Provisional PhD Thesis Title: Mothers on the Move: The Politics of Displaced Mothers in South Asia
Expected Completion Date: 2026
Raksha’s PhD dissertation analyzes the gendered politics of forced displacement by focusing on the narratives of refugee mothers surviving and raising families at the margins of the modern states. It brings together debates from critical security studies, migration research, and feminist International Relations to understand how the everyday practices performed by refugee mothers challenge the boundaries of citizen/non-citizen, security/insecurity, inclusion/exclusion in destination countries. This research also asks how power and politics are reconfigured and by whom in the aftermath of violent and prolonged displacement.
Raksha Gopal is a PhD Candidate in International Relations and Political Science and a research assistant for the Swiss National Science Foundation project “Gendering Survival from the Margins” at the Gender Centre. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and Political Science from the Geneva Graduate Institute and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi. Her research centres on issues of migration, forced displacement, critical security studies, gender, violence, and local and global governance.