Racial Exclusion by Bureaucratic Omission: Non-Enumeration, Documentary Dispossession, and the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar.

The article focuses on the bureaucratic foundations of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, examining how state practices of "bureaucratic omission" have contributed to the disenfranchisement and displacement of the Rohingya population. Through ethnographic research and interviews with Rohingya activists, the author highlights a shift in Myanmar's administrative strategies over the past decade, moving from legally-encoded racial exclusion to the strategic withholding of recognition and documentation. This shift has effectively nullified the Rohingyas' claims to citizenship and rights, as seen in the 2014 census, which excluded the Rohingya identity, and the 2015 dispossession of identity documents. The article also discusses how Rohingya activists are contesting these omissions by leveraging archival evidence to assert their historical presence and claims to belonging in Myanmar. [Extracted from the article]