Caught between the nation and the state: Voices of Rohingya refugee women in Bangladesh
| Author | Amena Mohsin |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891119874882 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Research article
Caught between
the nation and the state:
Voices of Rohingya refugee
women in Bangladesh
Amena Mohsin
Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
There is abounding literature on nationalism and the state that deals with the tensions
between the primordial and the civic. The bordered state or the legal ‘power container’ more
often than not is the container of a people/s who refuse to be contained within the geo-
graphical and cultural borders imposed by the state. The legality of the legal indeed remains a
big question. The geographical boundaries of the post-colonial states often do not match the
cultural boundaries of the newly created states. South Asia carried this colonial legacy of
boundary mismatch through its state crafting process. Borders and boundaries are often
lookeduponasthissideandthatside;ratherthan a sanctified territory. Borders also become
conduits of passage to safety when a group of people living within a bordered land called a
nation-state find themselves borderless within those borders, since the state’s ethno-cultural
borders or frontiers refuse to accommodate the frontiers of the former. This article is an
examination of the hopes, aspirations and moving ahead of the Rohingya people through the
voices of the Rohingya refugee women in Bangladesh as they carve out their spaces as a
people both cognitive and physical in a land which is not theirs; for a land which they claim to
be their own.
Keywords
refugee, Rohingya, Myanmar, Bangladesh, ethnicity, nation-state
Corresponding author:
Amena Mohsin, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
Email: amenanabeel@gmail.com
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2020, Vol. 5(2) 144–157
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891119874882
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