Bhutan too has been a sender of refugees. Here, Nepal has been the receiving country. Those who have been forced to leave Bhutan or who have left on their own, without coercion, are of Nepali-stock. Their forebears from Nepal had settled in Bhutan over the past 50 years, clearing wastelands and malarial-infested forests and swamps in the humid south, bordering India, turning difficulties into opportunities. New migrants kept trickling in until the ruling Drukpa, who are Tibetan in origin and Buddhist by faith, felt alarmed enough to launch a campaign to drive out ‘illegals.’ In the process, many genuine Bhutanese citizens of Nepali origin were harassed and pushed out of Bhutan.

For nearly a decade, these refugees have lived in UNHCR supervised camps in south-east Nepal, near the town of Jhapa, in neat settlements where there are schools but no work for the able-bodied. Not less than 1,20,000 live in these camps and another 20,000-25,000 have moved to the borders of Assam and West Bengal, where they have settled temporarily.

They continue to wait, hoping for a return to their homes. But several rounds of discussions between officials from Nepal and Bhutan have failed to move the situation around. They remain in the camps, the question of their nationality as far from resolution as when they first came, nearly a decade back. But the longer they stay in camps, the greater the danger of being infiltrated by radicalism and extremism and of groups taking to arms as an alternative means of struggle.

One of the best known exodus of refugees in recent times took place only a few hundred kilometres from India’s borders. More than two million Afghans have streamed out of their war-devastated country since 1979 and taken refuge in Pakistan and Iran. Some have returned to Afghanistan but the majority stay on in sprawling camps near Peshawar, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, bordering their homeland, and in camps on the Afghan-Iran border. They live in these settlements, fearful of the fighting that rages on in the country, of the land mines that devastate life and limb, of the lack of a stable government, and are worried about the capacity of the land to bear crops.

These are examples of how social definitions, analysis and academic discourse break down in the face of human prejudices and concerns.

Unwanted Migrants

The other ‘category’ which Weiner defined as Unwanted Migrants embraces those groups which have crossed international and domestic provincial boundaries in search of economic benefits, or those who have moved as a result of economic and environmental factors. They are unwanted because they have been rejected by the host community. Thus, the Russians who settled in Estonia over many years and, who, after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, became targets of Estonian nationalism, fall in this list.