Looking Beyond Invisibility: Rohingyas’ Dangerous Encounters with Papers and Cards

Abstract

State registration and identity documents are often promoted as a way to lift an individual out of the condition of statelessness and begin to redress their deficit of rights. This paper looks beyond invisibility to differentiate between the types of visibility that are produced by documents and registration. Drawing on Rohingyas’ historical experiences of documentation and registration in Myanmar, it explores meanings that Rohingyas’ attach to their identity documents and asks what contributions these narratives can make to understandings of identity documents in statelessness studies. It concludes that in order to ensure the principle of ‘do no harm’, international approaches to statelessness could better factor in the lived experiences of the documented, undocumented and redocumented.