Hierarchies of refuge: differentiated sovereignty and India’s stratified asylum regime

India has never enacted a refugee law, yet it has governed successive refugee populations in sharply different ways. This article explains that variation through the concept of differentiated sovereignty: the production of several protection regimes within a single legal category, the ‘foreigner’, through distinct instruments and authorities. Comparing six populations between 1959 and 2024 (Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils, Chakmas, Afghans, Burmese Chins and Rohingyas), I make three arguments. First, the resulting hierarchies of refuge are overlapping rather than linear. Groups advantaged on one dimension of rights are often disadvantaged on another. Second, positions within these hierarchies are closely associated with the identities that state texts ascribe to each group, as ‘kin’, ‘guests’, ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘security threats’, and do not correspond straightforwardly to persecution or need. Third, the absence of refugee legislation, which I term juridical vacancy, functions as a governance technology that preserves executive discretion. On this reading, the 2019 Citizenship (Amendment) Act did not create a refugee-status regime; it formalised in citizenship law one axis of a hierarchy that had long operated administratively. The article contributes to refugee studies in the Global South by showing how protection is stratified outside the Convention regime.