Host Communities and Refugees in Southeast Asia: Report on a Workshop held at the National University of Singapore (NUS), 10–11 May 2019

This workshop was convened for the purpose of understanding and synthesizing current knowledge on the state of relations between host communities and asylum seekers, refugees, and other forced migrants who have crossed international borders (for convenience, 'refugees') in Southeast Asia. Four countries Indonesia. Malaysia. Myanmar and Thailand, the largest refugee-hosting or -producing countries in the region were the main focus of discussion. The workshop took the following assumptions as its starting point: that the absence of robust domestic legislation addressing refugees was to be expected: that what might be called the 'refugee environment' in each country was marked by significant legal, temporal, spatial and cultural diversities: that the region's experience with hosting refugees was not a recent phenomenon: and. that particular attention would be given to the roles played by non-state actors.