Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement — Policy and ... - CEPA

IDPs and Hosts as Constitutive Categories inProtracted Displacement: Experiences fromPuttalamCathrine Brun 1AbstractIn October 1990, the entire population of Muslims living in the LTTEcontrolled areas of northern Sri Lanka were expelled from their homes. Themajority of those who fled settled down as internally displaced people(IDPs) in the Puttalam District in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka.Through the history of the northern Muslims’ settlement in Puttalam, thecategories of ‘IDPs’ and ‘hosts’ have been constitutive for how society isorganised and for the emergence of new social categories and boundariesbetween groups. This paper discusses the emergence and working of thesecategories in the context of continued conflict in the north of the country.The paper first explores how the two discourses of humanitarianism andMuslim hospitality have played a part in contributing to the formation of thecategories of ‘IDPs’ and ‘hosts’, and how the meaning of the categorieshave changed over time. The second part of the paper analyses how thecategories have impacted on the status and vulnerability of groupscategorised as ‘IDPs’ and ‘hosts’ respectively. By way of conclusion somereflections on the relationship between the categories and solution toforced displacement is discussed in the context of protracted displacement.1Dr. Cathrine Brun is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology. Her research is mainly in the field of forced migrationand recovery due to conflict and disaster with a special emphasis on Sri Lanka. Much of herresearch work is done in collaboration with the forced migration research group of theNorwegian University of Science and Technology of which she is a founding member. She hasalso worked in India, UK, the South Caucasus and Norway. She has authored and contributedto many academic publications, the latest being “Finding a place; Local integration andprotracted displacement in Sri Lanka” published by the Social Scientists’ Association,Colombo.125