Becoming subjectivity in transit

Fontanari, Elena

doi:10.4324/9781351234061-6

Cited by 12 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…While both Rohingya and Hazara refugees described Malaysia as a safer place and a shelter, the two groups did not agree on whether Malaysia was, in fact, a transit country. Despite scholars, international agencies like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Malaysian government itself considering Malaysia a transit country (Tedong et al 2018; Missbach and Hoffstaedter 2020), findings here suggest that Malaysia is simultaneously a transit and a destination country, depending on which group of refugees is considered.…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

“…Two key messages emerged in this section. First, despite scholars, international agencies, and the Malaysian government itself considering Malaysia a transit country (Hoffstaedter 2017; Missbach and Hoffstaedter 2020), findings here suggest that Malaysia was largely a destination country for the Rohingyas. Second, given the life-threatening situations and experiences of violence that respondents faced in their origin countries, both refugee groups viewed Malaysia as a safer place.…”

Section: Journeys Of the Rohingya And Hazara To Malaysia: A Transit D...mentioning

confidence: 60%

“…While scholars, international agencies, and the Malaysian government have viewed Malaysia as a transit country (Tedong et al 2018; Missbach and Hoffstaedter 2020), this article showed that Malaysia was seen as a transit country for Hazaras but a destination country for Rohingyas. Since Rohingyas fled Myanmar due to threats to their lives and livelihoods with no specific transit or destination in mind, Malaysia was not their initially imagined transit or destination.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The Malaysian state has created conditions of bare life for Hazara and Rohingya refugees, as Rohingya and Hazara refugees are not protected by laws in Malaysia but are subject to them. This is because in Malaysia, refugees are subject to the penalties specified in existing immigration laws that consider refugees and asylum-seekers “illegal” immigrants (Missbach and Hoffstaedter 2020, 68), even as Malaysia has no particular legislation to address refugee rights.…”

Section: Constructing and Supporting Refugees’ Bare Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies on transit migration have shown that refugees often face long waiting periods (Biehl 2015), enforced immobility (Hyndman and Giles 2011), protracted uncertainty, unpredictable status, and precarious lives in transit states (Hoffstaedter 2014; Biehl 2015; Suter 2017). According to Missbach and Phillips (2020, 19), transit states refer to countries through which migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, “try to pass on their way to another destination country.” Scholars and policy-makers have regarded many Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, as transit countries (Hussain 2017; Missbach and Hoffstaedter 2020; Shum 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Bare Life is Bearable: The Life Projects of Rohingya and Hazara Refugees Living in Malaysia

Sunam

2022

International Migration Review

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With anti-migrant populism and strict border regimes in many receiving countries, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been entangled in transit situations and face critically vulnerable conditions. While recent research on transit migration has explored “life projects,” including work, studies, and volunteering undertaken by refugees to make their lives more bearable in a context of protracted uncertainty, how refugees describe the country in which they are living and what facilitates their life projects there have remained less understood in a Southeast Asian context and in the Global South more generally. This article addresses this lacuna, drawing on interviews with Rohingya and Hazara refugees living in Malaysia. Rohingya and Hazara refugees described Malaysia as a safer place than their home countries, where they had endured violence and persecution. Examining key conditions underpinning the life projects of Hazara and Rohingya refugees, this article demonstrates that refugee lives are not completely on hold in transit situations, despite what dominant understandings of refugee lives often suggest. As it shows, while Rohingya and Hazara refugees are excluded from legal rights in Malaysia, the Malaysian state has not made them fully subject to laws and, instead, at times, has tacitly supported refugees. This situation has enabled refugees to pursue informal life projects, leading to a bearable bare life.

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Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

Section: Journeys Of the Rohingya And Hazara To Malaysia: A Transit D...mentioning

confidence: 60%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Constructing and Supporting Refugees’ Bare Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Bare Life is Bearable: The Life Projects of Rohingya and Hazara Refugees Living in Malaysia

Sunam

2022

International Migration Review

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The ‘Edge Effect’: Unfolding the Phenomenological Potential of Citizenship through Interdisciplinary and Emotion-Based Approaches

Pratesi

2022

Gender, Race and Inclusive Citizenship

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Contested Appropriations: Informal Migrant Settlements as Ambiguous Spaces Beyond Temporal Borders

Benedikt

2024

Int. Migration & Integration

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Temporalities of control are a key element of the migration reception regime: deadlines, waiting times, and limited durations of stay link safe housing to temporal and normative prerequisites. As a result, those who are unable to cross these temporal borders are stuck outside of reception and beyond the temporal nomos of the asylum system, in heightened im-mobility, cut off from protection mechanisms, and in a vicious circle of illegalisation. Based on a literature review and on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Italy between 2018 and 2023, and from the analytical vantage point on migrant practices of appropriation, this article aims to explore informal camps as ambiguous spaces between coercion and subversion. While informality is used by state authorities to disrupt migrant multiplicities, mobilities, and temporalities, it can at the same time become a loophole for migrants to evade control, deportation, and detention and to pursue their migration projects. Through practices of appropriation, migrants regain not only time and space but also rights that have been denied to them. In doing so, they contest the temporalities of control, demonstrating that time can be “taken” through endured limbo, but that it is still relative and can thus be recoded. Despite presenting informality as an arena of collective renegotiation, the article concludes arguing against a romanticisation of informal encampments, showing that they are subject to politics of violence and abandonment.

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Becoming subjectivity in transit

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

When Bare Life is Bearable: The Life Projects of Rohingya and Hazara Refugees Living in Malaysia

When Bare Life is Bearable: The Life Projects of Rohingya and Hazara Refugees Living in Malaysia

The ‘Edge Effect’: Unfolding the Phenomenological Potential of Citizenship through Interdisciplinary and Emotion-Based Approaches

Contested Appropriations: Informal Migrant Settlements as Ambiguous Spaces Beyond Temporal Borders

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