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Abstract
This thesis unveils the exclusion, counter resistance, and self-resilience of Rohingya refugees surviving in camps of Bangladesh, devoid of citizenship status, known as 'stateless' and fleeing persecution in Myanmar. A large section of the Rohingya are now refugees in Bangladesh and live in camps. The root of this problem although had emanated as a postcolonial fallout spanned between the murky borders of Myanmar-Bangladesh-India but is now a widely discussed global and transnational phenomenon. This study shows how through the production of new and changing social relations, the Rohingya refugees can challenge the classical understanding of citizenship and call for a renewed understanding of the term 'stateless'. The refugees are products of politics inside sovereign states and their 'statelessness', a part of the dynamics of border politics. In this kind of a survival, precarity becomes the new normal. Through these perspectives the thesis also provides insights to the changing character of refugee camps. In the second part of the thesis, through Rohingya land documents of Myanmar, the thesis explores whether the Rohingyas are attempting to subvert their statelessness through different ways? - wherein changing nationality (or creating new ones) through documents has become their most tangible option of survival. On the other hand, however, gripping on to the Rohingya identity and living in camps provide access to benefits or dolls by local NGOs which also leads to a complexity among the Rohingya on the way forward to wriggle out of their camp existences. How do the Rohingyas perceive themselves in this context? For the Rohingya women especially, is this step towards refugeehood more bonding or liberating in certain ways? The thesis will address some of these questions.