ABSTRACT
Based on an ethnographic study in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, this chapter looks at the ways in which Rohingya women have been able to negotiate a sense of belonging within their new environment, thereby transforming meanings of “home” despite the profound dislocation from their homeland of Myanmar. For Rohingya women, home and belonging emerge out of the shared experiences of displacement, the social and cultural interactions that constitute the camps, and the routine activities that provide normalcy in everyday life. Preexisting social ties are overlaid by new social relationships. Past communal practices carried into the present provide a feeling of continuity. These practices recast an unfamiliar environment as a familiar setting attached to a time immemorial. By exploring the lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women, this chapter reveals that even in the direst of circumstances, refugees maintain a productive capacity to transform their setting, thereby producing a new sense of home.
