders. Without formal charges, trials, findings made, or sentences passed nearly 1,20,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, including children and the elderly, were held in crude prison camps situated in the dusty and desolate areas of the United States. For decades after the war, official information and documents about the Japanese internment camps were difficult to obtain. Many U.S. agencies involved with the operation of such camps placed security classification on their files, thereby hampering access to information. Only recently has it become possible to examine some of these materials. Also, former internees were reluctant to speak about their experiences. Only now, with the passage of time, has some of this reluctance waned. Perhaps with the passage of time, like many refugees of the partition of India, they have been able to overcome the shock, the grief, the psychological trauma of incarceration.
Referring to historical documents, fiction, non-fiction and film documentaries, my paper therefore proposes to reexamine this major incident of human rights violation. The Japanese American Internment saga is an American story; the majority of those imprisoned were American citizens, the decision to imprison them were made by other Americans, the imprisonment sites were located within the United States, and the U.S. government transferred persons of Japanese ancestry from other countries and confined them in the Americas.  This larger context is vital to recall because the imprisonment experience is part of the warp and weft of U.S. race relations history.  Seeing things in the light of the American ideals of freedom, democracy and human dignity and thereby provide a new perspective on it becomes even more necessary after 9/11, where issues of minority rights remain unresolved and a nation goes overboard again.

Bionote

Somdatta Mandal is Associate Professor and current Chairperson, Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. A recipient of several prestigious fellowships like the Fulbright, Charles Wallace, Rockefeller Residency and Salzburg Seminar, she has been published widely both nationally and internationally. Her areas of interest are contemporary fiction, film and culture studies, Diaspora studies and translation. She has also received a Sahitya Akademi award for translating short fiction. She is at present translating a series of women’s travelogues from Bengal. She can be contacted at somdattam@gmail.com

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Strengthening Policy Responses to Migrant Smuggling and Human Trafficking - Ravi Tripathi

Abstract

Migrant smuggling and human trafficking are separate phenomena, which in turn are only components of the wider concept ‘irregular’ migration. People trafficked or smuggled across borders probably comprise a relatively small proportion of irregular migrants worldwide, but they deserve separate attention in the discussion on irregular migration for a number of reasons. First, both processes, but in particular human trafficking, expose migrants to special vulnerabilities, even compared to other forms of irregular migration. As a result, secondly, there is almost universal consensus that both processes should be stemmed. Consequently, thirdly, considerable progress has been made in developing a normative framework, addressing the issues in regional consultative processes, and implementing national laws and policies. It may not be possible absolutely to eradicate migrant smuggling and human trafficking, but there appears to be genuine political will to reduce them to a minimum. The proposed paper will recommend four steps to further strengthen policy responses to migrant smuggling and human trafficking. The first is to reinforce the normative framework applying to these processes. The second is to enhance political will on the part of all stakeholders to develop and implement national laws and policies, especially in response to migrant smuggling. The third is to build capacity to respond, including international cooperation. The final step is to develop responsiveness to new challenges as they arise, for example as migrant smuggling operations evolve into transnational businesses.

Bionote

I am a Fourth year student of law at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow and am associated with Youth Initiative Network (YIN) as Youth Coordinator. I have worked extensively on Migration and Trafficking issues and was part of the Civil Society Days of 2nd Global Forum on Migration & Development held at Manila, Philippines where I presented my paper titled “Trafficking in women and children – An insight in to the world of sex slavery”. Presently, I am working on the “legal and Policy aspects of Trafficking in South Asia” and preparing a case study on the “plight of migrant labourers working in Leather Tanneries of Kanpur”.

        

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Critical Climatic, Forced Migration and Social Justice - Arun G. Mukhopadhyay [ Full Paper]

Abstract

United Nations Secretary General, declaring 2009 as the year of Climate Change, has called for ‘responsibility to protect’ in the realm of human rights and ‘responsibility to deliver’ in larger sphere of common international action.Anthropogenic climate change leads to biophysical transformation on the global scale engendering localised stresses in the forms of coastal erosion, ice melt, infertile land and deteriorating water sources.These stresses threaten critical minimum basic needs of vulnerable socities without the capabilities of adaption and resilence. Neither the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, nor its Kyoto Protocol has any provision of protection or rehabilitation to numerous affected poor people of less developed world.Refugee Convention does not confer refugee status for environmental persecution. Northern knowledge-power had set the norms to reinforce dominance over the international system that can not reflect on the environment in a broader political and cultural context of a region or a country. The twentieth century has spanned through two world wars, post-war recovery-boom-burst and emergence of   neo-liberal globalisation .The treadmill of production is founded on classical Say’s law of capitalist circulation -supply creates its own demand and drives the expansion of production and consumption synergistically.  The   industrialised North  has  emitted massive  greenhouse gases, with increasing    energy- and chemical-intensive production since the ‘outbreak’ of cold war, and has polluted the environment to a catastrophic extent that is largely irreversible.The zero-sum game has its obvious toll on wretched teeming millions  of ‘other’ world as the ‘development of underdevelopment’ diversifies with deadlier dimensions. The victimised populations become uprooted from their habitats and forced to migrate, even to foreign countries to join the researve army of lobour there and get entrapped in new conflicts and crises. The citizens of a bordered territory are entitled to fundamental rights which their fellow human beings, the irregular migrants, can never be provided. As with capabilities approach by Sen and Nussbaum, if outcome of climate degradation potentially undermine fundamental rights and human security, enshrined as global norms, policy as well as national policies of the industrialised countries, the concerns about justice should be the prime mover of global climate governance. The emancipatory ideas about rights, justice and responsibility should transcend the ‘bordered’ confines with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This insight has definite resemblance with Derridan concepts of ‘new international’ and ‘democracy to come’. Ultimately, a successful adaptation process has to reflect on how the command of natural resources and environmental goods has forged the plunder of climate and human habitats by the interplay of a host of historical, ecological, social and economic factors. An internationally agreed measure of ecological debt would clarify “over-polluting” countries’ contribution towards climate change-enforced human vulnerabilities.Beyond the refugee definition contained in the Refugee Convention, the pertaining issue is to be addressed by a new legal instrument -a Protocol on Recognition, Protection, and Resettlement of Climate Refugees to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Bionote

I had been an academic at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.Initially, I had been engaged in institutional research/consultancy projects.Subsequently, my reseach interest had shifted towards critical studies, political ecology, biopower, public health, etc. About 15 papers have been acceped by international Conferences in Europe and North America since 2006, apart from published papers. Presently an independent researcher, my on-going studies are on (1) Critical Climatics and Human Vulnerabilities and (2) Climate Engineering and Outer Space Security.