Lives Within the Cage:

An Anthropological Inquiry into Power, Governance, and Statelessness in Rohingya Refugee Camps

Abstract

This article examines the multidimensional realities of Rohingya refugee life in the camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, through an anthropological lens of power, governance, and statelessness. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2024 and 2025 in the Kutupalong registered and unregistered camps, the study analyzes how administrative categorization, humanitarian regulation, and everyday moral economies construct and sustain the Rohingya condition. The research employs qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and thematic analysis, to explore the intersections of social hierarchy, dependency, and control within camp life. Guided by theoretical perspectives from Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality, Agamben’s notion of bare life, and Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, the article argues that the refugee camp represents a symbolic and political space where care and coercion coexist. In other words, the article advances these debates by conceptualizing the camps as regimes of governed waiting and by introducing the notion of a moral economy of humanitarian dependency. Humanitarian governance, while framed as protection, simultaneously functions as a mechanism of surveillance, exclusion, and moral discipline. Through the narratives of refugees themselves, the study reveals how the Rohingya negotiate survival, dignity, and belonging within structures that both sustain and subjugate them. Ultimately, the analysis redefines the Rohingya crisis as more than a humanitarian emergency; it is a deeply political and moral project that exposes the paradoxes of modern humanitarianism and the governance of stateless lives.