04/11/2024
Join us tomorrow at 3PM in Student Building 005 or on Zoom to hear more from our PhD Candidate Sharif Wahab!
Abstract: This talk deals with the prolonged exile that characterizes refugee experiences today in the camps, cities, and islands — more than ever before. The number of refugees remaining displaced for five years or more has doubled in the past decade, reaching over 16 million in 2022, with the majority hosted in the global South. How do the host state and humanitarian actors shape refugees’ lives in prolonged crises? My research delves into the case of the protracted displacement of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, showing an intricate relationship between how the postcolonial nation-states produce and maintain stateless refugees, the restrictive asylum policies of Western nations, and the resultant humanitarian governance practices. The research is based on three rounds of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Kutupalong refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar city, and Bhasan Char Island, and archival work in the national archive of Bangladesh in Dhaka. Rather than focusing on a singular location, I argue that understanding extended periods of exile requires the lens of refugee habitats — the spatial configuration produced by the multiple contestations over displacement. I show three outcomes of such spatial configurations. First, refugee habitats produce and maintain Rohingyas as displaceable refugees; second, prolonged displacement blurs the humanitarian boundaries between saving and improving the quality of lives; finally, as the host state, humanitarian organizations, and refugees contend over their respective interests regarding mobility and belonging, the nation-state extends its territorial grip through refugee governance.
Bio: Sharif Wahab is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Geography at Indiana University. He is a human geographer with expertise in protracted displacement and its impact on mobilities and belonging in South Asia. Sharif's research focuses on the place-based humanitarian governance of protracted Rohingya refugees in the Kutupalong refugee camp, Cox's Bazar city, and Bhasan Char Island in Bangladesh.
