The Refugee Festival opens a space for “power and hope” for refugees in Malaysia. Moving away from narratives of refugees as victims, this article highlights refugee practices of autonomy and freedom through the marginal spaces of the Refugee Festival. Within the context of the pandemic and rising xenophobia in Malaysia, the festival takes on an even more important significance for the community. Through the festival, the participants disrupted narratives of refugees as voiceless, powerless, and invisible, instead rebuilding an inclusive space, and a vision of an alternative future, in which they have equal rights and freedoms.
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