Paper short abstract:

Some Tibetan, Afghan and Burmese refugees live in Delhi for the past 21 years. How do they manage in dealing with waiting, living with uncertainty?

Paper long abstract:

The first Tibetans arrived in India in 1959, the first Afghans in 1979 and the first Burmese in 1988. A few years later some of them were in Delhi, seeking asylum.

From this time onwards, some of them live in the capital city of India, waiting either to go back, to settle down with proper rights to do so or to go further (to the West).

I propose to examine how refugees deal with waiting (a change of the political situation in their country of origin, the determination of their status, an appointment to get resettled) and live with this uncertainty. For the one who lead political activities, what strategies do they develop to maintain their struggle alive for so many years? What choices do they make in order to prepare for their future and to shape the options proposed to them? How do they manage to project themselves, even temporarily, in a country that keeps them in a transit state, which is at the very core of their status?

These questions will be answered with ethnographic data collected in Delhi between 2001 and 2006 among refugees and through an internship at the UNHCR Delhi.