In my current work, I am primarily interested in the maritime journeys of Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Malaysia and Indonesia.
More than one million Rohingya have been forced out of their country of birth, Myanmar. The majority are stateless and living in refugee camps along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Recent attempts to repatriate the Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar have failed for a variety of reasons. With no durable solutions available in Bangladesh or Myanmar, secondary movements to other countries in the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia have become the only available option for Rohingya in search of safety and dignified lives. To reach those countries, the Rohingya must travel long distances and use unsanctioned means of travel, as they are devoid of valid, legal, and internationally recognized identity documents. The unsanctioned movements are facilitated by transnational smuggling and trafficking networks that transport Rohingya by land, sea, or a combination of both. It is estimated that from 2012 to 2015, approximately 112,500 Rohingya travelled by boat across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea heading to Malaysia.
While Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia have for many years ignored such unsanctioned movements, more recently, these countries increasingly reject Rohingya refugees and criminalize not only alleged smugglers and traffickers but also rescuers. This project investigates this shift in policy, the political motives behind the state-induced hostility, and raises questions about how to better handle forcibly displaced people and irregular(ized) border crossings in Southeast Asia.