The Department of Politics and International Studies is excited to announce the publication of After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps by Farhana Afrin Rahman. This powerful book delves into the experiences of Rohingya women who fled violence and persecution in Myanmar, seeking refuge in Bangladesh.
Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017 and 2018, After the Exodus sheds light on the profound impact of displacement on gender roles, identity, and belonging within the Rohingya community. Rahman paints a vivid picture of how these women navigate the challenges of camp life, rebuild their lives, and forge a sense of normalcy amidst ongoing uncertainty.
For more information see the Cambridge University press introduction.
The Author
Dr Farhana Afrin Rahman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, as well as a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College Cambridge. She is a Bangladeshi-Canadian researcher whose research focuses on gender, displacement, and humanitarian interventions. After the Exodus is a vital contribution to the understanding of the Rohingya crisis and the experiences of women refugees around the world.
Reviews
‘After the Exodus is a refreshing addition to the literature of Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. The feminist lens that the book uses is very useful in casting light on the everyday lives of women. Through intense ethnographic details, life in the camps - the way that families regroup, new relationships formed, the problems with bringing up children in these cramped conditions, the issues surrounding marriage negotiations - are brought to life in vivid detail. The author has indeed successfully drawn us into the intricacies of negotiations that accompany these processes, as well as the fresh ways of problem solving that are brought into play.’
Firdous Azim - Professor and Chair at the Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University, Dhaka
‘This extraordinary monograph weaves the politics of storytelling in the context of acutely gendered violence and ethnic cleansing among Rohingya people with the futures they forge as they remake ‘home’ in the refugee camps of Bangladesh. Rahman’s exquisite research has clearly earned the trust of her informants, and reveals the horrid death and sexual violence against the Rohingya by the Burmese military during what is often a forgotten humanitarian disaster of dispossession and genocide, but also the ways people are remaking home in a new place. This reflexive and original feminist ethnography grapples with the unspeakable crimes against humanity faced by the Rohingya, but goes well beyond their survival in the camps of Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, highlighting their presence, perseverance, and strength under conditions not of their own making.’
Jennifer Hyndman - author of Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (2000)
‘This book provides a much-needed in-depth and poignant examination of the experiences of Rohingya women in the refugee camps of Bangladesh, exploring the complex interplay of gender identity, relations, and roles amid the harsh realities of forced displacement. Rahman restores women as resilient social agents navigating and negotiating patriarchal structures, rather than writing off their experiences as being those of victims unable to attend to their own wellbeing. Her unique approach instead emphasizes the resilience and creative strategies deployed by the Rohingya women to reconstruct their lives and communities, chief among them being the ‘Majhee’ system. This refreshing focus on the quotidian aspects of life in the camps provides an insightful and much-needed contribution to our understanding of refugee experiences more broadly and of refugee women specifically. Overall, a brilliantly researched and compelling book that offers a crucial perspective on the world’s most marginalized individuals, making it a highly relevant and significant read.’
Azeem Ibrahim OBE - author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide (2016)
After the Exodus is available for purchase now on the Cambridge University Press website