Differentiated Integration Among the Stateless Rohingya in Bangladesh’s Camps

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which integration is differentiated among Rohingya living in the relatively sequestered camps of southeastern Bangladesh. Interviews with multiple stakeholders, including stateless Rohingya, law enforcement, and political leaders collected across 3 years demonstrate divergence among the camp’s residents. Despite the outward appearance of evenness, these interviews lift the veil of homogeneity from the settlements to reveal hidden interplay between class, exchange, and humanitarianism. Subtle, yet significant, demarcations of differentiation signal how class schemas reproduce across the material, social, and legal dimensions of integration. Differentiated integration builds on the conceptual debates around integration informing both scholarly and humanitarian responses to displacement.