Abstract
In this age of border securitization, mobility has largely been discussed as a privilege accorded to citizens. The assumption is that refugees or undocumented persons are usually denied such mobility. The management and surveillance of refugees through documentation processes by both the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the host country further obstruct their freedom. However, in Malaysia, urban and mobile Rohingya refugees disrupt the linkage between citizenship and mobilities. In fact, being conferred refugee status in Malaysia has made Rohingyas relatively more mobile than they had been previously in Myanmar or Bangladesh’s refugee camps. Drawing from fieldwork in Klang Valley from 2017 to 2019, I propose the concept of “mobile refugee” to rethink mobility and citizenship. I argue that Rohingya refugees practice “imaginary citizenship” as a form of political participation to claim their rights with the aid of the UN refugee card. This article highlights the need to reinterpret mobility by situating it in the dynamics of citizenship practices of refugees and their engagement with documents as they seek to imagine and invent their future aspirations of becoming political subjects.
Introduction
Back in Arakan, we just stay in the village, we didn’t have IC [Identity Card] like the other Burmese . . . Even if we want to go to another village to visit our family or what, we need to get permission . . . It took them so long to get permission then they need to pay so much bribes to the police. —Fatimah (45-year-old).
1
Fatimah’s narrative of never leaving her village while living in Northern Rakhine State (NRS) was one that I heard repeatedly from my Rohingya interlocutors in Malaysia. As Myanmar does not recognize Rohingyas as citizens—and instead referred to them as “illegal Bengali migrants,” Rohingyas are excluded from rights accorded to citizens. Such rights include limited access to education, health, employment rights (Wong & Tan, 2012), and as Fatimah pointed above, freedom of movement even within Myanmar itself. While residents living in towns are relatively more mobile than those who live in villages, they are largely limited to movements within the townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung (Ostrand, 2020). The lack, or rather absence, of legitimate state documents availed to Myanmar citizens made Rohingyas vulnerable to discriminatory practices and continued suppression by the state. And although there were stories of Rohingyas being educated in the city of Yangon, their educational journeys were often achieved with painstaking effort and at high cost, usually involving fake documents.
The lack of mobility among Rohingyas largely stemmed from Myanmar’s policies that have systematically excluded them from the nation–state, particularly since the establishment of the military junta in 1962. The 1982 Citizenship Law compounded this problem by denying citizenship to most Rohingyas, making them essentially stateless (Nyi Nyi, 2017). State persecutions culminated in the NRS crises in 2012, 2016 and 2017 that globalized the Rohingya issue. This produced an exodus of Rohingyas attempting to cross the borders of South Asia and several Southeast Asian countries, especially Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Resultingly, Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh has grown to host nearly a million Rohingya refugees (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2020b), making it currently the largest refugee camp in the world despite Bangladesh being a nonsignatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention Related to the Status of Refugees. While the Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar is composed of those who fled from NRS, there are also second- and third-generation Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in the refugee camps (Farzana, 2016).
Although the Bangladeshi state has tolerated Rohingyas’ presence for decades, its attitude toward refugees fluctuates based on the country’s politics (Human Rights Watch, 2019; Lewis, 2019). What remains constant is the state’s position that Rohingyas are not allowed access to rights such as education and employment rights. Resultingly, many refugees in Bangladesh attempted to escape the stasis of their camp lives by seeking refuge in Malaysia. Often, Rohingyas would seek smugglers’ help to bring them to Malaysia—either to join their families or in search of better opportunities.
The movement of Rohingyas seeking asylum across borders marked the first time that many left the compounds of their villages or towns. Such forms of involuntary mobility reflect the hypermobility of asylum-seekers and/or refugees brought about by forced migration (Kalir et al., 2012). Yet during border crossings and encounters with state authorities and border mechanisms, many Rohingyas were discriminated because of their stateless status, further complicating their claims to being a refugee. Even on successful registration with the UNHCR, the process of documenting persons-of-concern and placing them in refugee camps or shelters forecloses their right to move (Franke, 2009). Such surveillance of refugees is further assisted with the UN refugee card that arguably marked the body as an other. The implications of such state efforts to control the transgressive nature of forced mobility constrained the refugee’s right to be mobile.
I employ the term “refugee” here to refer to persons who have been processed and registered as a refugee by the UNHCR. Once registered, these refugees are issued a UNHCR identity card—or in short, the UN card—that details their biodata including their country of origin. The UN card “provides a level of protection which may reduce the risk of arrest, and allow limited access to health services, education and other essential support services from UNHCR, its partner organizations or other actors” (UNHCR, 2019a). However, since Malaysia is not party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN card is only an “identity document and has no formal legal value in Malaysia” (UNHCR, 2019a). In fact, registered refugees are considered as undocumented migrants under the Malaysian Immigration Act (Ahmad et al., 2017). Nonetheless, for many Rohingya interlocutors, the internationally recognized UN card distinguishes them from the common undocumented migrant: the card has the “power” to move refugees from being merely undocumented to being considered a “legal” person, although with limited rights.
Where the mobility of refugees was surfaced in academic discourses, discussions often highlight their immobility (Campbell, 2007; Sommers, 2001) or explore experiences of mobility within refugee camps or in borderland areas (Brees, 2010; Johnson, 2012). By studying the experiences of urban refugees in a nonsignatory state, this article aims to demonstrate the heterogeneity of refugee experiences and contest the notion that refugees are immobilized. In particular, this article seeks to underline refugees’ voluntary mobility. To be a mobile refugee is to have the capacity to exercise agency and the freedom to determine how and what mobility means for them. Being voluntarily mobile is therefore associated with notion of rights that is accorded to citizens, or at least documented persons—but not refugees, especially in nonsignatory countries with no refugee legal framework.
Unlike other refugee communities such as the Chin, Karen, and Mon, Rohingyas are stateless and their illegality is marked by the absence of legal state documentation in Myanmar. Being recognized as refugees transforms their undocumented status to a person with legitimate rights. The UN card not only materializes their refugee status but also offers Rohingyas a way to belong to a world where documents matter. As many interlocutors told me, the UN card was the first document they have received in their lives. Being registered as a “refugee”—particularly in an urban environment, opened them up to new imaginations of the political subject (Bayat, 2010; Isin, 2002). Through Rohingyas’ everyday practices with the UN card in Malaysia, they are able to exercise claims to rights which they were unable to do previously—generated by the newfound mobility they experience as urban refugees. Thinking with the document thus allows us to interrogate the imagined mobility that Rohingya refugees have which offers them a site to lay claims on rights.
As such, I propose mobile refugee as a conceptual tool to rethink the heterogeneity of the refugee experience and to destabilize prevailing notions that refugees are immobile. Mobility, as a performance and an act of citizenship (Isin, 2008; Nyers & Rygiel, 2014), paves the way for imaginary citizenship as a form of political participation for stateless persons or refugees (see Bayat, 2010; McNevin, 2014). Mobile refugee therefore allows us to trace how new subjectivities are generated. Theorizing from the experiences of urban stateless refugees in a Southeast Asian context where the refugee legal framework is absent allows us to reconsider refugeeness (see Häkli et al., 2017). To do so, this article will first offer a background of Rohingya refugees in Klang Valley before exploring notions of citizenship tied to mobility and the everyday practices of mobility that assemble the “mobile refugee.”
Rohingya Refugees in Klang Valley, Malaysia
Over the course of my ethnographic fieldwork between 2017 and 2019, I conducted interviews with 58 Rohingyas with nearly equal participation of male and female Rohingyas living in Klang Valley, aged between 18 and 60 years old. The majority of them had been in Malaysia for at least 2 years; many had fled NRS during the 2016 NRS conflict. There were also substantial numbers who arrived in Malaysia following the 2012 Rakhine conflict while a minority had been in Malaysia since the 1980s or 1990s. Around a quarter of my interlocutors—mostly young men, were born and raised in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Additionally, I encountered second- and third-generation Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in Malaysia.
Currently, Malaysia has over 170,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers where more than half are Rohingyas (UNHCR, 2020a). This makes Malaysia one of the largest recipients of refugees and asylum-seekers in Southeast Asia despite being a nonsignatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Unlike Malaysia’s management of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s, Rohingya and other refugee communities live autonomously in urban environments where they are more “vulnerable to exploitation, arrest or detention, and can be forced to compete with the poorest local workers for the worst jobs” (UNHCR, 2019b). While Malaysia tolerates refugee presence and permits the establishment of UNHCR offices in the country, refugees are only allowed to stay in Malaysia, but have no legal access to employment or education.
Becoming Mobile Refugee
The UN Card and Refugee Mobility
Numerous literature has explored the making of borders that further entrench government control through the differentiation of bodies by means of documentations (Keshavarz, 2018; Torpey, 2000). This regime of surveillance privileges the circulation of some people more than other racialized persons who are often perceived with suspicion and fear. Such state practice is concurrent with the way in which documents are used as tools for states to authorize mobility, particularly for unwanted bodies (Berg, 2017; Keshavarz. 2018). For stateless persons like Rohingyas in Malaysia, the absence of documents such as passports, the UN card, driving license, or birth certificates, only serves to transform them into suspicious bodies who are illegal, constraining their mobility. The capacity to exercise the freedom to move has been at the core of discussions with regard to refugee rights as host states turn to mobility as a form of control and discipline. Such discussions are not only limited to states but also international organizations, such as the UNHCR and International Organization for Migration, which stipulate that refugees are not allowed to leave the refugee camps (U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2019). The UN card marked refugees as an other—as bodies that require policing and whose mobility is curtailed. Such normalization of othering feeds into the notion of refugees as immobilized with no “right to have rights” (Arendt, 1994).
However, discussions surrounding the bare life and immobilization of refugees often draw from Agamben’s and Arendt’s conceptions of refugees without considering the context of their work (Wong & Tan, 2012). Studies have shown that the porosity of refugee camps challenges the legal regime (Farzana, 2016; Jacobsen, 2005). Brees (2008, 2010) discusses how refugees leave the camps to seek employment, which also blurs the boundaries between a migrant laborer and a refugee. My research with Rohingya refugees also highlights the experiences of mobility for UN card holders. While there were instances when registered refugees were deported, changes in Malaysian policy toward Rohingya refugees particularly after 2012 effected in the growing authority of the UN card (Ekklesia & Fitriani, 2018; Wong & Tan, 2012), thereby increasing refugee protection for Rohingyas. Taufiq, a 40-year-old Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia in 1992 said that prior to 2012, state authorities did not seem to know about Rohingyas. In fact, Taufiq like many who had been in Malaysia before 2000, shared that he was often mistaken as an undocumented migrant by the authorities. Taufiq had been deported to Myanmar through the Thai-Burma border on a couple of occasion (before returning to Malaysia) and detained numerous times by the police or immigration authorities. However, the growing visibility and recognition of Rohingyas’ plight after 2012 and the 2015 Andaman Sea Crisis appeared to soften state authorities’ attitude toward Rohingyas. As Taufiq told me, “90% of the time . . . [the police] will just let us go [after 2012] after they see the UN card . . . so I can go anywhere now without worry.”
As such, while mobility is often seen as a biopolitical apparatus of the state to control its population (Berg, 2017; Johnson, 2012), it has also become “synonymous with freedom, with transgression, with creativity, with life itself” (Cresswell, 2006, p. 3) accorded to persons with legitimate documents. For Taufiq, possessing the UN card that is invested with state recognition offers Rohingyas an opportunity to be mobile, even if only for “90% of the time.” The biopolitical reality of the world of documentation requires that subjects have proofs of documentation to show that they belong. For Rohingya refugees, the UN card is proof that although they are not citizens, they are legitimate persons—and not undocumented migrants—who have the right to be in Malaysia. Although Malaysian legal and administrative framework does not denote refugees to be neither legal nor illegal, the significance of the card is such that it aids Rohingyas’ imagined mobility. While the lack of a legal framework for refugees produces precarity, Rohingyas exert their agentic potential within the interstices of this ambivalence in order to authorize their own mobility and belonging to the social world they are embedded in. Mobile refugee thus implies the force—imaginative or real, that engenders the transformation of the refugee’s agentic potential to lay claims to rights and (re)produce the political subject.
Imaginary Citizenship
Citizenship scholars have discussed the growing importance of mobility as a significant characteristic of citizenship, particularly in the context of globalization and securitization of borders (Nyers & Rygiel, 2014; Rygiel, 2010; Sheller & Urry, 2006). For refugees and undocumented migrants, the regulation of the right to be mobile demonstrates the key role that mobility plays in producing subjectivity, which determines their ability to make claims to these rights (Nyers & Rygiel, 2014). Since “the governing of mobility is directly connected to constructions of citizenship”—for instance in Rohingyas’ daily encounters with state mechanisms, for example, security checks, being in public spaces, or travelling to work or to markets—mobility becomes an “integral part of processes of making and unmaking citizen subjects” (Nyers & Rygiel, 2014, p. 4). These tensions and contradictions that Rohingyas experienced in their daily lives led them to aspire for citizen-like rights and imagine themselves as political subjects who can make rights claims.
In thinking about citizenship in relation to (stateless) refugees, the growing mobility of citizens and noncitizens have brought about “webs of rights and obligations” that transcend state discourse (Isin, 2008, p. 15). Such discussions also reflect critical works on “citizenship from below” (Isin, 2002, 2008; Nyers & Rygiel, 2014), where citizenship “emerges in practice, in the claims and counterclaims of what it means to belong, in the repetitive acts through which people are marked as one of us or one of them and places as ours or theirs” (McNevin, 2014, p. 167). These acts of citizenship “transform forms and modes of being political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens” who make rights claims through “creating new sites and scales of struggle” (Isin, 2008, p. 39). As many Rohingya interlocutors shared, their mobility was facilitated by the UN card, allowing them to participate in everyday acts that local and foreign citizens undertake. Through these acts of citizenship (Isin, 2008), one makes his or her presence known and seen in the public space as a call for recognition for his or her belonging to that civic space. Rohingyas’ “quiet encroachment” (Bayat, 2010) into these spaces redefines the notion of citizenship in these spaces of encounters and movements and where the political subject emerges.
Everyday Mobility and Practices of Citizenship
Being a citizen entails certain forms of rights which Rohingyas aspire to have. These rights are materialized and reproduced through their engagement in public/civic spaces, and in practices associated with the citizen. At the same time, refugee encounters with local Malaysians remind them of the limited rights they possess as noncitizens. In exploring the mobile refugee, I look at three sites and scales that point to the creative breaks where within the ruptures of everyday life, one can see how Rohingyas imagine themselves and aspire to have citizen-like rights.
The Local(ized) Refugee: “Macam Orang Malaysia” [“Just Like Malaysian people”]
“You know, this is why I love Malaysia,” Rafiq suddenly said amid the peals of laughter from others, at least here, we can sit until 11 at night, just like everybody else because we got the UN card. In Arakan, we cannot be out so late, cannot hangout with friends unless you want to be shot and killed.
He laughed wryly, as the others around nodded in agreement. I was sitting in a local coffee shop with three Rohingya youths: Rafiq, Kamal and Rohani. Rafiq, a 22-year-old Rohingya, arrived in Malaysia in 2016. He fled from the violence that erupted in his village in NRS to Bangladesh before deciding to engage smugglers to bring him to Malaysia. He had family here, he told me, and Malaysia was sold as a dream destination to many Rohingyas languishing in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. While he realized later that there were limits to the Malaysian Dream, his encounters in Malaysia generate lived/perceived experiences of citizen-like rights. As rights are often associated with mobility, becoming mobile allow refugees to exercise “freedom,” a notion that is often divorced from the subjectivity of refugees.
Acts such as “hanging out” at these coffee shops were often highlighted by many Rohingya interlocutors as an act of “freedom.” In exercising their right to choose how they order their time and to be in a space inhabited by legal persons and citizens, Rohingya refugees contest the disciplinary regime imposed on refugee bodies. For many like Rafiq, there was little reason to fear the authorities because the UN card engenders an imagination of themselves as legal subjects in Malaysia—that they were not illegal persons but “legal” refugees with rights. Such lived experiences as refugees stand in stark contrast with their experiences as Rohingyas in NRS where they were under constant state surveillance with limited mobility. Rohingya interlocutors recounted their experiences in NRS where permits were required to visit another village or town, which often came at a price since they were not considered citizens. Freedom of movement in Malaysia thus offers refugees the space to imagine themselves as having citizen-like rights. The imagined transformation of the refugee self into a “local resident” in Malaysia not only suggests new subjectivities that emerge from their lived experiences but also reflects their desire to challenge the limits of refugee mobility by contesting their right to belong in these ordinary spaces where locals frequent.
Such sentiments are largely made possible with the UN card easing Rohingyas’ mobility. As Rohani, Rafiq’s 20-year-old friend, shared, We have the UN card, that’s like our IC. Even if [police] want to detain us, they cannot keep us for long. Of course, some people will pay money but these people, it’s because they don’t know how to speak lah to the police. Anyway, the police now know the UN card, they cannot pretend to say that they don’t know . . . (Rohani, 20-year-old)
Besides imagining the UN card as a national IC—hence elevating the document’s status, Rohani also alludes to the card’s growing authority among state authorities. The circulation of the card, by showing it to the police on request, illuminates the role of various actors in Malaysia in producing meaning in the card; more than meaning, the material dimension of power is captured in the card—its circulation empowers the card and its holder as it becomes credible currency in the social transaction of their everyday life. The card, as a tool of mobility, enables the recognition of Rohingyas by the authorities, facilitating Rohingyas’ movement and generating aspirations for similar rights to be accorded to them—if not in Myanmar, in Malaysia.
(In)Authentic UN Cards and Mobility
“But you know,” Rafiq continued, “sometimes even when the card is real, the police if they want money, they’ll make problem. The other day, the police damaged my friend’s card and said “see, you don’t have a UN card and the police asked my friend for money or he would be arrested . . . my friend didn’t want trouble so he paid,” Rafiq let out a small laugh. As aforementioned, although many Rohingyas have been registered with the UNHCR, there remain a significant number of unregistered Rohingyas in Malaysia. Aminah, a 43-year-old Rohingya woman, fled the NRS in 2015. She arrived in Malaysia in early 2016 and underwent the refugee registration process. As the UNHCR’s Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process takes between a few months to a year or so, these refugees often live in precarity: a state of not-yet being refugees. The only evidence of being a refugee is found on a flimsy piece of A4 paper issued by the UNHCR in place of the UN card which details the refugee’s biodata. While some refugees laminated the paper to prevent damage, they lamented that it lacked the authority and legitimacy of a plastic UN card. Consequently, refugees like Aminah often chose to stay at home instead of going out because she was “always scared that police [would] catch [them]” since the paper was not seen as sufficient proof of their refugee status.
However, as a way of survival, Aminah’s husband, Karim, bought them a forged UN card from the black market while waiting for the RSD’s outcome. 2 Karim, a 46-year-old Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia in late 2015 was driven by necessity for income. The forged UN card, coupled with the temporary paper representing his refugee identity, was “sufficient” in maneuvering Malaysia’s landscape. Karim worked as a garbage collector; he also scavenged for recyclable materials that could be sold. There were times when Karim was stopped by the police either for document check or as a potential victim for extortion. Whenever the police refused to recognize the card’s authenticity, Karim would use the forged document to play up his refugee—and Rohingya—identity either to evoke police sympathy or as a tool to negotiate the bribe. Although Karim admitted that it was easier to bribe the police, he still believed that being a refugee with the UN Card offered him mobility and the space to lay claims to rights, which he was unable to do as a Rohingya in Myanmar.
A year after his arrival in Malaysia, Karim received the authentic UN card, rendering his forged document irrelevant. More importantly, since he received the document from UNHCR, he felt less anxious regarding his status in Malaysia. Such reduced anxiety was also felt by Aminah who “dared to leave [her] house with [Karim].” Despite instances when the couple were held up for document checks by the police, they were often released. Aminah shared an incident when they were stopped by a police officer. On verifying the authenticity of Karim’s UN document, the officer looked at Aminah’s card briefly before letting the couple go. The lack of police surveillance on Aminah lessened her fear over time of being caught with the forged document. As long as her husband possessed an authentic UN card, Aminah felt “protected” even with a counterfeit document. When she finally received the UN card from the UNHCR, Aminah said that she felt relieved as she no longer had to worry about the police discovering her document was forged. While gender dimensions played a considerable role—underlining the different levels of mobility that male and female Rohingyas experience, such everyday practices with the UN card also allude to the materiality of the document in securing rights for refugees while fueling their political aspirations. However, in thinking about the significance of the card and its implications on mobile refugee, it is also important to interrogate second- and third-generation Rohingyas’ experiences in Malaysia.
“I Didn’t Know I Was not Malaysian”
Halfway through our conversation, Kamal asked me if I would have known that Rohani, who sat across me, was Rohingya. “No,” I admitted, “If I didn’t know you, I’d thought you were Malaysian.” Her fashion choice, her fluency in the Malay language and to some extent, her physical appearance, formed the basis of my response. Rohani is a second-generation Rohingya who was born and raised in Malaysia. Her parents arrived in Malaysia in the 1990s and like many other undocumented children, had attended public schools up until Primary 6 as they had no legal document to register for the national examinations. That was when Rohani realized that she was not a Malaysian but in fact a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar. When she became conscious of her Rohingya identity, she sought to distinguish herself from first-generation Rohingyas whom she felt were “backward and unsophisticated.” She represented many Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in Malaysia and adopted more Malaysian markers (e.g., Malaysian-styled hijab, local accent). Resultingly, these Rohingyas were not scrutinized as frequently by the police as first-generation Rohingyas who stood out more: It’s very easy for people like me, I look Malay, I sound very Malay . . . usually police don’t stop me if I’m on my own but whenever I’m with them [points to Kamal and Rafiq] . . . then they’ll ask me for IC. But it’s okay, I’m not scared. I carry UN card with me all the time, just like how Malaysians always have to carry their IC . . . (Rohani, 20-year-old)
As such, many of these local born and/or raised Rohingyas’ mobility was facilitated not only by the UN card but also by their sartorial and vernacular expressions. As refugees who “look local,” Rohani and many others like her are able to access resources and spaces with ease, making them more mobile than other Rohingya refugees. Moreover, Rohani’s language skills landed her jobs with nongovernmental organizations where she was exposed to human rights discourses. As a consequence, many Rohingyas like Rohani become not only cultural brokers of Malaysia for newly arrived refugees but also rights-brokers. As rights-brokers, they shared knowledge of refugee rights and strategies to negotiate their everyday life with newly arrived refugees in a nonsignatory country. People like Rohani become important in generating more mobile refugees in the Rohingya community, especially among first-generation Rohingyas.
Yet, while the UN card appears to be less relevant for these second- or third-generation Rohingyas, the card is still important as it ascribes state legitimacy that facilitates her mobility. The parallel drawn between the quotidian act of carrying the UN card and the IC reveals Rohani’s imagination of becoming part of the society she is in. These everyday practices that are associated with Malaysians’ acts become a way for them to transform their imagination of being mobile, to think of themselves as subjects with rights by reclaiming their right to be in these spaces. Concurrently, the gap in everyday opportunities and lived reality of Rohingyas and their Malaysian counterparts underline the limitations of possessing the UN card vis-à-vis Malaysian ICs. Such realization points to the lack of rights Rohingyas experience, engendering their desire to be treated as human and become political subjects through rights contestation.
Conclusion: “Kita Pun Orang Juga”
“Kita pun orang juga” or we are also humans, was a phrase I kept hearing in my conversations with many Rohingya interlocutors. This article delved into their world to understand how Rohingyas construct themselves as mobile refugees and (re)produce refugeeness. Their encounters with other actors in Malaysia introduce them to values of equality and justice, and notions of rights that were previously elusive. The possession of the UN card transforms their imagination of being an “orang”—just like another Malaysian or citizen—and creates conditions and subjectivities that they aspire toward. Making claims to rights to be seen as an “orang” also reflects Rohingyas’ survival strategies “where they find alternative ways of imagining and constituting themselves as political subjects, or remain excluded” (Berg, 2017, p. 229). They enact themselves as political beings within the assemblage that they are in. More so, residing in nonsignatory countries makes ambivalent the legality of their bodies, allowing them more space and flexibility to traverse the spaces between refugees and locals.
While it is important not to understate refugees’ harsh everyday realities nor to overvalorize the potency of the UN card (Prasse-Freeman, in-review), this article underlined how documents can be (re)appropriated as a tool of emancipation. The notions of rights and citizenship attached to the UN card gave rise to the aspirations of citizenship among Rohingyas, especially since being legal or legitimate residents of a country is associated with proof of citizenship. As Rohingyas begin to remake their life-worlds in a new and unfamiliar setting, they attach themselves to the UN card in order to make sense of the new place they found themselves. The card allows them to be mobile and concomitantly aspire to be citizens, which provides them with the potential and opportunity to mitigate and move beyond bare life, hence reshaping refugee subjectivity—as one who actively participates in (everyday) politics to assert and claim his/her rights. The card thus embodies more than the present—they do things in, and for, the future where the refugee hopes to be a human being with rights.
This article has proposed mobile refugee as a concept to destabilize notions of refugees’ immobility. Through their presence in Malaysia, Rohingya refugees transform, and are transformed by the various sociopolitical landscapes in Malaysia. Stories like Rohani’s and Rohmat’s illustrate Rohingya refugees’ desire to pursue new ways of reimagining their communities and themselves beyond just being refugees. Their everyday practices rupture the binary of the refugee/citizen social worlds, and Rohingyas enact moments of imaginary citizenship in these interstices. The emphasis on the word “orang” draws attention to their new subjectivities as human beings who can and should be able to lay claims to preserve their dignity. As Taufiq (afore mentioned) shared, I’d only agree to return home if we are given equal citizenship like other Myanmar people, like Malaysians in Malaysia . . . I want a passport, and if I want to go for pilgrimage, I should be able to.
Having a state-recognized document like a passport enables one to be mobile which paves the way to make claims to rights. The UN card, the document closest to a state document for many Rohingyas, transforms their sociopolitical imagination. Becoming mobile allows them to experience certain rights that were previously elusive in Myanmar. Mobile refugee therefore provokes the notion of refugeeness as one that contains multiple subjectivities. Within the mobile refugee thus emerges the political subject who aspires to be recognized as citizens and afforded with rights as one.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the insights of Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Kelvin E.Y. Low, Elliott Prasse-Freeman, and Andrew Lee Ser Han in the initial drafts of the paper. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that helped improve the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the National University of Singapore through the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ Graduate Research Support Scheme; and ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute through the Tun Dato Sir Cheng-Lock Tan MA Scholarship.
