Migration Strategies and Human-Made Disasters: Considering Tajik Migration Policy Initiatives in Tashkorgan from the Perspective of Disaster Anthropology

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the Pamiri Tajik population in China at the southwesternmost corner of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Prefecture and their struggles during numerous local natural and human-made disasters over the past decade. It explores, from the local point of view, the disaster recovery policies that function as a disguise for homogenization-oriented state-building initiatives. It examines how the local Tajik people have been reacting to and coping with natural disasters and the related relocation policy initiatives and how the disaster they are increasingly facing is the desecration of their homeland and the destruction of their traditional livelihood. The fieldwork findings reported are based on 12 years of fieldwork throughout Xinjiang, the Pamiri borderlands (both in the Pamiri region in Tajikistan and Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang, China) as well as in the lowland relocation and sedentarization area in the Rabot resettlement township and the Tajik Abat resettlement township on the edge of the Taklimakan desert.