Chapter 6 - Re-Uniting Split Families: The 1972 Ugandan Asian Refugees and the Internationalization of an Imperial Diaspora

Summary

Abstract This chapter focuses on the reconceptualization and reconfiguration of both citizens’ rights as well as human rights in the aftermath of the Ugandan Asians’ expulsion. In particular, it focuses on the question of reuniting stateless husbands sent to India with their wives in Britain. In claiming the right to family, reunification was used as a bargaining tool by the UK, India, representatives of NGOs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Asian families split by the expulsion. Families where each member could possess different travel and nationality documents, as many Ugandan Asians did, defied an easy logic of nation-state belonging. Instead, the Ugandan Asian family became both a site and a unit of contested internationalism in the global transition from a world of imperial diasporas to one of postcolonial nation-states.

Key words: refugees, migration, East Africa, family, rights

In August 1972, Idi Amin issued an order expelling Uganda's ethnically South Asian population, requiring them to leave the country by 8 November. Far from an idiosyncratic act by Amin, the expulsion was rooted in the longer identity politics of East Africa. The “Asian” presence in East Africa had predated the establishment of the British Empire, but colonial officials had encouraged the activities of that transnational mercantile community. The subsequent settlement of Indians who helped build the railways in East Africa further helped to create a “subimperial” class of non-white, non-African subjects who consolidated the British Empire's encroachment into East Africa. Decolonisation put Asian communities’ future in question throughout the region. The revolution in Zanzibar and the introduction of Kenya's Immigration Act and Trade Licensing Act had already prompted many departures. By enumerating but also questioning their legitimate place in the country, Uganda's 1971 Asian census had heralded the threat of expulsion.53 While the initial expulsion was aimed at the British Ugandan Asians – those with passports and legal connections to the UK – soon orders were expanded to include all Asians regardless of their documents. In the ensuing crisis, family members (particularly intergenerational, extended families, but also nuclear ones) ended up divided across different countries.