Malaysia's Borderscape
Imaginaries of Law, Borders and Rights: Forced Migrant Voices of Change
PhD Research in Law and Development
University of Oslo and Tilburg University (Joint Doctorate)
In Malaysia, displaced people live outside legal protection. The state has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not recognise refugees, asylum seekers or stateless persons. As a result, forced migrants are classified as illegal and denied access to healthcare, education, or safe employment. They live with the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation.
This research asked what it means to voice rights when the law denies your existence. Working alongside Afghan, Rohingya, Somali and Syrian community leaders in Kuala Lumpur, the project explored how forced migrants resist, adapt, and create new forms of belonging. Rather than studying rights through institutions or legal frameworks, I centred the lived experiences of those excluded from them.
Voice
" Voice ...can be your own experiences, it can be your pain your suffering, it can be your happiness as well. It can be your own talent. Your dream or vision as well. As a community we have a lot of potential...So, we can show the world we are an asset to the world, not a burden as refugee."
- Rohingya women's rights activist
Participatory Action Research and Methodologies of Hope
It has long been argued that displaced communities have limited voice within research and are often imprisoned within the researcher’s words. Participatory action research offers a collaborative approach grounded in relationships, lived experience, and shared ownership of knowledge. It challenges extractive research models by treating participants as co-researchers and calls for deeper accountability by asking hard questions about positionality and the responsibilities that come with working inside ongoing struggles.
Over eleven months in Kuala Lumpur, I worked with community leaders who were already leading initiatives in education, healthcare, advocacy, and women's rights. They became co-researchers and collaborators. Together, we shaped research questions, co-designed methods, conducted focus groups, and analysed findings. Our collaboration extended beyond fieldwork—we continued to co-produce articles, host workshops, and build spaces for reflection and exchange.
Action research aims to confront injustice and contribute to change. This need not always take the form of large-scale transformation. Change can lie in the everyday work, relationships, and realities of those involved. I adapted the research to support the efforts already underway, and together we developed training materials, evaluation frameworks, and practical tools to strengthen their practice. These actions were not dramatic, and they were not more important than simply listening. It is for this reason I describe participatory research as a methodology of hope.
Storytelling
The Floating City by Mohammed Soleymani
I wrote my PhD thesis in the form of a magical realist novel. In the floating city called Polity, we see layers of exclusion. In the city above, citizens live freely. For those living in the city 'above' law meant protections, privileges and rights. Beneath them lies an undercity where those without papers navigate hidden infrastructures of bordering and control.
“The black law (denial of legal status/citizenship) lives in our minds and in our tongues. It stops us from knowing yet alone asking for our rights.”
- Rohingya activist
Narratives of Law from the undercity
Law is in the eye of the beholder. For those living in in the undercity, law is experienced through arrest, detention, surveillance and exclusion. Rights are, not given, rather claimed through the voices and actions of the undercity dwellers.
This narrative approach allowed me to weave together law, memory, voice, and violence. Stories became a way to show how legal exclusion is lived, and how trauma can shape new forms of resistance. Through fiction, I offered a way to trace the legal geographies of exclusion that remain unseen in policy or legal analysis.
My doctoral research followed these border dwelllers and asked how rights are lived, negotiated and reimagined in practice.
.'Yes, it's all about law...the law is trauma.' - Rohingya leader
PhD
I defended my doctoral thesis in Law and Development at the University of Oslo and Tilburg University on 6 March 2024 and was awarded a cum laude.
The thesis, titled Imaginaries of Law, Borders and Rights: Forced Migrant Voices of Change, explored how forced migrants in Kuala Lumpur navigate legal exclusion and voice rights in conditions of non-recognition.
PhD Defence
I was also asked to deliver a trial lecture on a topic assigned ten days in advance. The lecture, titled What can an autonomy of migration approach offer to research at the intersection of law and migration studies?, considered how researchers might reframe migration not as a problem to be solved, but as a site of agency, resistance and knowledge.
