ABSTRACT

In 1972, upon expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin, diasporic Asians, who had settled in East Africa during colonial times, underwent a second stage of global dispersal. Many of them managed to resettle in the United Kingdom, despite anti-immigrant sentiments and increasingly restrictive immigration legislation. Other large groups arrived in India and Canada. One group, however, got scattered around the globe: the approximately 10,000 ‘Asians of undetermined origin’, who were resettled as refugees under auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This article investigates how and why this group of stateless Asians became refugees and candidates for international resettlement. It argues that all British policy makers sought to use the international community to shoulder part of the burden of winding up empire, while trying to avoid convictions for breaching newly emerging legally binding international human rights obligations. The Ugandan Asian crisis fits within the history of the creation of modern British immigration control law that took shape from 1962 onwards. This article proposes to decentralise the geographical frame beyond the UK to include developments in Kenya, Uganda, and India, where East African Asians likewise became ‘undesirables’.

摘要

1972 年，在被 Idi Amin 驱逐出乌干达后，在殖民时期定居在东非的流散亚洲人经历了第二阶段的全球分散。尽管反移民情绪和越来越严格的移民立法，他们中的许多人还是设法在英国重新定居。其他大型团体抵达印度和加拿大。然而，有一个群体分散在全球各地：大约 10,000 名“来源不明的亚洲人”，他们在联合国难民事务高级专员的主持下被重新安置为难民。本文调查了这群无国籍的亚洲人如何以及为什么成为难民和国际重新安置的候选人。它认为所有英国政策制定者都试图利用国际社会来承担清盘帝国的部分负担，同时试图避免因违反新出现的具有法律约束力的国际人权义务而被定罪。乌干达亚洲危机与 1962 年以后形成的现代英国移民管制法的制定历史相吻合。本文建议将地理框架分散到英国以外，包括肯尼亚、乌干达和印度的发展，东非亚洲人在这些地方同样成为“不受欢迎的人”。