Journal of Refugee Studies The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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Hospitality: Becoming IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement

CATHRINE BRUN
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Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Cathrine.brun@svt.ntnu.no
MS received June 2009; revised MS received May 2010

The paper engages with Jacques Derridas writings on hospitality to discuss how, in a situation of protracted displacement in Sri Lanka, policy categories interact with local categories to make particular understandings of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their hosts. Using the notions of conditional and unconditional hospitality, the paper first shows the political and ethical principles underpinning local and international humanitarian discourses and practices for dealing with internal displacement. Second, the paper analyses how the two categories of IDPs and hosts emerge, are negotiated and redefined by looking at the hospitable engagements between the two groups. The paper analyses how hospitality operates and governs the relationship between IDPs and hosts and consequently shapes particular identities and rights. The paper concludes by indicating the need to encompass both different international humanitarian approaches and local approaches in dealing with internal displacement. Keywords: hospitality, hosts, displacement, Sri Lanka

Introduction Categories are necessary to comprehend the world, but how we categorize has profound social and political implications for people associated with the categories and for ways in which people relate to each other. This paper engages with Derridas writings on hospitality to discuss how, in a situation of protracted displacement, policy categories interact with local categories to make particular understandings of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their hosts. The paper goes beyond the familiar stories of disruption, loss and marginalization crucial for our understandings of displacement and discusses the emergence and working of the categories IDPs and hosts. Forced migration, the forcible movement of people from one place to another, represents a throwntogetherness (Massey 2005) of people who will have to relate to each other. Hospitality is applied to understand how, when thrown together as a result of displacement, individuals and groups

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transform into hosts and guests. In engaging with hospitality, I set out to achieve three aims. First I seek to introduce the ethics and politics of different policy approaches to internal displacementnotably what I term the UN/ Brookings approach and the ICRC approach. Second, I aim to show how the policy discourses and practices with regard to internal displacement interact with local discourses and practices so as to understand the emergence and changing meaning of IDP and host categories. Practising hospitality takes place between the ethics and politics of relating to others, and the third aim is to analyse how these categories operate and govern the relationship between IDPs and hosts and consequently shape particular identities and rights. The particular case of protracted displacement used to analyse these processes is the Muslims expelled from territories controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in northern Sri Lanka in 1990. The majority of the approximately 75,000 expelled Muslims are still living as IDPs in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka where they were welcomed initially by both Muslim and Sinhalese residents of the area. The work presented here is part of a long term engagement with the protracted situation of displacement that the Muslims from northern Sri Lanka have experienced. In this engagement I have worked with people within the groups of both hosts and IDPs. I first visited the area in 1994, but the research started as a PhD project in 1997 with fieldwork in several periods from 1997 to 2001. Since then I have visited and spent time with the people there every year. Since early 2009, I have again been involved more actively as a member of the Citizens Commission for the northern Muslims which aims to document the impact of their displacement and to voice the heterogeneous experiences of displacement within the group. In this paper I analyse the relationship of hospitality between Muslim hosts and Muslim IDPs in Puttalam, Sri Lanka. In the first section of the paper I discuss the different policy approaches to internal displacement and hosts. I move on to explain Derridas theorizing on hospitality before introducing the role of Muslims in Sri Lanka and the displacement of the Muslims from the north of Sri Lanka in 1990. The third section shows the ways in which the local and the international discourses operated in the process where the people in Puttalam welcomed the northern Muslims into their homes, and how people became hosts and IDPs. The fourth section analyses how the hosts welcoming attitude changed to make hospitality more conditional and the fifth section follows this process by discussing in particular how negotiations between the two groups impact on identities and rights. The paper concludes by indicating the need for an approach that encompasses different international humanitarian approaches and local approaches alike for dealing with internal displacement. The International Humanitarian Discourse on IDPs and Hosts Policy categories1 are much discussed in forced migration studies (Bakewell 2008; Black 2001; Van Hear 1998; Zetter 1988, see debates in 1999 in Forced

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IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement

Migration Review and between Hathaway, Cohen, de Wind and Adelman and McGrath in JRS in 2007). It is possible to identify two key discussions here: first, the relationship between the refugee and the IDP category and, second, the problem of applying policy categories as analytical categories in research. Less prominent in these discussions are the ways in which the policy categories operate and interact with local discourses, strategies and categories.2 In this paper I concentrate on the latter and in order to understand such interactions between international humanitarian policy discourses and practices and local discourses and practices, I identify in this section two approaches to internal displacement and their limited dealing with the so-called hosts. By and large internally displaced persons has been accepted as a category in our research and practice today. However, some contradictory views on the application of the IDP category can be found, notably in relation to assisting and protecting other vulnerable groups who have not moved but may stay together with those labelled IDPs and may be in need of the same protection and assistance as IDPs. It may be possible to identify two main views and schools in this debate. On one side is the UN/Brookings-Bern Project successful advocacy for internal displacement as a separate category and the formulation of the Guiding Principles for Internal Displacement.3 The main line of reasoning for this view is that there is a need for a separate category of internally displaced people because forced migrants are very vulnerable and their experiences differ from those of people who are not forced to move. IDPs consequently need special assistance and protection. The second approach may be termed the ICRC approach. Based on humanitarian principles and realities in the field, the ICRC is critical of working with internal displacement as a separate humanitarian category. On the ground, the ICRC does not distinguish between IDPs and other civilians affected by conflictat least in principle. Rather, in situations of armed conflict and internal disturbances, the ICRC will give priority to those with the most urgent needs, regardless of whether they have been forced to move or not (Contat Hickel 2001; Krill 2001). Contat Hickel warns against the discriminatory nature of the IDP approach because of the specific mechanisms set up to respond to the need of one single category. The ICRC approach rests in the ethical principles of the humanitarian imperative of impartiality, independence and neutrality.4 Borton et al. (2005) support this approach and point to the practical difficulties on the ground in separating IDPs from other vulnerable groups. Of particular concern here is that the separate identification of IDPs is at odds with the humanitarian principle that assistance should be determined by the needs and needs alone. The discussion between these two schools of dealing with people forced to move, but who have not crossed an internationally recognized boundary, is an important starting point for the remainder of this paper: one school advocates the need for IDPs to be a separate category, the other school takes a more inclusive approach as its starting point. In the ICRC approach, people in need of assistance and protection among the host population would

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potentially be assisted, but there is no discussion in either of the schools about who the hosts are and what the meaning of hosts would potentially be in situations of internal displacement. Hosts as a category has received limited attention in forced migration studies and policies and is taken for granted as a category that comes into existence when IDPs or refugees arrive. Hosts are often called upon as an important category by referring to Chamberss (1986) statement that hosts tend to be thought of as a single entity summarized as host communities, the local people or the surrounding population. However, few attempts have been made first, to look explicitly at the heterogeneity and meanings of this category for people defined as hosts. Second, there is not much work on how the hosts play a role in shaping the category of IDPs. There are limited attempts to include hosts in policies and programmes dealing with forced migrants. And finally, there are few attempts to understand how the categories of IDPs and hosts are created, recreated and manifested on the ground in interplay between different understandings, practices and discourses of hosts, IDPs and the meeting between hosts and IDPs. It is the two latter points I discuss here. Hospitality: Ethics and Politics of Relating to Others The arrival of forced migrantsin this case IDPsin a new place represents a throwntogetherness in which individuals and groups have to relate to one another in new ways. Derrida discusses this relation as hospitality (1997, 2000, 2001, 2005; Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000). Derridas discussion of hospitality is influenced by readings of Kant, Levinas and the phenomenology of the stranger developed by Simmel (Benhabib 2006). Hospitality is, in Derridas understanding, about ethics. It is the fundamental act of ethics and of receptivity to the other. According to Benhabib (2006), hospitality comprises both an anthropologically and culturally limited encounter with the other, and an ethical encounter with the other. In a number of essays, conversations, lectures and texts, Derrida discusses how we can understand the relationship between the strangerthe otherand the host in the context of immigration, integration and cosmopolitanism. His work has inspired others to use hospitality to unsettle the taken for granted relationship between host and guest in the context of migration and the welcoming and reception of migrants in practice and policies (Critchley and Kearney 2001; Deutscher 2007; Dikec 2002; Friese 2004; Ramadan 2008; Rosello 2001). Derridas writings on hospitality concern the foreigner in general, the immigrant, the exiled, the deported, the stateless or the displaced person (Derrida 2001: 4), but hospitality can also more generally be the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others. Derrida seeks to advocate a set of cosmopolitan rights for asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants that goes beyond state authority and legislation (Derrida 2000). He terms this an unconditional hospitality which he describes as the ethical dimension of hospitality. It is hospitality that makes no demand on the other and

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IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement

welcomes the other without knowing in advance who or what the other might be (Derrida 2001). Unconditional hospitalitythe total welcome would require the right of refuge for all immigrants and newcomers (Critchley and Kearney 2001). In unconditional hospitality, formulating categories for indicating who should have the right to support or the right to stay does not make sense. Here it is a more universal understanding where rights to assistance are not based on where you are and who you are. These ethical principles of unconditional hospitality towards the other underpin the discourse and practices advocated by the ICRC, as mentioned above. The notion of unconditional hospitality is an uncomfortable and rather unrealistic understanding of hospitality. It implies a total welcome where the relationship between hosts and guests becomes unsettled and where a host would abandon possessions and cede mastery of the home. It is unrealistic because we have to have things to be hospitable with; the hospitable do possess things, and the things remain theirs. Derrida tackles the dilemma inherent in unconditional hospitality by introducing the double law of hospitality (Derrida 2005). Together with unconditional hospitality, Derrida introduces the law of conditional hospitality. While unconditional hospitality is the ethics of hospitality, conditional hospitality is the political dimension of hospitality: the right to welcome and be welcomed. It involves judicial principles and institutional arrangements and is based on the distinction between host and guest with a locational right at the centre. In the humanitarian discourse of internal displacement as discussed above, conditional hospitality could be represented by the UN/Brookings approach to internal displacement with the accompanying Guiding Principles formulated to protect and assist IDPs. The starting point for conditional hospitality is the rights and entitlements associated with the category. The consequence of a conditional hospitality is first, that internal displacement becomes an institutional responsibility. It is in the power of the institutionlike the humanitarian community or a governmentto decide who is entitled to be welcomed and defined as an IDP and to decide who belongs to this category. Second, conditional hospitality denotes a particular right to a particular place. It is the movement of people and the status that determines their right to protection and assistance. In conditional hospitality, assistance for people forced to move within their own country becomes a question of having crossed a local boundary, being defined as an internally displaced person and consequently being granted a predetermined set of rights. Derrida used the two understandings of hospitality to separate political from ethical constraints. The tension between politics and ethics is a classic tension in humanitarian ethics and Derrida formulates them as two contradictory and equally justified imperatives. The two notions of hospitality must co-exist, and it is between the two that decisions must be taken (Derrida 2005). This is, as Derrida states himself, a formidable challenge because of their difference. However, there is no choice between the one or the other, the

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two forms of hospitality are always there. The politics and ethics of hospitality do not exclude one another. With reference to the UN/Brookings and the ICRC approach to internal displacement then, it should not so much be that we select one or the other, but that we should rather acknowledge the need for the two approaches to relate more to each other. Again, these two approaches to internal displacement do not take place in a vacuum, but in interplay with the concrete situations where displacement takes place. In order to bring hospitality into this discussion, I first want to address the question of how hosts become hosts and guests guests; who should welcome, whose responsibility is hospitality? In this context, the institutional responsibility is much stronger in conditional hospitality where it is subject to regulative forces. Unconditional hospitality, on the other hand, is a more universal responsibility in our dealings with others where the hosts, or the established groups, would welcome newcomers based on a feeling of responsibility for others. Second, as mentioned above, hospitality requires having something to be hospitable with. Analysing relations between forced migrants and their hosts through hospitality must include understandings of structure, power and inequalities. Here a challenge is the problem, and the necessity, of categories. In an unconditional hospitality, the categories IDPs and hosts do not make sense, but there is a need to differentiate not only institutionally and legally, but also ethically between people in need of protection and assistance and others. Third, hospitality is fundamentally about ethics and a way of understanding the encounter with the stranger. Hospitality takes place between the hosts and the guests, governing the relationship between self and other (Westmoreland 2008). Hospitality as an encounter with the Other shapes identities of individuals and groups and the relationship between them. Ramadan (2008: 665) shows how war reveals starkly the limitations of unconditional hospitality as an ethic for our relations with the Other. Unconditional hospitality comes under pressure in the relationship with the enemy as Other. In the case I turn to now, the Other is less obvious as it is Muslims being welcomed by Muslims. However, even in this case the relationship between the two forms of hospitality is not clearcut; there is tension between conditional and unconditional hospitality in the interplay between international humanitarian and local discourses and practices.

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IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement Muslims, Muslimness and Spatial Politics in Sri Lanka
What were your first memories in the sense of being a Tamil in the south? I had no sense of being a Tamil No sense? I had no sense at all of being a Tamil (Sivanandan 2009: 82). There were no divisions between us at that time; we didnt think of Muslims and Tamils as different. Only our religion was different, but in our minds there were no divisions (from an interview in 1998 with a northern Muslim living as an IDP in Puttalam).

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When reading the interview with Sivanandan5 about his life in Colombo in the 1940s, I was struck by the similarities with my conversation with a northern Muslim displaced by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the relationship between Tamils and Muslims in northern Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. Both interviews show the importance ethnicity has gained in Sri Lankan society since independence. In Sri Lanka Muslim is an ethnic category and identity, but Muslims do not always share the cultural grammar with the Tamils and Sinhalese. Partly as a result of this they have come within the shadow of Sri Lankas dominant ethnic discourse of Tamils and Sinhalese (Ismail 1995). Sinhalese and Tamil ethnicities refer to origin, religion,6 language and territory. Sri Lankan Muslims, however, are defined as an ethnic group based on religion. Their geographical distribution is a major determining factor of the diversity of their culture, economy and their political behaviour (Nuhman 2007). There is a distinction between Muslims in the south and west and Muslims in the north and east. Muslims of the north and east are primarily cultivators and poor farmers living with the Tamil community (Knoerzer 1998). Muslims of the south and west tend to be a wealthier and more urbanized group living with the Sinhalese community and involved in trade and commerce (OSullivan 1999). Additionally, the Muslims in Puttalam District (north-western Muslims) are distinct from both southern and western and northern and eastern Muslims. While Muslims represent a small minority of approximately 7 per cent of the population,7 they have played a relatively major role in Sri Lankan politics nationally by often supporting the majority Sinhalese political initiatives such as the Sinhala-only language reform in 1956. Muslim politics have been dominated by politicians from the south and west who found that their political interests were best met through participation and integration with the majority Sinhalese partiesnot with the Tamils (Knoerzer 1998; OSullivan 1999). Although traditionally speaking Tamil, they now tend to speak the language of the majority group at the place where they live. In the north and east in particular, Muslims and Sri Lankan Tamils have intersecting histories with many commonalities; they share many of the same cultural traditions and they speak the same language. At the same time, however, their histories have been very different and these differences have become

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more articulate during the conflict. With increasing emphasis on a separate homeland for Tamils in the north and east from the 1970s, Muslims in this area felt the need to state their own identity and claim their rights as Muslims. Mobilizing on the basis of Muslim identities, a political party, the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress (SLMC) was established in 1981. Its charismatic leader, M. H. M. Ashraff, led the party to become a national Muslim party till his unexpected death in a helicopter accident in 2000. The SLMC has not been able to keep its national strength since 2000 and Muslim politics have again become more regionally based. The war between the LTTE and the government forces started in 1983. During the 1980s Tamil militants became rougher in their dealings with Muslims (Hoole 1993). There were increasing tensions between Muslims and Tamils on issues of land, identity and support of the LTTE in the north and east. The government also played a part in divide and rule strategies between Tamils and Muslims. A complex web of alliances and of sympathies and antipathies developed in the north and east. Some Muslims continued to support and join the LTTE until 1990; other Muslims supported other militant groups, and an increasing number of Muslims operated on their own behalf, often with support from the government. Violence culminated in 1990 with the LTTE killing Muslims praying in mosques in eastern Sri Lanka, and finally expelling Muslims from their homes in the north. Becoming Internally Displaced and Hosts 75,000 Muslims were expelled by the LTTE from the northern areas under their control in October 1990 (Hasbullah 2001). Experiences of expulsion, loss of house and belongings, and the flight on foot through the jungle and by boat in rough seas during monsoon rain played its part in constituting the northern Muslims identities as IDPs. The majority of the displaced arrived in Puttalam District in the North-Western Province. The local people in Puttalamparticularly the Muslims but also the Sinhalese and Tamilswelcomed the Muslims from the north into their homes, gardens and schools for shelter, and provided the displaced with clothes and food. In this process the local population became hosts. Although there is much variation in the way the categories of IDPs and hosts are performed, these categories were formed and maintained as an interplay between peoples experiences, practices, culture and institutional practices. Two discourses in particular were instrumental in forming the categories: the discourse on Muslim ethics and ideals of generosity and hospitality, and the humanitarian discourse on internal displacement. The Discourse on Islamic Ethics and Ideals
The Prophet went into exile at Medina in AD 622, a key date because it constitutes year one of the Muslim calendar. The Meccans who migrated with him

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IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement

would be called the Muhajirun (literally migrants), [. . .]. His new adherents, recruited from among the tribes of Medina, would be called the Ansar (auxiliaries, supporters). [. . .] The simplicity of their lodgings, their closeness to each other, and their closeness to the mosque gave a democratic dimension to the Islamic community that makes us all dreamdream about that lack of distance between the leader and his people. Thanks to the ease of exchange among the Muhajirun and the presence of the mosque, the integration of the Ansar and all the other new converts proceeded with rapidity. To accelerate the amalgamation of Medinese and Meccans, Muhammad had recourse to some rituals that created fraternal links: each Ansari was to accept a Muhajir as brother, for whom he was to be, as it were, responsible for helping him to conquer the feeling of uprootedness (Mernissi 1991: 30 and 111).

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Principles of hospitality are shared by the Abrahamic religions (Derrida 2002; Elmadmad 2008; Friese 2009). In the context of the northern Muslims arrival in Puttalam, the Islamic value of welcoming strangers was presented as an important act of generosity. It has been shown by several authors that granting asylum and refuge constitutes a moral and legal obligation in Islam (Elmadmad 1991; Muzaffar 2001). Elmadmad shows how obligations of welcoming guests in Islam also encompass the obligation for all Muslims to grant asylum and protection to any person who asks for it, whatever the reason for his or her flight. Additionally, as Muzaffar shows, the role of almsgivingzakathshould play a key role in financing refugee relief, rehabilitation and development. The principle of zakath refers to compulsory almsgiving in deference to the rights of the poor and refugees.8 The significance of the Prophet Mohammads flight from persecution in Mecca and reception in Medina was often mentioned as an important dimension of the arrival and reception of the northern Muslims in Puttalam. People compared the displaced people with the Muhajiruns who had to flee, and the locals who received them with the Ansaris, and thereby positioned themselves as hosts and displaced in Puttalam. The Islamic discourse of unconditional hospitality is close to the ICRC approach of unconditionalityit requires a total welcome and no separation between different categories of need. However, despite the language of unconditionality dominating the stories from Puttalam, Derrida (2005) shows that the Islamic obligation means compulsion. Still, what is important is that the Islamic obligations to receive and assist the displaced eased the phase of reception, and provided a basis for rebuilding the lives of the northern Muslims and for local integration processes. For the first month, the host population was essential for the survival of the IDPs, and the role of the host community was often referred to by the northern Muslims with immense gratitude. All ethnic groups assisted the northern Muslims when they arrived in Puttalam. But the Islamic discourse of hospitality was mainly pursued by local Muslims and concerned the obligation by Muslims to assist their Muslim brothers and sisters. In the following I focus mainly on this relationship between the local Muslims and the displaced Muslims.

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The Humanitarian Discourse A second discourse to influence the formation of the IDP and host categories in Puttalam was the humanitarian discourse. The ICRC was a major actor in humanitarian operations in war affected Sri Lanka and assisted people displaced by the war and living in LTTE controlled areas. However, it was the UN/Brookings-Bern approach that came to dominate the discourse and practices dealing with people displaced by the war. Internally Displaced Persons has become a well established term and category in Sri Lanka. Today, the acronym IDP is a term commonly used by politicians, newspapers and people in general. The term came into common usage through the myriad of institutions, committees, organizationsgovernmental, nongovernmental and multilateraland researchers working with and writing about displacement. In fact, the term internal displacement was used in the country before it became an internationally recognized term. UNHCR played a key role in this process, and the agencys involvement in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s and 1990s contributed to shape the agencys policy in engaging with IDPs elsewhere.9 In 1993, Francis Dengs first country mission following his confirmation in 1993 as representative of the UN Secretary-General was to Sri Lanka (Weiss and Korn 2006). The UN/Brookings group subsequently came in and worked actively and successfully to make the IDP category known in Sri Lanka, together with UNHCR which also worked to disseminate knowledge about the category and the Guiding Principles to all levels of the government administration (see, for example Jayatillake 2003). These various initiatives paved the way for the established understanding of IDP in Sri Lanka. As well as this, the Sri Lankan government embraced the IDP category and utilized it as an opportunity to control peoples movements and regulate peoples access to various rights and entitlements (Brun 2003). In the case of the northern Muslims, the IDP category has become very persistent. Most people thought the displacement would be temporary and that people could return to their homes shortly. After the first month when the hosts took the most active role in providing relief for the northern Muslims, the humanitarian community moved into Puttalam to assist with establishing welfare centres (camps), providing food, shelter and basic services. Along with this process, the hosts to a large extent withdrew their assistance. The IDPs became much more the responsibility of the humanitarian community than the hosts. This is not a unique history in Sri Lanka. Hasbullah and Korf (2009) show from the post-tsunami work in eastern Sri Lanka how the state initiatives and humanitarian agencies largely replaced local initiatives. From an Unconditional to a Conditional Welcome
[. . .] the host, he who offers hospitality must be the master in his house, he [. . .] must be assured of his sovereignty over the space and goods he offers or opens to the other as stranger (Derrida 2000: 14).

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Hospitality is often taken for granted as something we do to be good to others. However, as discussed here, it is an ambiguous notion full of contradictions (Dikec 2002). Derrida demonstrates how, to offer hospitalityto be able to welcome someone into your homeone has to have control and ownership of a place. It requires the right to a particular place and it involves power and inequality in the relation between the host and the guest. The act of hospitality performed by the Puttalam Muslims, indicated the control over and right to Puttalam as their place. This welcoming did not take place in a historical and socio-political vacuum. The Muslims in Puttalam have a history of longstanding negotiations over control of land, resources and businesses in the Puttalam area. Since the 1950sand particularly after the change in language policies in 1956there has been a Sinhalization of the area in terms of landownership, of government administration and businesses. Muslims still speak Tamil here and there are ongoing negotiationssometimes violentbetween Muslims and Sinhalese about the control of resources and territories (Brun 2008). The residential pattern is ethnically segregated and there is limited communication between Muslims and Sinhalese people in the area. The arrival of the northern Muslims represented a manifestation of the Muslim control over the two divisions of Puttalam and Kalpitiya which before their arrival had about 45 per cent Muslims, 45 per cent Sinhalese and 10 per cent Tamils (Brun 2008). The initial welcome was framed as unconditional. With the developments that took place after their arrival, however, the welcome changed towards a more conditional hospitality. Together with what will often happen when guests overstay and hosts become tired of being hosts, a most significant reason for the move towards conditional hospitality was the sidelining of the hosts in the process. The humanitarian operations made the host category invisible and largely irrelevant beside the IDP category as a humanitarian label. Here, the strength of the guests played an important part; they were very quick in organizing themselves and advocating for their interests based on their common identity as displaced when realizing the entitlements involved in the IDP category. As a group, the IDPs appear almost stronger than the hosts. The challenges experienced by the hosts varied according to their resources and status. For example, landless hosts living on state owned land near the IDP camps felt their homes were under threat because their right to stay on the land was not clearcut in the first place. These factors were further strengthened in 1994/1995 with the change of government. The new government policies enabled the displaced people to buy land and receive support to build permanent houses in Puttalam, which increased the pressure on land in the area. Another dimension was the competing for local resources in health services and university quotas. Health services have not improved in relation to the population increase which has put existing government health services under pressure. At the same time, university quotas did not increase for the area, but all students sitting their O-level exam in Puttalam,

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including children of the IDPs, compete for university places in this area. Over time, people in Puttalam have become more attentive to what they feel are negative impacts of the settlement of the northern Muslims, despite the economic development that seems to have taken place after their arrival (Brun 2008). Derrida shows how welcoming someone into your home can challenge your sovereignty over that place. The perceived group strength of the IDPs and the feeling of being sidelined as hosts by the humanitarian agencies changed the local Puttalam peoples understanding of being hosts. Feelings of losing control over their homes made it necessary to reassert control. In this process, the language of unconditionality turned to conditional hospitality. It was a conditionality closely related to the political dimension and demographics that could potentially have overturned the ethnic balance between Muslims and Sinhalese in the area. In terms of livelihoods, for example, local people would formulate restrictions on IDPs going fishing. And in terms of access to local power and influence, the local mosque societies played a key role in preventing IDPs from sitting on local Mosque Trustee Boards, which again led to the displaced Muslims establishing their own mosques and further segregation between the two groups. Groups may come to identify themselves with categories initially formulated by others (Jenkins 2008). In the case analysed here, the categories of IDPs and hosts were shaped and are changed by peoples experiences and practices as well as the intervention by outside humanitarian actors and institutions, including government institutions. The interaction of local practices and discourses of dealing with displacement and the international humanitarian practices and discourses made the two categories of IDPs and hosts social groups in Puttalam. IDPs and hosts are categories used as organizing principles in the society, determining access to resources and influence over institutions. Hosts are today considered the legitimate local citizens of the area, and for the humanitarian agencies, they represent a group that the IDPs must live in peace with. In this context, the IDP category has several meanings of varying importance for the internally displaced themselves. First, the category means that when labelled IDP, a forced migrant is entitled to certain assistance and protection during displacement. Second, an internally displaced person is out of place and does not belong to the place where he or she stays as an IDP, but is only a guest and temporarily present at the place of refuge. An IDP belongs to the place where he or she fled from and this has implications for the access to rights and entitlements at the place where he or she is living as displaced. The third meaning of the category IDP is the right to return and assistance upon return, which has been an important motivation for many northern Muslims to keep identifying themselves with the category. For the local people of Puttalam, they still express their identity as hostsand in particular the meaning of being in their own place, and having the right to restrict outsiders access to resources in the area.

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IDPs and Hosts in Protracted Displacement Negotiating Muslimness and the Right to Stay and Leave
(. . .) hospitality should be neither assimilation, acculturation, nor simply the occupation of my space by the Other. Thats why it has to be negotiated at every instant, and the decision for hospitality, the best rule for this negotiation, has to be invented at every second with all the risks involved, and it is very risky. Hospitality, and hospitality is a very general name for all our relations to the Other, has to be re-invented at every second, it is something without a pre-given rule (Derrida 1997: no page number available).

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Hospitality is a response to the arrival of an Other and governs the relationship between the host and guest. The case discussed here represents stories of a hospitable community that opened their homes for people in need. However, as elsewhere, when displacement became protracted, the hosts became increasingly tired of being hosts. Being hosts implies a temporary relationship and when the guest does not leave, the attitude towards the guest tends to change. Two decades on, most northern Muslims are still living as IDPs in Puttalam. Some live on small plots of their own land, some are still in camps, most still have the status of internally displaced people. People in the area maintain very strong identities as IDPs and hosts. After the war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government came to an end in May 2009, some northern Muslims began to return to the north. However, this will be a long process, many people will not return and most families will continue to have connections with Puttalam and pursue translocal strategies between the north and Puttalam. Despite the northern Muslims and the Puttalam Muslims sharing ethnic identities, the northern Muslims became the Other when they became the guests in Puttalam. The maintenance of the identity as guest becomes an important boundary marker to the host. In fact the hospitable engagements resulted in a number of boundary markers becoming more explicit: the troubled relationship between Muslims and Sinhalese in the area as discussed above, the relationships between Muslims and Tamils in the north, the various regional identities of Muslims in Sri Lanka and the relationship between local and international humanitarian discourses of assistance to those displaced by the war. This process of making the Other was expressed by hosts through the reassertion of control over their homes as indicated above. However, for the Puttalam Muslims, the arrival of the northern Muslims also reinstated their regional identities as Muslimsdifferent from the northern Muslims. The feeling of difference was clearly based on the differing histories, and for the Puttalam Muslims, the arrival of the northern Muslims was a symbol of the war in the north coming closer; could they trust people who had lived with the war, what kind of violence did they bring with them? There was also much negotiation about being Muslimsabout Muslimness. In some ways the negotiations have clearly brought the two groups closer. For example, Middle East influences have increased a common Muslim identity and

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women among both groups dress more like each other and more often use the hijab. Still, however, the northern Muslims are seen as being closer to Tamils, sharing their customs, traditions and culture. The arrival of the northern Muslims in Puttalam represented a threat to the Muslimness of local Muslims who would often state, in referring to Tamil practices and customs, that this is not our culture and as such distance themselves from the northern Muslims. The northern Muslims on the other hand would proudly announce their Tamil language as the pure Tamil in contrast to the Puttalam Muslims Tamil. Negotiations still continue that from time to time result in violent encounters between northern Muslims and local Muslims (Brun 2008; Thalayasingam et al. 2009). The arrival of the northern Muslims in Puttalam started as a hospitable relationship where an unconditional hospitality was prominent. Over time, the particular interplay between the humanitarian and the local perspectives on internal displacement has created a situation where the northern Muslims are still living as guests in Puttalam with a conditional hospitality. While the hosts felt the need to reassert control over their homes, there has been an increasing consciousness among the displaced of losing out in comparison with their hosts in areas of education, livelihoods and influence over local institutions. Living as guests with conditional hospitality resulted in the northern Muslims failing to become full local citizens in Puttalam, although they are entitled to do so. There has been limited political will on the part of local politicians, politicians among the northern Muslims and the national government to make northern Muslims local citizens in Puttalam. In Derridas double imperative of hospitality, the relationship with the Other takes place in the tension between conditional and unconditional hospitality. As I have shown, unconditional hospitality is no longer prevailing in Puttalam. When hospitality is only conditional, IDPs becomes an isolated category that can be separated from the hosts. People labelled IDPs can more easily be controlled and their citizenship rights more easily denied. IDPs are granted assistance and refuge based on locational rights, but when the war is over, they are understood as out of placethey need to return. While some are happy to return, many feel that after almost 20 years in Puttalam, returning to the north is like being displaced again. When relations of hospitality are no longer operating between unconditional and conditional hospitality, the northern Muslims are stripped of agency and basic rights they no longer have a choice of where to live as full members of society. Conclusions: Hospitable Engagements and the IDP/Host Categories As stated in the introduction to this paper, categories are necessary for comprehending the world. Categories are used to bring order into a situation when institutions may not have means to assist everyone in need. However, formulating categories always has individual and social implications for those assigned to them. The discussion of hospitality creates an understanding of

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the principles underpinning humanitarian categories and how humanitarian practice is developed and implemented in the interplay with local perspectives of dealing with displacement. The arrival of the northern Muslims in Puttalam became a space of hospitable engagements (Ramadan 2008). Both unconditional and conditional hospitality were present in the way people related to each other as IDPs and hosts. In the early stages of the displacement, the hosts pursued an unconditional hospitality grounded in the principles of Islam and their identities as Muslims. Later a conditional hospitality became dominant with the humanitarian community and the government taking more responsibility and as a result making the hosts irrelevant. In the process, regional Muslim identities were negotiated and strengthened and the categories of IDPs and hosts were established as social categories and identities. The categories of IDPs and hosts do not simply represent a binary relationship between two groups of people. A key question becomes whether within a nation state, labels based on a locational right (belonging to particular places within the country), such as the IDP label defined by the UN/Brookings approach, should form the basis of protection and support. In this context, it seems na ve to think that such universal categorieslike the ICRC approach and Islamic hospitalitymay be less political. In Puttalam, the Muslim obligation to be hospitable was presented as an unconditional hospitality, but as Derrida notes the element of compulsion also makes Islamic hospitality conditional. Along the same lines, Elmadmad (2008) argues that the gap between theory and practice is deep in the Muslim world, where no Muslim states today actually practise Islamic principles. She still argues for using the Islamic principles of hijra (forced migration/ asylum) and hospitality for developing refugee law and protection. A key question relates to responsibilities: responsibilities of institutions in dealing with internal displacement, the general responsibility we all have towards others, and how these two forms of responsibility should interact. Thinking of internal displacement as hospitable engagements requires the inclusion of hosts as active participants in the displacement process. From Derridas discussions of hospitality we can learn that hospitable engagements should take place as a double imperative of unconditionality and conditionality. Allowing for the negotiations between conditional and unconditional hospitality, and for both understandings to prevail in the assistance of internally displaced and their hosts, requires opening up the different approaches to internal displacement. But my argument here is that the two international humanitarian approaches to internal displacement need to engage more actively with the local ways of dealing with displacement. First, we need the two humanitarian approaches to internal displacement (the UN/Brookings approach and the ICRC approach) to talk more to each other, to continue negotiations that can open up new understandings for how to deal with displaced populations. Second, and above all, we need

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to engage with the way people themselves deal with displacement in order for people to get back on their feet and become full members of their societies.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the two reviewers for their constructive and very generous advice on the first draft of this paper. I would also to thank V. Ushantini, Subadra Hudson, A. G. Anees for research assistance, Nicholas Van Hear for inspiration and Ajmeer Khan and family and Mahomoda and family who have always welcomed me back to Puttalam. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at IASFM in Cairo in January 2008 and a workshop on critical approaches to internal displacement at Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford, in June 2008.
1. Categorization is a basic process of arranging people, objects and phenomena into categories for comprehending and understanding the world. Categorization is a routine and necessary contribution to how we make sense of, and impute predictability to a complex human world (Jenkins 2008). A category is a class whose nature and composition is decided by the person who defines the category. A category, according to Jenkins, may be contrasted with a group, defined by the nature of the relations between its members. As I show in this paper, categorization of individuals and populations in social sciences and among policy makers contributes to constituting people as subjectsand objectsof assistance and protection. 2. I am not in this paper concerned with looking at the causality of the categories and their nature as analytical categories, but rather aim to focus on the emergence and consequently, the constitutive nature of those categories. See Wendt (1999) for a discussion on the difference between causal and constitutive nature of categories. 3. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement set out in one document the international human rights obligations that are binding through international treaties and how these obligations are applicable in situations of internal displacement. According to Carr (2009), they remain soft law and as such are non-binding. 4. The ICRC is often directly involved in assisting IDPs. Often, as discussed by Aeschlimann (2005), due to the severity of their needs and their often greater vulnerability, IDPs may be the object of more attention from the ICRC than the resident population. This is in conformity with the principle of impartiality, which requires that the ICRC act on the basis of needs and vulnerability. 5. A. Sivanandan grew up in Sri Lanka. He left the country in 1958 and later became the director of the Institute of Race Relations in London. 6. Most Sinhalese are Buddhists and most Tamils are Hindus, but a large proportion of both groups are also Christian (mainly Roman Catholics). 7. There has not been a complete census in Sri Lanka since 1981. In that census, it is believed that Sri Lankas population of approximately 18 million consisted of 74 per cent Sinhalese, 19 per cent Tamils (Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils) and 7 per cent Muslims. 8. Principles of welcoming refugees and giving zakath are referred to in the Quran (see, for example, Quran 8: 7071 and 59: 8). However, according to Hoffman

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(Encyclopaedia of the Quran) the enormous emphasis on hospitality in Islamic culture is derived from pre-Islamic Arab values and draws its greatest validation in hadith. 9. According to Jens et al. (2002: 4), UNHCR was present in Sri Lanka since 1987 to assist with the repatriation and reintegration of Tamil refugees from India. The repatriation programme continued intermittently (when conditions allowed) until 1995. At the same time, UNHCR became progressively more involved with Sri Lankas growing population of IDPs, many of whom were to be found in the same areas to which the refugees were returning. Jens et al. show how, in 1990, the Government of Sri Lanka formally asked UNHCR to provide assistance to IDPs on both sides of the conflict, an arrangement that was formalized in 1993 through a Memorandum of Understanding between UNHCR and the Sri Lankan government: The extension of UNHCRs mandate to cover assistance to IDPs in Sri Lanka was agreed by the UN Secretary-General in 1991 and reaffirmed in a March 1997 letter from the UN Secretary-Generals office, stating that UNHCR may continue to co-ordinate the UN efforts for humanitarian assistance for internally diplaced persons in Sri Lanka. Clarance (2007) shows how UNHCRs dealings with IDPs in Sri Lanka were taking place amidst much internal controversy in the refugee agency. In Puttalam, the new Government under President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge reasserted its responsibility for the IDPs in the area (Brun 2008).

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