Research Articles
Statelessness and the Lives of the Children of Migrants in Sabah, East Malaysia
Author:
Catherine Allerton
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics
Abstract
This article explores issues involved with researching statelessness ‘on the ground’ during ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia with the children of migrants and refugees. It argues that many of these children, whose parents or grandparents originate from Indonesia or the Philippines, lack an ‘effective nationality’. However, rather than statelessness or illegality per se, what dominates these children’s lives is their perpetual ‘foreignness’. Even when children might be able to have their citizenship recognised by a parental country of origin, families often prefer to remain undocumented, and to wait (perhaps indefinitely) for the Malaysian citizenship they perceive as rightfully theirs.
Published on
01 Jan 2014.
Peer Reviewed
Downloads
