24 Papers, cards, and perilous encounters with the state often feature the struggles over constructions of the past. Myanmar’s histories in relation to state dominance and its minority populations are also characterised by contestation, conflict, and struggle (Metro 2011). Narrative research moves away from more traditional human rights research that, broadly speaking, seeks to ascertain and triangulate facts relating to violations and to establish degrees of distance between the researcher and the research participants for the purpose of objectivity and validity (Patel 2012). Narrative research focuses rather on subjectivities, multi-layered meaning, and historical experience. The framework provides useful methods for state crime researchers to explore how survivors contest and/or authorise dominant constructions of events and histories in state and international discourses, and how they construct their own individual and group memories, experiences, and identities in narrative forms that produce social action and demand change (see, e.g. Perks and Thomson 2006:1–14; Yuval-Davis 2010; Squire, Andrews et al. 2014). I have identified four ways in which a narrative approach is useful in investigating social histories, identities, and belonging. First, narratives are understood as ‘modes of resistance to existing structures of power’ (Squire, Andrews et al. 2014:4). Rohingya have been marginalised in Myanmar society and their histories, heritage, and traditions hidden and erased by the process of genocide and the production of their statelessness (Lee and González Zarandona 2019; MacLean 2019). Narrative frameworks have been integral to approaches that seek to make visible the ‘hidden histories’ of marginalised or ignored groups. These include black, working-class, or women’s histories, often incorporating anti-racist, socialist, and feminist perspectives in order to challenge the assumptions and accepted judgements and demand social action (Stanley 1995; Popular Memory Group 2006; Tamboukou 2010). This approach, then, provides an ideal way to explore how Rohingya narratives are able to influence the larger narratives at international level in ways that demand change and social action, tying in with the notions of resistance and social audience from within state crime scholarship. Written documents are sometimes described as having a ‘monopoly’ over ‘factual credibility’ (Portelli 2006:57), which can place communities and groups with oral traditions at a disadvantage in contesting the constructions of the past by dominant group with written (national) histories. Rohingya language has not been widely used as a written language in modern-day Myanmar; oral traditions within the household and community have played a huge part in shaping and maintaining identities and are thus a useful method of inquiry.6 Second, narrative research is useful in shifting the focus from the collection of objective facts and instead traces different meanings, understandings, and interpretations of events. Any single narrative also contains imaginings and symbolism (Portelli 2006:37). Narrative research accepts that structures, discourses, and social formations shape personal stories and that individuals may draw from multiple and shifting subject positions. Through these