Notions of Belonging for Working Rohingya Boys in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Abstract

How do children negotiate belonging in temporal and spatial spaces that have been determined by official processes to be illegitimate and bereft of rights including right to education? These spaces, occupied by undocumented children who may participate in further niches of illegality such as child labor, are ripe for investigation. This article focuses on Rohingya children in Bangladesh, born in Myanmar or in Bangladesh, as inhabitants of these physical, spatial, and illegal spaces of political status. Exploring the lack of education opportunities, I utilize the framework of belonging through a lens of dialogic encounters as a primary way working Rohingya children make meaning of their lived experiences. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh over seven months, this article elucidates previously unexplored lived experiences of Rohingya children working in the dry fish fields of Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. The article makes key contributions to the intersection of childhood and migration studies, presenting the effects of the protracted Rohingya crisis on working Rohingya children. The article emphasizes that working children’s perception of their work and schooling opportunities and their notions of belonging in illegitimate spaces are connected in the ways they facilitate facets of social agency through dialogic encounters of the self and the other.