PHD-LEVEL RESEARCH QUESTIONS CONFLICT, GEOPOLITICS AND STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITY AMONG EELAM TAMILS

A MULTI-ACTOR, MULTI-PERIOD AND INTERDISCIPLINARY EXAMINATION OF STATE POWER, GEOPOLITICAL COMPETITION, POST-WAR POLITICAL ECONOMY AND TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION

1. How have Sri Lanka’s protracted armed conflict and subsequent political, economic and institutional transformations produced, reproduced or intensified the political, socio-economic, demographic and structural vulnerabilities of Eelam Tamils, and to what extent have the actions and interests of the Sri Lankan state, India, China and other state and non-state actors interacted across different historical periods to shape these processes?

I. INDIA–CHINA–SRI LANKA: TRIANGULAR GEOPOLITICS

1. How did India’s interventions in Sri Lanka, particularly from the 1980s to 1990, shape Eelam Tamil political experiences, perceptions of India and subsequent patterns of political trust and distrust?
2. To what extent did Eelam Tamil historical experiences of Indian intervention contribute to the subsequent emergence and consolidation of anti-Indian political narratives within sections of the Tamil population?
3. To what extent did China’s military, economic and diplomatic support for the Sri Lankan state during the final phase of the civil war between 2006 and 2009 influence the military outcome of the conflict and the political, security and institutional order that emerged thereafter?
4. What similarities and differences characterised India’s and China’s respective geopolitical interests, strategies and modes of engagement in Sri Lanka across different phases of the conflict?
5. To what extent can the expansion of China’s economic, infrastructural and strategic presence in Sri Lanka after 2009 be analytically connected to transformations in the political, economic and social position of Eelam Tamils, particularly in the Northern and Eastern regions?

II. RECONSIDERING THE “INDIA OR CHINA?” BINARY

1. To what extent does framing the Eelam Tamil conflict through an “India versus China” binary obscure, simplify or distort the plurality of actors, interests, mechanisms and historical processes involved?
2. Would an actor–period–motive–mechanism–impact framework provide a more analytically rigorous explanation than the reductionist question of “who destroyed the Eelam Tamils”?
3. Were existing anti-Indian sentiments among sections of the Eelam Tamil population incorporated into political or media narratives that subsequently framed Chinese engagement with Sri Lanka primarily through the prism of strategic competition with India?
4. If such narratives existed, how did they influence Eelam Tamil perceptions of India, China and Sri Lanka, and how did they affect interpretations of competing geopolitical interests in the Indian Ocean?
5. To what extent, if any, did anti-Indian political sentiment among sections of the Eelam Tamil population inadvertently or strategically contribute to constraining India’s potential geopolitical engagement on behalf of Tamil interests, thereby producing advantages for the Sri Lankan state?
6. How can such processes be examined through theoretical frameworks including strategic political framing, geopolitical perception management, securitisation, strategic narratives and state-sponsored political communication?

III. CONFLICT, DESTRUCTION AND STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITY

1. Through what political, institutional, military, demographic and socio-economic mechanisms did armed conflict, displacement, deaths, disappearances, dispossession, economic disruption and political marginalisation contribute to the production of Eelam Tamil structural vulnerability?
2. How did vulnerabilities generated during the conflict persist, evolve or become institutionalised following the end of the war in 2009?
3. How did state institutions, markets, humanitarian organisations, civil-society actors and non-state networks respond to, mitigate, reproduce or potentially exploit conflict-induced vulnerability?
4. To what extent did transformations in land ownership, property rights, employment, natural-resource access, resettlement and development policy reshape the long-term socio-economic position of Eelam Tamil communities?

IV. POST-WAR POLITICAL ECONOMY

1. To what extent did the post-2009 political economy of Sri Lanka reduce, reproduce or transform the structural vulnerabilities experienced by Eelam Tamils?
2. What relationships existed between militarisation, land administration, demographic transformation, development policy and control over economic and natural resources in the post-war North and East?
3. Which political, institutional and economic actors derived material, political or strategic benefits from post-war reconstruction, infrastructure development and resource allocation in predominantly Tamil areas?
4. To what extent did post-war development interventions strengthen local economic autonomy and political agency, or alternatively reinforce patterns of dependency, dispossession and structural marginalisation?

V. HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND MODERN SLAVERY

1. To what extent did conflict-induced displacement, poverty, documentation insecurity, family separation and socio-economic marginalisation increase the vulnerability of Eelam Tamils to human trafficking?
2. To what extent were conflict-affected women, children, young people, refugees and internally displaced persons exposed to forced labour, sexual exploitation, debt bondage or other forms of modern slavery?
3. To what extent did transnational migration pathways used by Eelam Tamils create opportunities for recruitment fraud, trafficking, debt bondage, forced labour or other forms of exploitation?
4. What structural and causal relationships, if any, can be established between conflict-induced vulnerability and transnational human-trafficking networks?

VI. MIGRATION, DEPORTATION AND TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS

1. How did irregular migration networks involving Eelam Tamils develop and operate during and after the conflict?
2. What relationships existed between irregular migration, fraudulent documentation, recruitment fraud, human trafficking, migrant exploitation and deportation?
3. To what extent did transnational criminal networks exploit the vulnerabilities of Eelam Tamils seeking political protection, refugee status, employment or economic security abroad?

VII. ILLICIT FINANCE AND TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL NETWORKS

1. To what extent did informal financial networks developed during the prolonged conflict subsequently intersect with illicit financial flows, money laundering or other forms of transnational financial crime?
2. How can legitimate humanitarian transfers, remittances and diaspora financial activities be empirically distinguished from illicit financial activity within transnational Eelam Tamil networks?
3. To what extent did narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, illicit finance and migration fraud operate as distinct criminal activities, and under what circumstances, if any, did they become interconnected within transnational criminal ecosystems?

VIII. RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS, HUMANITARIANISM AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

1. How did religious, missionary, humanitarian and civil-society organisations engage with the social, economic and psychological vulnerabilities of conflict-affected Eelam Tamil communities?
2. What institutional, financial and operational relationships existed between humanitarian assistance, social services, education, healthcare, religious outreach and proselytisation?
3. Where religious conversion occurred among conflict-affected Eelam Tamil populations, what relationships, if any, existed between conversion, foreign funding, humanitarian intervention, NGO activity and post-war reconstruction?
4. How can religious conversion, humanitarian assistance, proselytisation and alleged support for ethnic oppression or mass violence be conceptually and empirically distinguished in order to avoid unsupported causal inferences?

IX. “FOLLOW THE BENEFIT”: IDENTIFYING BENEFICIARIES

1. Which political actors benefited from the emergence, persistence or transformation of Eelam Tamil structural vulnerability during different phases of the conflict and post-war period?
2. Which states, institutions, corporations or economic actors derived military, commercial, infrastructural, security or strategic benefits from conflict-related and post-war activities?
3. Who benefited economically from changes involving land, maritime resources, ports, infrastructure, commercial activity and natural-resource governance in Tamil-majority areas?
4. Which transnational actors, where demonstrable through evidence, benefited from migration, remittances, trafficking, illicit finance or narcotics-related networks?
5. To what extent did the termination of the armed conflict and the subsequent construction of the post-war political order alter the political, economic and geopolitical bargaining power of different actors?

X. INTEGRATED AND SYNTHESISING RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Can the long-term structural vulnerability of Eelam Tamils adequately be explained through the actions of a single state or causal factor, or is it better understood as the outcome of a historically contingent, multi-layered interaction among state power, geopolitical competition, military intervention, economic interests, post-war political economy and transnational non-state networks?
2. Even where common intent cannot be demonstrated, did the independent actions of different state and non-state actors interact in ways that unintentionally or indirectly intensified Eelam Tamil structural vulnerability?
3. To what extent can an actor–period–motive–mechanism–impact–beneficiary–evidence framework provide a theoretically robust and empirically testable model for analysing the evolution of the Eelam Tamil conflict and its post-war consequences?
4. On the basis of primary and secondary evidence, which claims concerning the involvement of particular actors can be substantiated, which remain only partially supported, and which are contradicted or unsupported by the available evidence?
5. Can a multi-actor, multi-period and evidence-based explanatory model be developed to distinguish between the underlying causes, enabling conditions, mechanisms and consequences through which Eelam Tamil structural vulnerability was produced and reproduced?
6. How can the study move beyond the reductive question of “who was responsible?” towards a historically grounded and empirically testable investigation of who acted, when they acted, why they acted, through which mechanisms, with what consequences, who benefited, who was harmed, and what evidence substantiates or challenges each proposed relationship?