Bhattacharjee
10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493
Thailand in 2012. The report of CNN revealed that Thai police found
hundreds of Rohingya males, females, and offspring in a trafficking
camp in January 2014 (Hutcherson and Olarn, 2015).
According to Human Rights Watch Report, in the Sadao district of
Songkhla region near the Thai-Malaysian boundary, a united armypolice team found about 30 bodies in an uninhibited human trafficking
camp on 1st May, 2015. A lot of them were buried in narrow graves,
whereas other bodies were covered with mantles and clothes. These
dead bodies were identified as ethnic Rohingyas by the police report
(Human Rights Watch, 2015). The ASEAN parliaments for Human
Rights report shows that approximately 100,000 Rohingya refugees
now exist in Malaysia, and numerous are living in Bangladesh,
Thailand, and other ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian
Nations) countries jointly [APHR (ASEAN Parliamentarians for
Human Rights), 2015]. According to UNHCR, Rohingyas are treated
as one of the world’s biggest defenseless refugee bunches (Albert and
Maizland, 2020). In 2017 when the ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army) militia attacked the police stations in the Rakhine region, the
security forces of Myanmar retaliated, and consequently, the chaos
started. Thousands of people became shelterless and displaced from
their settlements due to the burning of the Rohingya villages by the
security forces of Myanmar (Amnesty International, 2017). As a
consequence of these violent terrorist attacks by the Myanmar army in
August 2017 (Human Rights Watch, 2017), a huge number of Rohingya
refugees started to cross the border. Approximately 650,000 Rohingyas
escaped from Myanmar and surpassed the boundary to Bangladesh in
order to take shelter as refugees in the Cox’s Bazar area of eastern
Bangladesh (Milton et al., 2017; United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), 2017; Choudury and Fazlulkader, 2019; Lewis,
2019). The majority of Rohingyas currently reside in Cox’s Bazar’s
Ukhiya and Teknaf Upazilas near the Naf River, which serves as a
porous border between Bangladesh and Myanmar (Khuda, 2020).
Based on the perspectives of the human rights scholars writings
address the multidimensional aspects of Rohingya refugees living in South
Asian (India and Bangladesh), and Southeast Asian countries (Faisal, 2020;
Sabbir et al., 2022; Uddin, 2022; Zaman, 2022). The transforming public
discourse regarding the Rohingya community and the blame-game of
environmental costs of Rohingya presence in neighboring countries is
declining the relationship between the host countries and the Rohingya
refugees (Chemali et al., 2017; Chaudhury and Samaddar, 2018; Uddin,
2020; Shohel, 2023). Recent studies on this issue examine and analyze the
reasons for increasing intra-group conflicts, declining international
concerns, the failure of repatriation, diplomatic roles of the global
community, voice of the universal civil society and diaspora engagement
(Storai, 2018; Hossain and Hosain, 2019; Ali, 2022; Sabbir et al., 2022). The
host countries including Bangladesh is considering Rohingya refugees as
an additional burden on their land, social structure, job opportunities,
social security, tourism industry, and economy (Dey, 2018; Bhattacharjee
and Hoque, 2019). Under the criterion of sharing global justice the host
countries are waiting for a stable solution and are concerned about the
future direction of the Rohingya crisis.
Levitas (2005) to identify and explain the reasons for statelessness and
leading dynamics of social exclusion among the Rohingya Muslim
minority community of Myanmar.
Hillary Silver, a noticeable French academic, offered three central
paradigms about social exclusion, formed on the considerations of the
underprivileged and deprived individuals in French culture and
society. Hilary displayed several meanings of exclusion and
marginalization through the threefold typology of exclusion, explicitly
solidarity paradigm, specialization paradigm, and monopoly
paradigm. Silver varied these three paradigms from political ideologies
and state dissertations. Thus, she concentrated her ideas on distinct
understandings of social integration and political philosophies for
explaining exclusion (Rawal, 2008).
Silver suggested that the solidarity paradigm compacts with the
view that segregation and exclusion are a principal agency to collapse
the societal connection between individuals and society. This social
tie is not financially manufactured; rather, it is generated in cultural
and ethical terms, forming a hectic condition in society that impends
community order and eventually creates marginalization and social
exclusion. Similarly, from this study, it can be shown that the
Government of Myanmar (GOM), political leaders, and other ethnic
groups did not recognize the Rohingya Muslim minority community
as citizens of the country. The reason is Rohingyas were treated like
residents of other countries. Besides, this model contains diverse
agreement, consistency, and solidarity notions. Hilary argued whereas
solidarity decays, exclusion arises (Mathieson et al., 2008: 17).
The specialization paradigm is the subsequent model of Hilary Silver.
This model represents that exclusion is a product of the market fiasco or
monetary discernment (Silver, 1994: 543). The monopoly paradigm is the
third and concluding model of Silver. Centered on Weber and Marx, this
model designates that exclusion begins when a segment of the residents
is purposefully forced out from the ingress or entry to typical or shared
belongings. Furthermore, this model claims that hierarchical or classified
power interactions are vital for social banishment and exclusion.
“Exclusion arises from the interplay of class, status, and political power and
serves the political interests of the included…exclusion is combated through
citizenship, and the extension of equal membership and full participation
in the community to outsiders” (Silver, 1994: 543). In the case of the
Rohingya Muslim minority people, political leaders of Myanmar thought
of them (Rohingya) as a risk to their interests. Thus, the government of
Myanmar excluded Rohingyas through various tactics to secure the
interests of political leaders.
A different theoretical perspective about social exclusion came from
the intellectual writings of Pierre Clavel. For simplifying social exclusion,
(Clavel, 1998:184-186; DIMÉ, Mamadou dit ndongo, 2005) applied four
approaches. The leading one is identified as the population groups
approach, where persons of society are separated into paramount social
classes considering the definite quantity of individuals as beneficiaries and
other individuals as underprivileged. The subsequent one is recognized
as the economic approach. This approach describes social exclusion in
terms of some signs, i.e., revenue, social disparity, financial disproportion,
and poverty levels. Consistently, the population of Myanmar and political
leaders boycotted Rohingyas from businesses and also boycotted their
goods. The denial of rights approach is the next approach that denotes the
refusal of or scarcity of entrance to resources, belongings, or investments.
The concluding approach is the extreme situations approach, and it
represents the situation where persons are considered outsiders,
unwelcomed, and aliens (Mathieson et al., 2008:18). Rohingyas are
Contextualizing statelessness from
theoretical viewpoints
This study used three relevant theories of social exclusion and
downgrading offered by Silver (1994), Pierre Clavel (1998), and
Frontiers in Political Science
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