The labeling problem in Southeast Asia’s refugee crisis
In the ‘crisis’ involving the displaced Rohingya people in Southeast Asia, the preferred institutional label is “irregular migrants.”
It is a term which implies that migration is well-regulated, which is not the case in South East Asia. The ‘labeling’ or construction of identities of social groups and individuals by institutional power determines how they are dealt with by such powers.
This is vividly illustrated by the current ‘crisis’, and reflects the regional securitized discourse focusing on human trafficking and transnational crime, which began in the 1990s. Under the term irregular migration,” the ‘crisis’ of the Rohingya people is reduced to one of human trafficking and smuggling, rather than one of systematic persecution within Myanmar.
