Exploring the Links between Camp governmentality and Agentic Responses of Rohingya Refugee in Bangladesh [védés előtt]

Abstract

The debate is that a particular form of governmentality is acknowledged in the different studies on refugee camps governance but those studies consider only the power of state actors and humanitarian organizations. This thesis found that consideration incomplete and partial view of camp operations in protracted refugee situation (PRS). Rather the camp governmentality necessarily encompasses power of the refugees, their microphysics of power in the long-term camps. This understanding of governmentality result in an essential link with refugee agency with a view to operate the camps peacefully in extended period. This dissertation deals this aspect based on the empirical evidence from Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar of Bangladesh. The exploration of connection between these two phenomena of refugee camps resolves the research question that why and how the refugee agency emerges and sustain in the camp governmentality. This dissertation considers refugee, member of government organizations (state actors) and humanitarian organizations (non-state actors) as the main actors of the Rohingya refugee camps. In this hindsight, I ask here how camp governmentality in the form of exercising power by these three actors is (re)constructing ambivalent relationships-interactions and (un)linked them with emerging agencies of refugees in protracted situation (PRS). To that end, it takes up Michel Foucault’s governmentality theory in discerning the camp governmentality while on the same ground it challenges the default understanding of refugees’ agency from a sociopolitical lens rather than from a political lens or cultural perspectives alone. Put differently, the study extends the scope of camp governmentality investigation beyond the sovereignty-territorial, juridico-political narrative to microphysics of power of the actors in the ‘state of exception’ of refugee camp.