Infrastructuring Hope: Solidarity, Leadership, Negotiation, and ICT among the Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

Abstract

Migration, forced mobility, and refugee studies in ICTD and related disciplines have been predominantly focused on the victims' immediate needs, including shelter, food, healthcare, language, and information. This line of work has mostly been devoid of the political background of migration and the victims' future hopes and aspirations, and hence fails to address many pressing issues associated with their long-term settlement. We address this gap in ICTD literature by drawing on our two years long ethnography with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. We build on a rich body of literature on development sociology and philosophy to demonstrate how the refugees infrastructure their hope through various artful practices of solidarity, leadership, and negotiation, and how ICT plays an important role in and around each of these practices. We discuss how our study further contributes to the ongoing discourse in ICTD around aspiration, hope, design, and empowerment.