LAUSR

Pakistani Hindu refugee claims in India are shaped by both the international refugee regime and the regional South Asian refugee regime, which have overlapping and diverging notions of what constitutes refugeeness. Though both the international refugee regime and Partition-era-derived South Asian refugee regime emphasize vulnerability as a feature of refugeeness, the former evaluates refugee claims on the basis of statelessness and the latter on the basis of a religio-cultural identity. The interface of multiple refugee regimes both opens and forecloses opportunities for those who seek refugee status after crossing the border between Pakistan and India. This article argues that an attention to the interfaces between refugee regimes, and refugees and their advocates, reveals the ambiguities and consequences for people trying to work in and through multiple socio-legal regimes. As Pakistani Hindus and their advocates juggle expectations of what constitutes a good refugee, they are unable to fully satisfy the conditions of either regime’s criteria for refugee recognition.