3  Challenges and aspirations of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh This chapter explores the perspectives and aspirations of Rohingya refugees on the challenges they face and foresee in their lives, their next 5–10 years in Bangladesh and where they would like to live. We have made this our focus because our previous research on the livelihoods of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia (Wake and Cheung, 2016) and on the livelihoods of Central African refugees in Cameroon (Barbelet, 2017), Turkey and Jordan (Bellamy et al., 2017) illustrated the importance of understanding refugees’ goals and aspirations, including how they change over the course of protracted displacement, and how they affect refugees’ behaviour and interactions with aid actors. Our previous research and the research presented in this report draw on Levine’s insights on sustainable livelihoods. Levine (2014: 5) asserts ‘People will only choose a strategy from among those that they feel are possible for them … the possibilities which people see depend partly on what is there, but also on their own perceptions – their perceptions both of the options available and of themselves and what they can do’. Three overarching findings emerge from listening to Rohingya refugees’ views about the future. The first is that their perceptions of what is possible are cautious and constrained. Second, they have had to reorient their expectations and hopes for life. This was particularly hard for those who had assets and a relatively comfortable economic position in Myanmar, and who have struggled with trauma, loss and difficult living conditions in the camps. Lastly, their hopes for the future emerge from and are intrinsically linked to their present, difficult reality in the camps. The following provides more detailed analysis and examples. 3.1  Challenges Both men and women identified similar challenges. While the focus of this research was on the next 5–10 years, it was clear that, if the day-to-day challenges 10 refugees face are not addressed, they will continue into the future: as one man in Kutupalong said, if his short-term problems are not resolved, they will become long-term problems. Many of the challenges refugees face are intrinsically interconnected, and trade-offs are often made in order to address them. 3.1.1  Immediate challenges Living conditions. The refugees we spoke to shared the following concerns about shelter conditions: size of shelters relative to family numbers, camp congestion, quality of shelters, particularly given variations in seasonal temperatures and the monsoon season and, finally, limited lighting. One 21-year-old man in Unchiprang expressed his need for a different shelter, as 12 members of his family, including his parents and siblings, were currently living together in a small shelter. One refugee in Kutupalong said: This camp it is so congested, it is not open. Since this block is near host community and they don’t allow refugees to enter the children cannot play, they say if you come we will harm you. Since there is not enough space for children to play they have to stay at home and mothers have to look after children. We are living as confined people that’s why we want to move to another camp so we can move more easily. Having to pay rent to the Bangladeshi owners of the land on which their shelter sat was a pressing concern for some interviewees in Balukali, Kutupalong, Shamlapur and Nayapura. During a focus group in Shamlapur, one man explained that they initially had to pay 2,000 Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) ($24) a month in rent to the owner of the land. The military had asked them if they had to pay rent, but they told them ‘no’ because they were worried it would get the landlord into trouble. The landlord recently increased their rent to 5,000 BDT ($59), which they were unable to pay. They had reported this to the UN and hoped to Uncertain futures: Rohingya refugees’ perspectives on their displacement in Bangladesh