ASKING THE WORLD TO SEE: IM/MOBILITIES IN REFUGEES' GROUP SELF-REPRESENTATION THROUGH THE PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZINE ROHINGYATOGRAPHER.

Abstract

Turner suggests that while contemporary globalization creates mobilities for goods and services because of economic needs, it produces immobilities of people because of state system’s relies on sovereignty and borders. These productions of immobilities at borders are paralleled by denial to those rendered (temporarily) immobile to participate and actively represent themselves. As media is the site where questions of refugees’ positions in society, their rights, and livelihoods are negotiated, dominant representations protecting the (white) host society’s sensibilities reinvoke the state’s needs for sovereignty and securitization of borders. Mediatized refugee self-representation means that instead of being represented according to hegemonic, immobilizing discourses and by more powerful institutions like global news media, refugees are representing themselves according to their interests. An example for this, and the focus of this thesis is a photography magazine by Rohingya refugees from the camps in Cox’s Bazar titled Rohingyatographer. In analyzing this photography magazine both self-representation and representations and conceptions of different forms of mobilities and immobilities are explored, building on Khan and Smet’s perspectives on immobility. This thesis argues for understanding the Rohingyatographer as a form of group self-representation, building on Thumim’s perspective of the genre of self-representation and differentiating the meaning of representation into depiction and speaking for inspired by Spivak. This group self-representation addresses previous symbolic immobilizations but also serves to move the symbolic space in which Rohingya understand and see themselves. Through the Rohingyatographer, Rohingya ask to be seen by the world and to be seen how they see themselves and for the world to finally pay attention to solutions, the indignity of their situation, and the continuing lack of justice for the atrocities they endured. The Rohingyatographer is a collective portrait in service of dignified portrayal, group identity, and visual affirmation. As such the magazine represents both spatial immobility through ordinary daily camp life and a sense of temporal liminality tied to an understanding of the overall situation of the Rohingya community as deteriorating, which exists side by side with a desire for social mobility and a hope for a better future for Rohingya.