citizenship and genocide cards: ids, statelessness and rohingya resistance in myanmar

This book draws on Rohingya oral histories and narratives about Myanmar’s genocide and ID schemes to critique prevailing international approaches to legal identities and statelessness. By centring the narratives of survivors of state crimes, collected in the aftermath of the 2017 genocidal violence, this book examines the multiple uses of state issued ID cards and registration documents in producing statelessness and facilitating genocide. In doing so, it challenges some of the international solutions put forward to resolve statelessness.

Rohingya narratives disrupt a simple linear understanding of documenting legal identity that marginalizes experiences of these processes. The richly layered accounts of the effects of citizenship laws and registration processes on the lives of Rohingya, problematise the ways in which international actors have endorsed state ID schemes and by-passed state-led persecution of the group. This book will be valuable for scholars studying global criminology, state crime, development studies, refugee and migration studies, statelessness and nationality, citizenship studies and genocide studies.

Natalie Brinham is a researcher and author working on statelessness, ID systems, forced migration and genocide. She also has many years of experience working in the UK and Southeast Asia in human rights, advocacy, and frontline provision for refugees and migrants. She holds a PhD in Legal Studies from Queen Mary University of London, and an MA in Gender, Education and International Development from University College London.