Research Topic Title: IDs for Rohingya: ‘Pathways to Citizenship’ or Instruments of Genocide?
My research interests include statelessness, state crime, forced migration, ID systems and bordering technologies. My doctoral research draws on Rohingya oral histories and narratives about Myanmar’s genocide and ID schemes to critique the prevailing international approaches to statelessness and legal identities. Approaches to reducing and preventing statelessness often start with the promotion of civil registration and the provision of state issued identity documents. IDs and state registration are understood to assist people in accessing their right to nationality over time. The ‘legal identities for all’ target in the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals (16.9) increased the international focus on the provision of IDs. These approaches informed development policy in Myanmar. However, Rohingya narratives often described Myanmar’s use of ID cards and registration as integral to the persecution and genocide committed by the state. My research explores these tensions, using narrative methods. It considers how Rohingya survivors of state crime have disrupted international framings of statelessness and its solutions.
Mentor: Prof. Bridget Anderson
Publications
Brinham, N. (2021) ‘We are not stateless! You can call us what you like, but we are citizens of
Myanmar!’ Rohingya resistance and the stateless label. In Statelessness, governance, and the
problem of citizenship (pp. 342-355), Manchester University Press.
Brinham, N. (2019) ‘Looking Beyond Invisibility: Rohingyas’ Dangerous Encounters with Papers
and Cards’, Tilburg Law Review, 24(2) 182-203. https://tilburglawreview.com/articles/10.5334/tilr.151/
Brinham, N. (2021) ‘Statelessness: A Modern History by Mira L Siegelberg’ (Harvard University
Press)”, The Statelessness & Citizenship Review, 3(1), pp. 163-168. https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/view/311
Brinham, N. (2023) Podcast: ‘Statelessness and Research Ethnics’ IMISCO,
https://www.imiscoe.org/news-and-blog/podcast/1866-on-statelessness-and-research-ethics
Zarni, M. & Brinham, N. (2017) ‘Reworking the Colonial Era Indian Peril: Myanmar’s State-
Directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims’ The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol
XXXIV: 1 https://bjwa.brown.edu/24-1/reworking-the-colonial-era-indian-peril-
myanmars-state-directed-persecution-of-rohingyas-and-other-muslims1/
Zarni, M. & Cowley, A. (my pseudonym), (2014), ‘The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya’, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, University of Washington, 23(3), Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol23/iss3/8/
Zarni, M & Brinham, N. (2019), ‘Essays on Myanmar’s Genocide of Rohingyas (2012-2018)’, Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, University of Dhaka.
Policy papers available at: https://www.institutesi.org/focus-areas/rohingya
Contact Details:
E-mail: eq23321@bristol.ac.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-brinham-68926a34
X (Twitter): @natbrinham