Lines of Flight – Justice Vacuums and Legal Pluralism in the Rohingya Refugee Camps

Abstract Refugee camps within non-signatory states are differentially distinguishable with respect to the degree of the social and administrative integration of their residents with the wider “host” community. Nonetheless, in each case, the spatio-temporal and administrative segregation lends to the creation of localised time-spaces where divergent and parallel structures of law develop. This research looks at the perpetuation of legal pluralism within the confines of the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, one of the more repressive camp settings across the world. Through in-depth ethnomethodological accounts, I trace the ways in which refugees (dis)engage with state legal systems and the divergent, multiple legal orders within the camps, a number of which are administered by armed groups. The research argues that through the establishment of such pluralities, the process of justice production itself becomes a site of contestation between competing actors seeking to establish temporal and effective control in refugee camps and over refugee bodies. The findings of this study add to the literature on law and order in refugee camps and to the debates on how plural legal spaces emerge.