Citizenship, Statelessness, and “Home”: Rohingya Children and Youth in Bangladesh

The Rohingya are described as the world’s most persecuted minority, perhaps among the most populous de jure and de facto stateless people in South Asia, currently living in social, legal, and political limbo in refugee/FDMN camps in Bangladesh. Bangladesh currently hosts a total of 978,003 stateless Rohingyas, 52% of whom are children (UNHCR Rohingya Refugee Response Bangladesh, as of 31 March 2024). But is statelessness always synonymous with homelessness? The term “home” can recur “in the collective memory and is linked to the place of origin as well as the current situation of displacement” (Almenara-Niebla, Int J Cult Stud 23:723–744, 2020). Moreover, the notion of home can be explored along with the broader search for identity and notions of belonging, which vary greatly across the different temporal categories of Rohingya children and youth in the camps in Bangladesh. In this context, this chapter attempts to explore the concept of home from the perspective of three different categories of Rohingya children and youth living in the camps in Bangladesh: Rohingya children who came to Bangladesh during the 1992 exodus, Rohingya children who came to Bangladesh with the 2017 influx, and Rohingya children born in the camps after 2017. Spatio-temporal, emotional-aspirational, and material factors are considered, including the nature of rights that these temporal categories of Rohingya children and adolescents have in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, particularly their right to education. The chapter also looks at other perspectives on the homeland. This chapter attempts to explore the forms of belonging that have emerged from the ongoing and negotiated construction of home in various difficult circumstances (Taylor 2015) Refugees and the meaning of home: Cypriot narratives of loss, longing and daily life in London. Palgrave Macmillan, London. The paper thus seeks to analyze “home” not only as a concept but also as a practice. The methodology used in this chapter includes the following elements: quantitative primary and secondary data, ethnographic research, individual interviews, focus group discussions, and observations.