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Podcast: New Books in Human Rights
Episode: Susan Banki, "The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Description: The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists (Cornell UP, 2024), relays the events in Bhutan that led to the exodus of one-sixth of the population, and then recounts the activism by Bhutan's refugee diaspora that followed in response. Susan Banki asserts that activism functions like a physical ecosystem, in which hubs of activism in different locations interact to pressure the home country.
For Bhutan’s refugee mobilizers, physical proximity offers advantages in Nepal and India, where organizing protests, lobbying, and collecting information about government abuse in Bhutan is aided by being clo...