10 Introduction 2012) especially where the criminal nature of a particular set of practices is under dispute, as has been the case with the production of statelessness. The study of resistance in state crime scholarship then, drawing on the concept of ‘social audience,’ focuses on naming forms of criminal behaviour, making this behaviour publicly visible and putting pressure on the perpetrators to stop and make amends (Green and Ward 2015:214–215). As such, how Rohingya resist identity destruction and the production of their statelessness was a key area in my research. It was the focus on resistance that led me to look much more closely at narratives relating to identity cards and their absences. Registration and the issuance of identity cards are one of the most frequent encounters between the individual and the state (Hull 2012); hence, ID schemes in Rakhine State and in the refugee camps of Bangladesh have become a key site of resistance for Rohingya (Brinham 2018). If citizenship is viewed not simply as a status but as a relationship with the state that may be destroyed as part of a process, it is possible to view Rohingya claims to citizenship over several decades as methods to name, make visible, and censure the state for their gradual revocation of that citizenship. The main thrust of Rohingya claim-making processes relating to their citizenship in Myanmar has come not only through acts of resistance such as claiming the name ‘Rohingya’ against state policy but also through the enactment and performance of citizenship—whether that be through constitution writing, taking part in national cultural events, paying taxes, voting, working in government roles, and other everyday interactions. Such acts potentially place demands on the state and expose the arbitrary revocation of citizenship as part of a criminal process by the state. Thus, in exploring Rohingya narratives, I also looked beyond their stories of identity cards to consider how they enacted and experienced citizenship in Myanmar which, as I discuss in Chapter 5, often disrupted assumptions of their statelessness in ways that highlighted the arbitrary nature of the removal of their status and evidence of citizenship. Chapter outline In this chapter, I have provided a background and explained the theoretical underpinnings for this research. In Chapter 2, ‘Papers, cards and perilous encounters with the state: Identity documents, oral histories and state crime research,’ I focus on IDs and other state-issued documents as central to the research methods developed for this project. Oral histories and narratives about identity documents produced rich data pertaining to state power, social relations, administrative violence, and resistance. They enabled an examination of the intimate relationship between ID systems, identity destruction, and genocide, as well as the interconnections between legal and social identities Chapter 3, ‘By-passing State Power and Neutralising State Bureaucracies in International Approaches to Statelessness,’ focuses on statelessness.