Reckoning with refugeedom: refugee voices in modern history

This article outlines an agenda to relocate refugees the centre of historical enquiry by recovering and analysing their voices, in form letters petitions sent authorities within refugee regime. We adopt a comparative approach using evidence from four distinct incarnations regime: League Nations interwar Europe; early post-1945 era represented International Refugee Organization (IRO); newly established Office United High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); quarter century following Partition India, specifically its impact West Bengal. The demonstrates how refugees’ voices were shaped social, cultural administrative contexts which they wrote, that understanding these can help us see why framed claims particular ways. suggests Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept ‘polyphony’ provides means understood predicament engaged with regime often contradictory ambiguous viewpoints.