Between Home and Exile: Rohingya Refugees’ Everyday Practices, Contested Identities and Temporalities in the Bangladesh-Myanmar Borderlands

• Applicant: Dr. Anas Ansar
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Asian Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568444149

This project explores the paradoxical and intimate relationship between protracted displacement and borderlands, focusing on the Rohingya refugees in the Bangladesh-Myanmar borderlands. By conceptualising borderlands as a third space, this research investigates how the Rohingyas carve out their own spaces of resistance in the state of abandonment and negotiate statelessness in a prolonged exile context. Departing from the “methodological nationalism” that long dominated the studies on Rohingya refugees, it aims to demonstrate how borderlands transform into an extended homeland in exile for displaced Rohingyas, acting as sites for constructing, contesting and performing identities, challenging homogenised nation-state narratives and fostering diverse forms of meaning-making. Three specific objectives guide this project: 1. To analyse the relationships between protracted displacement and borderlands in which boundary-producing and boundary-breaking practices work in tandem, produced through historical and social affinities, cross-border mobilities and mundane economic activities. 2. To unpack how the borderlands serve as sites for constructing and contesting identities, as place of convergence and divergence and in the process, foster diverse forms of solidarity and resistance, in particular paying attention to gender. 3. To investigate borderlands as “extended homeland” that challenge homogenise narratives of nation-state, politics of belonging and citizenship practices.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position