Chagos Islanders in Mauritius and the UK: Forced Displacement and Onward Migration
Manchester University Press's picture

Author:   Jeffery, Laura                   
ISBN: 978 0 7190 8430 0
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
List price(s): 65.00 GBP  100.00 USD 
Publication date: 1 July 2011

Short description

This is the first book to compare the experiences of displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius with the experiences of those Chagossians who have moved to the UK since 2002. It provides a unique ethnographic comparative study of forced displacement and onward migration within the living memory of one community.

Full description

The Chagos islanders were forcibly uprooted from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean between 1965 and 1973. This is the first book to compare the experiences of displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius with the experiences of those Chagossians who have moved to the UK since 2002. It provides a unique ethnographic comparative study of forced displacement and onward migration within the living memory of one community. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Mauritius and Crawley (West Sussex), the six chapters explore Chagossians' challenging lives in Mauritius, the mobilisation of the community, reformulations of the homeland, the politics of culture in exile, onward migration to Crawley, and attempts to make a home in successive locations. Jeffery author illuminates how displaced people romanticise their homeland through an exploration of changing representations of the Chagos Archipelago in song lyrics. Offering further ethnographic insights into the politics of culture, she shows how Chagossians in exile engage with contrasting conceptions of culture ranging from expectations of continuity and authenticity to enactments of change, loss, and revival. The book will appeal particularly to social scientists specialising in the fields of migration studies, the anthropology of displacement, political and legal anthropology, African studies, Indian Ocean studies, and the anthropology of Britain, as well as to readers interested in the Chagossian case study.

Table of contents

Note to readers Introduction: Forced displacement and onward migration Part : Marginalisation and mobilisation 1. Marginalisation in Mauritius 2. Mobilisation in exile Part II Narrating homeland, displacement, suffering, and loss 3. Singing the homeland 4. The politics of culture in exile Part III Onward migration 5. Echoes of marginalisation in Crawley 6. Making home in exile Postscript. Legal and environmental barriers to resettlement References

Biography

Laura Jeffery is Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

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