Abstract
Statelessness poses profound barriers to legal recourse, yet disenfranchised populations frequently deploy innovative legal mobilization strategies to contest their marginalization. This comparative study examines grassroots advocacy and legal mobilization among the stateless Rohingya in Rakhine State, Myanmar, and the refugee settlements of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Drawing on qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews with community paralegals, human rights defenders, grassroots organizers, and civil society leaders, this paper investigates how Rohingya actors navigate distinct institutional environments to claim rights, document human rights violations, and contest systemic exclusion. The findings reveal that while Rohingya advocacy in Myanmar relies heavily on informal, vernacularized dispute resolution and covert documentation under severe authoritarian surveillance, mobilization in Bangladesh’s refugee camps centers on transactional legal bargaining with humanitarian authorities, structured paralegal networks, and transnational accountability initiatives linked to international justice mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. By synthesizing legal mobilization theory with critical statelessness studies, this article demonstrates that even in the absolute absence of formal citizenship and de jure legal standing, subaltern legal consciousness operates as a resilient mechanism of political agency and collective survival. The paper concludes by outlining policy implications for international non-governmental organizations and donor agencies seeking to support localized legal empowerment frameworks in protracted displacement contexts.
