The Development and Dismantling of Fragmented Protection: Rohingya Refugee Experiences of Fragmented Governance Across India

Research has extensively explored the ad hoc nature of forced migration governance in India, with scholars arguing that India has tended to take a different approach to different asylum-seeking groups. Recent research also highlights how policy toward a single refugee group can shift drastically over time. What does this fragmentation and ad hocism mean for the everyday life of refugee and asylum-seeking communities? How does it affect the lived experience of refuge and protection in India? This article tackles these questions by examining the case of the Rohingya refugees in India—once granted official Long Term Visas as asylum seekers in 2012, now marked for detention and deportation as illegal immigrants in 2025. Drawing from fieldwork conducted with refugees, community leaders, and NGOs working across the country, this article examines how the combination of fragmented (forced) migration governance and divergent settlement patterns of the Rohingya in India has resulted in a form of fragmented protection, marked by different degrees of negotiated access to services such as health and education. At the same time, the precarity of the Rohingyas’ legal status in India (as UNHCR card-holders who are simultaneously deemed illegal by the Indian government) profoundly influences the operational space and potential impact of this fragmented protection. I show how fragmented protection is increasingly shaped by structural shocks including the political (negative government stance on refugees), the discursive (growing negative public perception of the Rohingya), and the administrative (drives toward all-encompassing digital identification schemes inhibiting the space for policy discretion).