Some Rohingya family networks traverse both banks of the Naf River A 22-year-old man with Rohingya relatives in Teknaf who have held Bangladesh citizenship since its independence explained that people might conceal having relatives in Bangladesh due to fear of repercussions. “Almost everyone in the camp has relatives in Bangladesh, but they won’t admit it in your survey,” he said. “They have no hope at all of going back to Myanmar, because they were struck off the family list long ago or were born in Bangladesh…I have one relative whose wife didn’t even know he was Rohingya until long after they were married.” Despite having integrated into Bangladeshi communities several generations ago and living discretely alongside locals ever since, people contend with ongoing disenfranchisement. “Rohingya settled [in a particular town] a long time ago,” the man said. “But they still don’t have any identification cards. To get one they would have to provide their family’s genealogical information—even if they have been in Bangladesh for a long time. Without IDs, Rohingya in the border areas can only get certain jobs. They are waiters in teashops, tom tom [a small, battery-powered carriage] and rickshaw drivers, and shipbreakers. But their labor is often exploited.” A widowed Rohingya mother of three, who migrated to Cox’s Bazar with her husband and children after a family dispute in Myanmar in the early 2000s, said her work as a day laborer in a fish-drying field earns the family enough to eat “sometimes, but sometimes not.” She has never received support from NGOs, but says that she and her children are still better off than people living in the camps, due to “the feeling of being free and having a normal life.” A migrant becomes a refugee: Abdullah’s story Abdullah is a 26-year-old man living in the mega-camp within the population of newly arrived refugee households. But Abdullah was not a refugee when he initially arrived in the area. He explains that he grew up in a family that had illegally immigrated to Cox’s Bazar. After an uncle was arrested and detained by Bangladesh authorities for illegal immigration in 2012, Abdullah and his family became afraid to stay in the country. But due to their lack of citizenship in Myanmar, there was no option for this family of undocumented Rohingya migrants to go home. Retroactively, they became refugees and journeyed to India, where they were granted refugee status by UNHCR. Abdullah explains, “We had relatives in Myanmar until 2017, but we knew it wouldn’t be safe to go back. When you’re a Rohingya, once you’ve left Myanmar it’s really hard to ever go back because Myanmar is convinced you’re a Bangladeshi migrating illegally. It’s also unsafe there. Our situation is not the same as Bangladeshi migrant workers, who can return home after even 10 or 15 years abroad. In Myanmar they probably take you off the family list so you can never prove you were born there.” In Bangladesh, Abdullah had worked on fishing boats, but in India he only found work as a trash picker. He says the family again became afraid when the Indian government began threatening to deport Rohingya to Myanmar, and they arrived at Cox’s Bazar in early 2019. This time, they decided to live in the camps among the recently displaced population. For families like Abdullah’s that left Myanmar as migrants and are now unable to return, the camps are a place to survive. But Abdullah suffers from depression and misses the freer life he once enjoyed. “The best time was in Bangladesh before 2012. We didn’t ever really find a good life in India or after coming back here. I crave having that freedom again. But I don’t plan to go back to India, and I don’t have the money to, either. I used the last of my savings to get settled in once we arrived here in Bangladesh. I have nothing left. I am really upset. Now, I am just waiting to die. In this camp we have no permission to go out or to work at all. We are suffering a lot. We are trapped here. I really want the right to work.” 24