Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which Afghan refugee women in Delhi, India, experience everyday lives while waiting for imagined futures, via resettlement, in Canada. Bringing together social and political structures, the paper aims to shed light on the nuances of gendered refugee migration.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the everyday lives of Afghan refugee women in Delhi, India, while they wait for imagined futures in Canada. In the context of India not being signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, most refugee groups in India are considered foreigners by the Indian government and (for most purposes) come under the purview of the UNHCR. Placed in this legal liminality, Afghan refugees, who constitute one of the largest refugee groups in India, consider India as a transitory location, and are bound by the desire to be resettled in third (Western) countries. Drawing on 64 in-depth interviews conducted over nine months with Afghan refugee women of Hazara, Pashtun, and Tajik ethnicities, who migrated to India between 2005 and 2020, and who live in central Delhi as well as far-flung suburbs, I investigate how waiting in everyday life is experienced differently by different Afghan refugee women, while being in transit. I find that experiences of waiting are crucially shaped by the multiple intersections of identity that the women embody, of refugeehood, ethnicity, age, marital status, economic class, and spatial locations in Delhi, as well of those in Afghanistan. The varied identities that the women constitute produce varying experiences of everyday life in waiting, ranging from hopelessness, the perception of the UNHCR as their State, and the knowledge that Canada is only a matter of time. Bringing together social and political structures, the paper aims to shed light on the nuances of gendered refugee migration.