Running Head: Mitigating Refugees’ Social Exclusion

Abstract

The 2017 unprecedented pouring of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees<br />into neighboring Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, fleeing violence related to a retaliatory<br />military crackdown in western Myanmar (Burma), created a major humanitarian crisis.<br />Sympathy and solidarity were expressed worldwide, alongside a flood of humanitarian<br />aid. However, their decades-old plight as socially excluded poor and marginalized<br />outside Myanmar, particularly in host countries of Southeast Asia, has remained eclipsed.<br />Youngsters, preferred targets for drug traffickers, participate as mules in smuggling a<br />heavily consumed methamphetamine (yaba pills) proceeding from Myanmar. Such<br />deviance (being part of the supply chain), which not only is a criminal offence, but also<br />blamed on the entire community, is likely to exacerbate its marginalization. A collective<br />punishment of these forcibly displaced would make them shift to becoming forcibly<br />relocated and confined to Thengar Char, a remote and underdeveloped island in the<br />Bay of Bengal known for being prone to flooding. Although important, criticism and<br />condemnations may be insufficient. This article addresses recreational sports as a tool of<br />social inclusion among other already known benefits, and is based on secondary data.<br />In so doing, it seeks to link it with the key role of social policy in providing responses<br />to the needs of a vulnerable population in a protracted situation. Plentiful leisure time<br />available looks undervalued. There is a predominant monovalent activity with a gender<br />discrepancy in participation. The article offers a perspective on mitigating their exclusion,<br />drawing on a hierarchy of prepotency, and minding that social inclusion is neither the<br />focus of social policy nor recreational sports a panacea.