Burmese Refugee Women and the Gendered Politics of Exile, Reconstruction and Human Rights

This research paper examines the predicament of Burmese women refugees in India and explores the complexities of the female refugee experience. Combining theoretical perspectives with personal narratives and oral histories, this paper provides a view of the struggles faced by refugee women as both victims of circumstance and agents of regeneration. More significantly, the case of Burmese refugee women challenges traditional stereotypes and gendered binary constructions of victimhood associated with the refugee experience. Their participation in community based refugee organisations and the larger women’s rights movement has provided refugee women with new scope for action, activism, social interconnectedness, cultural nationalism, transnational linkages, and economic and political mobilisation.