Mohammad Javed Kaisar Ibne Rahman

This project explores how Bhasan Char, a newly formed island off the coast of Bangladesh, is becoming a refugee camp through the ongoing interplay of natural forces and humanitarian governance. Built from river sediments and continually reshaped by tides, storms, and erosion, Bhasan Char acts as a form of “natural infrastructure” whose unstable materiality demands constant negotiation. The island now serves as a temporary settlement for thousands of Rohingya refugees relocated from overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar. Through ethnographic research with refugees, aid workers, and administrators, I examine how the movement of sediments—grains in motion—directly shapes infrastructures, governance practices, and everyday life. Treating sediment as vibrant matter—an active force rather than passive material—I trace how managing environmental uncertainties becomes a deeply political and ecological process. This project follows how camp administrators, engineers, and refugees respond to sediment movements, salinity, and flooding, revealing how human and more-than-human actors are entangled in the unfinished becoming of a humanitarian space. By tracing these relationships, the research offers new insights into how precarious environments are made and maintained through sedimented politics.