Tracing Histories of Displaceability in and from Myanmar

Roundtable Convenor(s)

• ER

  Elizabeth Rhoads

  Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden
• AK

  Aung Ko Ko

  Mosaic Myanmar, Myanmar

Roundtable Chair(s)

• ER

  Elizabeth Rhoads

  Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden

Roundtable Participant(s)

• ER

  Elizabeth Rhoads

  Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden
• AK

  Aung Ko Ko

  Mosaic Myanmar, Myanmar
• NT

  Nan Tinilarwin

  Mosaic Myanmar, Australia
• TT

  Tharaphi Than

  Northern Illinois University, United States
• MB

  Maxime Boutry

  Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE) - French National Centre for Scientific Research, France

Roundtable Abstract: Since Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, Myanmar civilians have faced multiple displacement events including in situ, internal, and cross-border displacement. Every previous period of military rule in Myanmar was accompanied by deportations, citizenship stripping and denationalization, emigration, and widespread urban and rural displacement. Previous periods of military rule also led to widespread exclusion of those deemed not to fit within the narrowly drawn parameters and impractical evidentiary requirements of Myanmar’s citizenship regime, causing longstanding inequality and producing millions of emigrants, exiles, and stateless people within and beyond Myanmar’s borders, with Myanmar’s Muslim and Hindu minority communities particularly impacted.

Yet, many previous population movements and forced migrations do not appear on the radars of international organizations tasked with displacement, statelessness, migration, and refugees, particularly as many of these movements occurred before the Refugee Convention’s 1967 Optional Protocol extended the temporal and geographic scope of the Convention to include Myanmar. Furthermore, Myanmar’s well-documented racialized citizenship regime, and Myanmar and Thailand’s status as non-signatories of the relevant Conventions have complicated international policy responses to myriad forms of displacement and irregular documentary status on both sides of the border. In addition to hundreds of thousands of contemporary refugees, evictees, and internally displaced persons, in the archive, Myanmar’s displaced include multiple and often overlapping subjectivities: war-time evacuees, urban squatters, fire victims, emigrants, internal and cross-border migrants, and disaster victims, many of whom would have been considered refugees or internally displaced persons had contemporary definitions been applied.

This roundtable explores the multiple modes of displacement in Myanmar’s history, not limited to development-induced displacement and conflict-induced displacement and the overlaps of displacement with other forms of marginality. It asks panelists to reflect on how histories of displacement and displaceability intersect with contemporary forms of ongoing and repeat displacement, like that experienced by the Rohingya in 2017 and since the 2021 military coup. Furthermore, we intend to explore the after-effects of displacement, home-creation, rebuilding, and emplacement in communities within Myanmar and abroad. In discussing displacement across a longer time period, we hope to make links between past and present state practice and the agency of communities in resisting and rebuilding.