Social Friction Through Local Community Rejection during the 2023 Rohingya Refugee Surge in Aceh

After the pandemic, the peak wave of Rohingya arrivals in Indonesia occurred in 2023, reaching 2,288 people compared to the previous year, which numbered in the hundreds. This high number caused increasingly intense social friction between the Rohingya and local communities, culminating in local rejections. This paper addresses the question of what reasons led to the rejection of Rohingya refugees by the local Aceh community in 2023. The purpose of this research is to illustrate the reasons for the local community' rejection along with its geographic distribution, particularly in 2023. This research uses a qualitative approach with data collection from news published in 2023, where the news directly quotes statements from the local community. This paper uses social friction theory, which provides several categorical explanations for the phenomenon. The findings of this study show that the reasons for the rejection fall within both the ideational/non-material and material realms. This study uses a qualitative approach to explain the social reality

Aceh, Social Friction, Rejection, Rohingya

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