Niro Kandasamy

Niro Kandasamy is a Tamil woman who was born in 1988, “in Paruthithurai which is in the northern most tip of the island that we call Sri Lanka now.” She came to Australia just before her fourth birthday, along with her mother and brothers, following her father who had migrated earlier.

Niro said that “I never think about the state as a place that I desire to be a part of because it’s never included me in anything. And when I say me, I mean people like me. But I think the term home is something that has always been a part of my thinking. And home as in like feeling included or excluded or being rooted or uprooted. And I think when I think of the term ‘stateless,’ I also think about the struggle for statehood because of the Tamil Liberation Movement. There’s a notion of longing for something that never materialised and there’s a sense of loss because I’ve never – because it never happened.”