The Centre for Gender Studies will be hosting an event to mark the launch of Dr Farhana Afrin Rahman's book 'After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps' (Cambridge University Press, 2024) on Wednesday 30 April at 5.00 pm in Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge.
The book examines how forced migration of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women, and transformed gender relations and roles in displacement. Based on 14 months of feminist ethnographic fieldwork in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp in 2017 and 2018, the book uncovers the everyday strategies employed by refugee women to create a sense of belonging and to make a life for themselves after forced migration. Rohingya women adapt to camp life by negotiating marriage and intimate experiences, adjusting to changing gender divisions of labour, and navigating encounters with humanitarian aid agencies and male camp leaders. These women strategically bargain shifting power relations to reconstruct their lives in displacement, thereby reclaiming agency and asserting their identity through the spaces they create, inhabit, and reshape; the coping mechanisms they employ; and the bonds of kinship and community they forge.
The event will be followed by a drinks reception and all are welcome to attend.
Cover image © Cambridge University Press. Used by Permission