ABSTRACT
As ethnocultural groups, refugees encounter host societies in mutual processes of accommodation. This study previously attested to the abrupt changes in refugee lives, the feeling of being unsettled in displacement, to the new worlds and their new demands and finally the complexities of ‘refugeeness’ 1 for individuals and groups, as they moved from their home country to the country of their settlement. Human beings experience forced migration differently, respond to it differently and hence have different needs and expectations. Thus, the interaction of refugee characteristics and features of the host society continues to be worth of consideration especially since this study attempts to find answer to the broad question, ‘How do Afghans in India acculturate?’ For Afghans, the timing of their migration, the circumstances under which they migrated, the countries through which they made their journey, their position in the social hierarchy in Afghanistan and the rung they occupied in India determined the strategies of acculturation they adapted and the identities they eventually acquired. Therefore, the identities that individuals acquire during the course of their settlement phase in a new country too have to be understood as a multilayered construct, wherein the relationship and positioning of each layer in its specific historical context affect and even construct one’s identity in collectivities in the different layers.
