Statelessness-citizenship continuum

Abstract

The ongoing Rohingya crisis revolves around severe systematic and institutionalized socio-political exclusion, violence, and xenophobia now widely seen as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, stemming from primordial nationalist tendencies of Myanmar state; forcing millions to undertake perilous sea voyages and long odyssey across lands, mountains, and paddy fields through the economy of human traffickers and smugglers in search of asylum. Moreover, the rising intolerance, ultra-nationalist sentiments, and extremism feeding into the global Islamophobia industry along with the piecemeal approach of the neighbouring countries and highly limited and uneven international humanitarian protection regime both on geographical and political terms makes it even more precarious and protracted, dumping such population into a socio-legal limbo. Thus, are undergoing the exacerbating pain from the prolonged stay with zero rights, uncertain future, and fear of deportation. Based on the ethnographic inquiry conducted among stateless Rohingya Muslim refugees living in the semi-urban ghettoes in Delhi, Mewat, Jammu, and Hyderabad, the chapter looks into the historical and political dimension of the Rohingya crisis that emanated through the faulty lines of modern nation-state building along the ethno-religious lines; giving birth to ‘state-centric conflicts’. While looking into the refracted and displaced realities and complexities of their ‘everyday living’, it will also analyze the responses to the crisis made by both the host state-India and international community; thereby highlighting violence in transnational spaces is now a reality that national, international agencies, and governments must look into. The chapter attempts to raise the question of identity and citizenship. Since citizenship is an imperative of basic human rights, security, sense of identity, belongingness, and development. Therefore, it brings forth the wider debate on state and statehood and issues of rights, protection, and inclusive citizenship within the nation–state paradigm.