that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are making sacrifices to ensure that their children receive an education, including selling rations to pay for private tuition or education in the camps, or sending their children outside camps so they could receive religious education or attend state schools.5 Beyond education, there were notable gendered differences in the goals and aspirations of the Rohingya men and women we interviewed. When asked about their goals and aspirations, most men said they wanted to return to Myanmar. The issue of returns is explored in detail below, as part of a broader discussion of where refugees would like to live. Women were less likely to identify returning to Myanmar as a goal (although a few did); their goals pertained to improving the living conditions and situation of their family in Bangladesh. This included better WASH and healthcare, and less crowded, more robust shelters. When discussing their goals and what they hoped for their lives few refugees raised the issue of work, but this is not to say it is not important to them, as evident from responses to questions about supporting their families and livelihoods (discussed in Chapter 4). Some refugees found it hard to express any goals and aspirations at all; one 28-year-old woman said that she does not ‘hope for anything in this country because it’s not our country. Life is so uncertain here. Just praying and living somehow’. When asked what he hoped for, a 35-year-old man we interviewed in Kutupalong said ‘What should I hope for my life? If we can’t get these things in this camp then there is nothing but die. If we go back to our country without justice, then the military will start killing us’. 3.3  Where refugees want to live in the medium and long term 3.3.1  Returning to Myanmar As noted earlier, returning to Myanmar was a priority for many of the men we spoke to. Some identified the conditions under which they would return, including citizenship or identity documents,6 justice for perpetrators of violence and the freedom to return to their previous land or homes. This desire to return to Myanmar is in line with survey findings from 2018, including those by Habib et al. (2018: 81), who reported that, of the more than 3,000 Rohingya heads of household surveyed, 79% wanted to return to Myanmar as soon as possible. Similarly, Xchange (2018: 33) found that 97.5% of the Rohingya surveyed would consider returning to Myanmar, but only if certain conditions were met (namely Myanmar citizenship, being recognised as Rohingya, freedom of movement and religion and rights and dignity). It is interesting to note the discordance between this finding and the ill-fated attempt to begin repatriating Rohingya refugees late last year, in which not a single refugee agreed to return to Myanmar. Little to no progress has been made on Rohingya refugees attaining citizenship or justice, violence in Rakhine continues and research indicates that military clearance operations have destroyed villages where the Rohingya previously lived, making it unlikely that refugees would be able to return to their original homes (Amnesty International, 2018). While some of the Rohingya men we interviewed expressed a clear desire to return and the conditions under which they would do so, others were less certain. One man in his fifties said ‘I am thinking about my future, how much I will be able to educate my children, and when we will go back to Myanmar, and what happens later when we go back to Myanmar. Is it true we will get identity in Myanmar or not? We are highly confused about it’. Such confusion can be linked to a lack of clear information on conditions in Myanmar and what has changed since the refugees were forced to flee. One refugee said he was waiting to see what happened to Rohingya IDPs in Myanmar as an indication of what might happen to them. Others, in particular women respondents, expressed conflicting views about returning, and were less certain about what they wanted or expected for the future. A 34-yearold woman with six children said ‘In Myanmar they tortured us a lot, burned our houses, killed our cattle. We might go back if we get justice, but still we don’t want to go if another country will take us … If you tell us to go back to our country we will get killed after two years – if you tell us to go back I will just lie down in front of a truck and die here, I don’t want to go back’. 5 In March 2019, a month after our fieldwork, the Bangladeshi Government cracked down on Rohingya children attending Bangladeshi schools, leading some to be expelled (McPherson and Paul, 2019). 6 Caution should be exercised in equating identity documents or citizenship with an automatic improvement in security and rights in Myanmar, when there is little to suggest this would be the case. Even those with appropriate documentation in Rakhine continue to face restrictions and discrimination, as do other minority groups, such as the Chin. This matters because, if Rohingya were to be offered a form of documentation acceptable to them, this may increase their willingness to return even if it does not fundamentally alter the discrimination they are likely to face. 14 Uncertain futures: Rohingya refugees’ perspectives on their displacement in Bangladesh