Compensation in Perpetuity? Charting Historic Island Displacement & Geographies of Repair

Keywords: Compensation, Marshall Islands, Chagos, Repair, Islands, United States, Britain
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Colonial and post-colonial relationships between islands and distant seats of power have long been facilitated through legal, political, military, economic, and environmental mechanisms of control. They have also, however, maintained their connections through limited policies of repair (at various scales) and calls for further action and acknowledgement of unjust events (by numerous actors and individuals). This paper presents the complex contours of Chagossian and Marshallese displacement and diasporic life through the lens of compensation—as delivered in the past, debated in the present, and used as a proxy for the ongoing responsibilities linking the United States, Britain, other geopolitical states and actors, and archipelagoes.

This research brings together geography’s ruminations on morality and ethics, the law, and temporality to ask--and begin to answer--the following questions: “How, why, and when are reparative concerns included or omitted in national, bilateral, and international policy?”, “How has the possibility of compensation been changed by the (im)mobility of the displaced?”, and, finally, “How long do we care about the displaced?” The paper draws on the perceptions and experiences of various stakeholders aligned with Marshallese and Chagossian concerns, as articulated during in-depth interviews and within archival, legal, and journalistic documentation of compensatory thought and action.