NAVIGATING A (POST-)SOVEREIGN SPACE AS A DATAFIELD SUBJECT: A STUDY OF THE ROHINGYA IN KUALA LUMPER

Abstract

While the refugee confounds the traditional nation-state and citizenship regimes, refugees are often inducted into it through the global humanitarian regime. As humanity is increasingly entangled with digitisation, it is worthy to examine the interaction between stateless people and technological affordances, and how the latter may take ownership over the former's identity formation. On the other hand, digital affordances can do something good for the stateless too, and may be the tool necessary for establishing a meaningful life outside of the logic of the nation-state and citizenship. This thesis engages in participant observation of the Rohingya Project, a Rohingya-led organisation, to examine the possibility of stateless people carving out a post-sovereign existence. The findings show exclusion from the nation-state was navigated with the aid of technology through three approaches: (1) preservation of Rohingya identity through a historical archival mechanism; (2) providing infrastructure to go beyond legal identities in forming the sense of self, such as through education; and (3) seeking change from the community itself. However, the efficacy of establishing a post-sovereign existence is limited by the lack of capacity of both the organisation and the Rohingya community, a failure to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the Rohingya, and attempts to define identity explicitly referencing the Burmese state, undermining a post-sovereign solution. Ultimately, while RP attempts to utilise space that escapes the Westphalian nation-state's gaze, the sovereign remains dominant.