Rohingya women and children who are stateless live in constant fear of immigration detention in Thailand and Malaysia amid many other threats and challenges. This article examines their situation as a continuum of vulnerability and explores how Rohingya women exert agency where possible.
Key words: statelessness, protection, Rohingya, immigration detention, Thailand, Malaysia.
The Rohingya community have lived in a condition of enforced statelessness since they were deprived of citizenship under law in 1982. The relentless condition of ‘not belonging’ does not end at the border of Burma/Myanmar, it follows the Rohingya into displacement contexts where exclusion is reproduced through restrictive migration regimes, xenophobia, and the constant threat of violence.
Millions of Rohingya have been forced to flee Myanmar, resulting in a large diaspora in the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions. The undocumented nature of statelessness and forced migration obscures accurate population data, but it is estimated that approximately 100,000 Rohingya are residing in Thailand and 250,000 in Malaysia. According to a report by the International Federation of Human Rights and the Union of Civil Liberty , there were more than 1,800 people in detention Thailand in 2024, the largest proportion of which were from Myanmar. There are approximately 5,100 Rohingya detained in immigration detention in Malaysia.
It is commonly claimed that Thailand is a transit country for the Rohingya making their way to Malaysia. This perception influences government policies, resulting in a lack of permanency and underfunding of long-term settlement support. Malaysia is portrayed as a better destination for displaced Rohingya because of the notion of Muslim solidarity, but this is challenged by increased episodic xenophobia towards the Rohingya. Despite the religious commonalities, there is restricted access to work and study rights, and a lack of settlement support for refugees.
Drawing on the lived experiences of Rohingya women living as stateless migrants and refugees in Thailand and Malaysia, this article examines the risk of indefinite detention and its gendered impacts on women and children; and how individual and collective capacity shapes the possibilities for agency within displacement.
Statelessness and exacerbating vulnerability
Statelessness results from the stripping or denial of citizenship. Neha Jain, a public international law expert, categorises statelessness as a statecraft, describing it as only occurring through the intent or neglect of the state. In many contexts, such as those experienced by the Rohingya, citizenship stripping is a weaponised tool to dehumanise, degrade and deprive an entire population. To be stripped of citizenship is to be severed from a legal relationship with the state and from the protections and entitlements that the state is obliged to provide.
Our research
In-depth interviews and focus groups with 55 Rohingya women as well as community and service provider representatives were held in September and October 2025 in Malaysia and Thailand. A semi-structured format enabled participants to describe their lived experience of displacement, gendered violence and contextual factors contributing to vulnerability. Interviews were conducted in English, Rohingya, and Thai. The research team included Thai, Australian and Rohingya colleagues and interpreters, most with long-standing community relationships. Details of exact locations have been reserved for population safety. The participant’s identifying information has also been withheld and pseudonyms used.
Using equations to calculate complex risk
The Global Protection Cluster, a network of humanitarian actors and organisations including the U.N., has commonly promoted a risk-based model of protection (Figure 1). This non-mathematical equation assesses protection risk with a focus on context specific vulnerabilities and threats that compound the likelihood of violence, exploitation and abuse.
Figure 1: Protection equation adapted from InterAction/Global Protection Cluster.
Risk refers to actual or potential violence, coercion, or deliberate deprivation. Threats are individuals, institutions, or policies that cause harm. Vulnerability captures the contextual, circumstantial and individual factors, including gendered inequalities that heighten exposure to harm or limit a person’s ability to anticipate, cope with, resist or recover from threats and imposed risks. Time relates to the duration of exposure to such conditions. Vulnerability and protection scholarship shows that prolonged exposure intensifies susceptibility to risk. Drawing on interviews with Rohingya women in Malaysia and Thailand, we have interpreted capacity as encompassing informal protective strategies including community-based supports, individual strengths and forms of resistance.
For Rohingya women fearing immigration detention, everyday activities such as going to the market or taking children out to play, requires undertaking their own risk assessments. The views of Rohingya women about their safety can be analysed and interpreted using the risk equation, to understand the impact of statelessness on protective factors, and where capacity for protection in such extreme situations can be exercised.
We argue that statelessness is a constant vulnerability, which shifts analytical attention toward the individual and community-generated responses that shape protection for Rohingya women and children in practice.
Threats, vulnerability and time
Indefinite detention
Immigration detention and deportation are two coercive state mechanisms to manage populations deemed unwanted and/or irregular. These practices are often justified as necessary to safeguard state sovereignty and are widely employed across global migration regimes.
For people who are stateless, however, deportation is often impossible because no state recognises them or is obligated to receive them. This legal and political impasse reinforces stagnation in the deportation process, leaving stateless people trapped in systems unable to resolve their status, and resulting in prolonged or indefinite detention in immigration facilities.
Amina*, a Rohingya woman living in Malaysia explained ‘if you are arrested, you are sent to the immigration camp. Some men are arrested and stay seven or eight years in camp. No visit, no call’. Amina gestured to an adolescent girl sitting with her and stated ‘she is 16 years old, she was married only a couple of months before her husband was detained. Now it has been one year, she has been left with no financial support and no one to protect her.’
Financial vulnerability
Women alone or separated from their spouses may also be forced to engage in negative coping mechanisms, such as survival sex or marriage for ‘safety’. Rabeya*, a widow with daughters in Thailand told us ‘an older man approached me. He asked me to marry him, so I said yes but only for financial reasons. I needed to feed my children and take them to school.’
Statelessness and being an undocumented migrant create legal barriers to employment. As a result, unpartnered Rohingya mothers in Malaysia and Thailand experience severe financial hardship which increases the risk of exploitative labour and child labour, exposing children to elevated risks of violence.
Aziza* in Thailand told us how her two sons, both under 12 years of age, were illegally working to earn money for the family. Although Aziza spoke positively about the care afforded to her children by the family paying for their labour, she also highlighted the disruption to their childhood, education and the lack of choice due to their vulnerability.
The separation of children from their mothers
Jacob*, a service provider supporting refugees and people seeking asylum in Malaysia, explained that the age limit for a child housed in detention facilities is 12-years-old and that boys over 12 were separated from their mothers and transferred to adult immigration facilities, despite the international and national legal definition of a child being anyone under 18 years of age.
Mothers tend to experience acute psychological distress due concern about the welfare of their children, adolescent girls often assume adult responsibilities prematurely and face heightened risks of exploitation, while adolescent boys placed in adult facilities are exposed to environments that are unsafe, punitive, and developmentally damaging – influencing life trajectories.
The harms of lengthy periods in immigration detention
Time spent in detention and the risk of psychological and physical harm, and even death, are correlated. Age is also a factor linked to vulnerability, with detained children at serious risk. Protracted displacement has a significant impact on mental health and heightens the risk of intergenerational trauma, reduces future-oriented activities such as education and increases the risks of gendered violence such as intimate partner violence.
Mina*, a Rohingya community representative in Malaysia, shared his experience of detention and deportation and the long-term impacts: ‘Throughout my journey, I was detained 18 times and deported 15 times. As a result, I have post-traumatic stress disorder and receive mental health treatment’.
Prolonged, repeated and seemingly indefinite detention increases risks for women and children in the community and as well as those within detention facilities.
Extortion and harassment by police and immigration officials
In borderland contexts women’s stories featured targeted immigration raids by police and/or immigration officials. Due to proximity to national borders, such raids could result in unlawful deportations rather than detention in an immigration facility.
Rhia*, a Rohingya community representative in Thailand, explained that borderland postings can be lucrative for police and immigration officers, who advance their career prospects and accumulate wealth through deportations, the taking of ‘protection money’ and bribes. Interviewees described needing to pay money, sometimes as often as monthly, to avoid harassment and arrest. While payments may provide a temporary sense of safety, they constitute extortion, contribute to vulnerability, and exacerbate financial stress. These scenarios also increase the risk of gender-based violence in the home. Police are often perceived as a threat, which creates barriers to accessing what protection mechanisms may be available. As Freya* stated ‘we are scared to go to the [U.N. agency] office because it is far and we have heard that it is surrounded by police’.
The targeted and frequent yet unpredictable occurrence of immigration raids is traumatising and disrupting for people who are undocumented and stateless. During raids, many people feel compelled to go into hiding for days due to the fear of deportation or detention. One family interviewed described how their father, who is in the end-of-life phase of cancer and receiving only informal care, is regularly forced to hide in outdoor settings while raids occur.
Capacity: Strategies to reduce risk—a ‘never-ending story of difficult survival’
Women describe applying self-restriction and avoidance tactics to stay safe. These strategies include staying home, hiding, avoiding areas of perceived risk (including children’s playgrounds and shops where surveillance is perceived as higher) and avoiding service providers with relationships with the state (including United Nations agencies). Prisha* shared her fears, ‘I am scared of the police, I don’t go out because we don’t belong to this country. I am scared the police will take us to detention, even if we do nothing wrong.’
Communities develop word-of-mouth warning systems of high-risk locations and when police or immigration raids are occurring or are likely to occur. Kia* described such a warning system and the way she protects her children: ‘Sometimes Police or Immigration come and check, around 3am or 4am. When this happens, I send the children to another place overnight to avoid arrest. We are told through rumours if a raid is going to happen. I feel like I’m always on alert.’ These risk reduction strategies are context specific and often informed by direct experiences of intimidation, harassment and violence.
Communal money lending and sharing knowledge and resources are other strategies used to increase capacity. Rohan* and Alice*, a couple living in Bangkok are supported by the community: ‘The Rohingya story is one of difficult survival. For the Rohingya this is a never-ending story… with our Rohingya friends, we take turns supporting each other when we can’t work.’ Established members of the community often help new families when they arrive. A woman on the borderlands in Thailand described this type of support: ‘For the first two months after arriving our relatives helped pay our rent. Now, three months we have not paid rent. The house owner is (a religious leader), we seek understanding from him but if he says “go”, we have to go.’
Rohingya women we spoke to also use protective rituals and religious items to protect themselves and their children. One example is the tabis, a special string that is tied on part of a baby’s body, thought to provide protection for the child. Another example is the use of kohl to paint dots on a baby’s face and feet to protect them from the evil eye. Such practices can offer a psychological sense of protection, steeped in history and are symbolic of protection in faith.
Statelessness as a constant and its disruption to the protection risk equation
Across research sites in urban Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and in Thailand’s borderland areas, statelessness emerged not merely as the absence of legal nationality, but as a condition that systematically reorganises exposure to protection risks. Rather than discrete incidents of harm, Rohingya women described a continuum of vulnerability shaped by legal precarity, restricted mobility, informal labour arrangements, and uneven access to both state and humanitarian protection mechanisms.
Women face multiple constraints: limited communicative confidence, restricted mobility, and an inability to independently navigate welfare or service-provision spaces where they exist. At the same time, members of households live under the constant harmful stress of needing to evade police checks and arrest. These vulnerabilities are not experienced separately, but are accumulated through everyday encounters with employers, landlords, police officers, health providers, and other intermediaries who mediate access to safety.
In the protection risk equation, statelessness functions less as a background condition and more as a multiplier—intensifying gendered, economic, and institutional forms of insecurity, while rendering capacity as fragile, conditional, and perpetually at risk of erosion.
The known protective factors in displacement settings such as education, engagement in structured activities, formal documents, access to justice and other essential services, stable family relationships, and adequate household incomes are absent in the context of constant and enduring statelessness and the threat of indefinite detention and raids. Despite this absence, Rohingya women navigate this environment through constrained, but nonetheless protective informal strategies.
Conclusion
The absence of legal status, or pathways to permanency, requires Rohingya women and children to rely on small scale individual or community coping strategies, including some that can place them at further or new protection risk. These strategies are necessary and lifesaving in the absence of formal protection, but broader structural forces continue to generate and reinforce harm. The result is a protection environment defined by a persistent imbalance between oppressive threats and the limited formal and informal protective factors within their reach.
The protection environment for Rohingya women and children, who are often framed predominantly through the ‘lens of vulnerability’, will likely continue to be shaped by structural threats that far outweigh the constrained capacity-strengthening efforts they can self-mobilise. The influence available on the protection equation, therefore, leaves safety dependent on often unstable community‑level strategies rather than rights‑based safeguards.
*Pseudonyms for interviewees have been used throughout.
Authors: Zoe Bell,; Bina D’Costa, Michelle Godwin, Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, The Australian National University; Amporn Marddent, Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Thammasat University, Thailand; Khin , Independent Researcher, Thailand; and Hamidah Abdul Salam, Independent Researcher, Malaysia.
Acknowledgement: This research sits within a broader initiative at the Australian National University, seeking to understand the contexts in which violence against women occurs in displacement settings. It is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW #CE230100004) and the ARC Future Fellowship (#FT210100759). Research ethics obtained from the Australian National University (H20240996). Views expressed are the authors alone.
Image: Shoes behind window bars, Malaysia. Photo used with permission of Zoe Bell/CEVAW.
