TILBURG LAW REVIEW Journal of International and European Law Natalie Brinham, ‘Looking Beyond Invisibility: Rohingyas’ Dangerous Encounters with Papers and Cards’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review pp. 156–169. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.151 RESEARCH ARTICLE Looking Beyond Invisibility: Rohingyas’ Dangerous Encounters with Papers and Cards Natalie Brinham* State registration and identity documents are often promoted as a way to lift an individual out of the condition of statelessness and begin to redress their deficit of rights. This paper looks beyond invisibility to differentiate between the types of visibility that are produced by documents and registration. Drawing on Rohingyas’ historical experiences of documentation and registration in Myanmar, it explores meanings that Rohingyas’ attach to their identity documents and asks what contributions these narratives can make to understandings of identity documents in statelessness studies. It concludes that in order to ensure the principle of ‘do no harm’, international approaches to statelessness could better factor in the lived experiences of the documented, undocumented and redocumented. Keywords: Rohingya; Myanmar; Statelessness; Identity Documents; Legal Identities; Narrative Research 1 Introduction Citizenship and statelessness are often associated with ideas of who is “visible” and “invisible” to states and to the law, who has been “counted” and who remains “uncounted”, who is “documented” and “undocumented”, and who is “registered” and “unregistered”. State registration and ID papers are often promoted as a way to lift an individual out of the condition of statelessness and begin to redress their deficit of rights. This paper looks beyond invisibility to differentiate between the types of visibility that are produced by documents and registration. Drawing on Rohingyas’ historical experiences of documentation and registration in Myanmar, it asks: How can the meanings that Rohingya attach to their identity documents contribute to understandings of visibility and identity documents from within statelessness studies? In answering this question, I draw on qualitative narrative research undertaken as part of my research with Rohingya participants. I demonstrate that Rohingyas’ understandings and lived experiences of being registered and documented in Myanmar speak to different academic approaches to identity documents. In order to do this, I identify thematic areas within Rohingya narratives that converge with three of these academic approaches. These thematic areas are the emancipatory, repressive, and destructive powers of documents. State-issued identity documents are material objects of law that can frame human experience, generate multiple meanings, and describe social identities.1 It is through rich ethnographic description that these meanings can be represented effectively within academic research.2 Therefore, these above-mentioned thematic areas are illustrated through the personal history of one Rohingya man named Mohammed and his three identity documents. Through discussion of the power of documents, I argue that identity documents do not merely prevent and reduce statelessness but can also produce and reproduce it in multiple ways. The lived experience of being registered and documented relates not only to being seen or unseen by the state but also to how one is seen and for what purpose. I suggest that approaches aiming to reduce statelessness through registration and documentation have primarily drawn on understandings of documents as emancipators. Incorporating deeper understandings of the ways in which documents and registration can also * PhD student, Queen Mary University of London, UK, n.j.brinham@qmul.ac.uk 1 Matthew S Hull, ‘Documents and Bureaucracy’ (2012) 41 Annual Review of Anthropology 251. 2 Fiona McConnell, ‘Citizens and Refugees: Constructing and Negotiating Tibetan Identities in Exile’ (2013) 103 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 967.