'Migration Control and the Solutions Impasse in South and Southeast Asia: Implications from the Rohingya Experience'

By examining the comparative experiences of Rohingya who fled in the early 1990s to Bangladesh and Malaysia, this paper discusses implications for refugee protection in an Asian regional context characterized by generally applicable immigration measures and a reluctance to offer formal durable solutions. Somewhat secure from refoulement but undifferentiated or even deliberately invisible among larger irregular migrant populations, refugees in the region develop certain protection strategies and livelihood mechanisms outside the boundaries of formal asylum, which suggest they possess significant capacities to carve out their own protection space and achieve a level of de facto integration. Given the migration-focused discourse among states and regional processes as well as the impasse on solutions in Asia, this paper makes the case for further recognition of available, intermediate solutions which capitalize on ambiguities between migration management and refugee protection and empower refugee-driven solutions in all dimensions.