DOI:
AUTHOR(S)
Md. Arafat Mostofa, Masha Al-Airin Khan
ABSTRACT
The large-scale displacement of more than 1.3 million Rohingya individuals to Bangladesh is a humanitarian disaster that has radically changed how everyone approaches identity formation among stateless people. In this paper, the new ways in which Rohingya refugees form their sense of self and community by using narrative practice that crosses geographical and cultural boundaries are explored. Establishing links with contemporary displacement fiction—i.e., works by Mohsin Hamid, Khaled Hosseini, and Viet Thanh Nguyen and the discourses diaspora, identity, and postcolonialism—this paper illustrates how the narrative becomes a survival strategy for maintaining cultural cohesion in the face of the violent harshness of refugee camp existence. The study demonstrates that Rohingya groups build complex patterns of identity that operate beyond the traditional frameworks of citizenship, and these identity patterns spin transnational webs of identity which conflict with dominant diaspora paradigms. Examining oral testimony, digital communication, written texts, interviews and witnessed cultural practices within Bangladesh’s refugee camps, this paper argues that diaspora groups rebuild their own collective identity actively through cross-border narrative exchange. This paper also highlights the process of developing new paradigms to understand home, belonging, and cultural continuity in cases of permanent displacement.
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