Forced Migration, Homelessness and the Memory of Home: A Critical Review of the Displacement of Rohingya Muslims

• SADDAM HUSSAIN

  South Asia University

• NAFIS HAIDER

  Jawaharlal Nehru University

Forced displacement constitutes one of the most acute humanitarian and sociological crises of the contemporary world. However, the subjective and affective dimensions of displacement, particularly the meanings  that displaced communities construct about Home, Homelessness, and Memory, remain comparatively underexamined in South Asian scholarship. To fulfil these gaps, the paper offers a critical review of literature on Home, Homelessness, and Memory in the context of displacement, with special focus on the displacement of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State in Myanmar. The objective of this paper is to analyse how Memory works as a sociological process for displaced Rohingya Muslim refugees in negotiating their identities and belonging, and in resisting dehumanisation. Theoretically, this paper utilises the refugee studies paradigm, drawing on Liisa Malkki's concept of “Mythico-history,” Pierre Nora's idea of lieu(s) de mémoire (or sites of Memory), and Bhabha's theory of “unhomely,” alongside the sociological constructivism of Berger and Luckmann. For displaced Rohingya refugees, the paper argues, Memory is not a passive residue of the past but a creative, embodied, and political resource through which they reconstruct identity and belonging in conditions of ontological Homelessness. The paper is centred on a critical conceptual review of the existing literature, purposively selected to be representative of literary, historical, sociological, and ethnographic sources. This paper finds that memory formation through practices of storytelling, prayer, the spatial arrangement of the camp, eating habits, and narrative traditions among the Rohingya refugees constitutes an act of sociocultural agency that challenges administrative categories that treat them as dehumanised subjects. In conclusion, it shows that paradigmatic change in displacement governance is imperative – one where preserving Memory and making meanings by communities are reviewed as valid forms of humanitarianism.

1. SADDAM HUSSAIN, South Asia University

   Saddam Hussain is a Doctoral student at the Department of Sociology, South Asain University, New Delhi. 

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