Institutskolloquium: Dr. Andrey Damaledo

“Dealing with refugees at the local level: A politico-historical perspective from an eastern Indonesian province”

Abstract

Recently, the newly inaugurated Vice Governor of Indonesia’s province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) announced a proposal to relocate more than 400 refugees currently transiting in the province, to Ndana Island, an outer uninhabited southernmost island in Indonesia, adjacent to Australia As one of the poorest regions in Indonesia, NTT is facing daunting task to provide support for refugees as mandated by the Presidential Regulation 125/2016 on the Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers. This paper examines how local government deals with refugee issues. Rather than focusing solely on the recent phenomenon, the paper adopts a politico-historical approach and considers some of the responses that have been undertaken in the past. Located at the border of East Timor and Australia, NTT province has been dealing with different refugee crises over the last 40 years. This means to understand the current local policies requires a perspective on the historic local responses on refugees as a whole. The paper also requires that careful attention be given to (1) the dynamics of central to local relationship; (2) the complexity of local planning and budgeting processes; and (3) the distinctive local situations.

Biography

Andrey Damaledo is a research fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at Kyoto University. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from The Australian National University and an MA in Advanced Development Studies from the University of Queensland. He is the author of Divided Loyalties: Displacement, Belonging and Citizenship among East Timorese in West Timor (ANU Press 2018). In addition to academic scholarship he has years of experience in the Indonesian local government planning and budgeting as a senior official at the Regional Development Planning Agency (BAPPEDA) in Indonesia’s Province of East Nusa Tenggara.