Bhattacharjee 10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493 socially excluded from the mainstream community of Myanmar. This study discovers that this Muslim minority community people have been experiencing discernment through the generations. They are excluded from the conventional society, fundamental rights, labor market, social practices, and other cultural festivals and occasions. People of this community are facing an identity crisis problem. They are discriminated against more in terms of work, medical facilities, shopping, education, social security, and other purposes. Furthermore, intergenerational poverty situations, lack of wealth, limited opportunities, and powerlessness are the indicators of social exclusion in this community. These social exclusion indicators are responsible for the statelessness of the Rohingya community. Ruth Levitas is an eminent intellectual who deliberately studied social exclusion and isolation. Levitas proposed that three discourses are responsible for relegation and social exclusion. The chief one is recognized as redistributionist discourse, which maintains that the public’s inadequacy of entire freedoms to citizenship declines their well-being circumstances that create paucity, exclusion, isolation, discernment, poverty, and relegation. Rohingyas are not considered citizens of Myanmar. The government did not categorize the Rohingyas according to the different categories of citizenship because Rohingyas are thought to be outsiders. Thus, they are deprived of various amenities. The following discourse is identified as the moral underclass discourse, which represents that the mislaid and excluded persons are accountable for their personal fate. It focuses attention on the dependent actions of the underprivileged and destitute individuals who are eliminating their expertise and capability to welfare dependence (Levitas, 2005: 21). The concluding discourse is the social integrationist discourse. This discourse explains exclusion through the employment market. There has no opportunity to have a job and business sector for Rohingyas as they are a Muslim minority community. Similarly, this discourse gives importance to discernments among paid laborers, chiefly wage discrimination in gender frameworks (Levitas, 2005: 26; Mathieson et al., 2008:18). Furthermore, Amartya Sen described why social exclusion is inevitable in society. According to him, exclusion occurs due to the incapability of entering into the amenities which are accessible in the political, societal, and financial arenas (Sen, 2000: 4). Rohingya statelessness in Myanmar began when this community was de facto excluded from Burmese citizenship through the “Citizenship Law of 1982”.Though the Law of Burmese citizenship did not reject the citizenship of Rohingyas, the national race was the central inducement for Burmese citizenship that is highlighted by this law and clearly presented that Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Arakanese, and Shan, who have existed in Myanmar before 1823, will get citizenship (Cheesman, 2017). This law formed three kinds of “citizens” within Myanmar: citizens, associate citizens, and naturalized citizens. Since among the 135 national races Myanmar government did not consider Rohingya, the implications of this law excluded this community from Burmese citizenship by making them stateless. That means it is impossible for a Rohingya child to obtain citizenship in Myanmar because their parents are not enlisted among these three types of citizens (Farzana, 2017: 51). Furthermore, people of this community cannot move freely throughout the country and abroad, which is a sign of political exclusion. This political instability increases the terrorist activities within the Rakhine state. The ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) is a terrorist organization that operates terrorist activities within the state and has launched several attacks on the Myanmar Security Forces (MSF) in the past few years. Consequently, the Frontiers in Political Science Myanmar army started operations within the Rohingya villages, making the Rohingyas shelter less and stateless. Methodological background The central research question in this paper examines why and how Rohingyas are stateless. The methodology of this study involves secondary data analysis. For this reason, this paper is principally based on secondary sources of data. The researcher gathered information from secondary sources to conduct this study, including previously published and unpublished research works, relevant books, journal articles, internet documents, newspaper and magazine reports, e-books, and other archival documents. The researcher used a wide range of electronic databases, especially Scopus, Google Scholar, Google, Pub Med Central, Pro Quest, Web of Science, and PsycINFO, to find relevant articles and literature for this study. Research articles and significant literature on the Rohingya community published between 1957 and 2023 were considered for this study. Besides, in this study, the researcher adhered to the article’s inclusion and exclusion criteria. That means, to conduct this study, the researcher only accepted those research materials that focused on the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, who are stateless, marginalized, and socially excluded. To specify the exclusion criteria, the researcher excluded the other pieces of literature and findings for not fulfilling the research question and objectives of the study. Analyzing secondary data sources, the study identifies several structural factors contributing to the statelessness of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, which points to the analysis of this research paper. Analytical framework This study developed an analytical framework in order to understand the process of statelessness of the Rohingya community. Based on the research question, literatures and theoretical understandings on the Rohingya crisis this study identified that the Myanmar government applied several process to make the Rohingyas stateless. The following figure (please see Figure 2) shows the analytical framework. The findings of the present study is consistent with this analytical framework. Findings: why and how are Rohingyas stateless? This study argues that Rohingyas are stateless because they are the victim of four factors: the logic of illegal aliens (former Bangladeshi people who illegally entered Myanmar); the enemy discourse (collaborators to British armies while Myanmar was fighting for its independence from British rule); the “doctrine of Islamic terrorism”; and foreign interests in the Rakhine State. In this section, the researcher will explain these four factors. The logic of illegal aliens Historically, the Rohingya community has been living in the Rakhine (the then Arakan) state for a long period. Although people 05 frontiersin.org