Malaysia’s New Ethnoscapes and Ways of Belonging

This book analyses a globalized Malaysia that spans beyond its multicultural population often formulated as Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others. Focusing on new ethnoscapes consisting of migrant workers, refugees, international students and foreign spouses, it asks how these transnationals find ways of belonging: either as non-Malaysians living in Malaysia or Malaysians in Australia. What strategies of citizenship do they enact?

This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

This book provides a picture of a globalized Malaysia where its conventionally-conceived multi-ethnic composition of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others rub shoulders with or interact more intimately on a daily basis with transnational ethnoscapes of migrant workers, asylum seekers, international students, and foreign spouses. It asks how, as Malaysians become wedded to their citizenship, they extend the same awareness of rights and claims to non-citizens such as African international students, the Indonesian maids who look after their children, and the Chins and stateless Rohingyas who populate the landscape as refugees and undocumented workers. What are the possibilities of forming cosmopolitan solidarities with non-Malaysians? And what are the newcomers’ strategies for place-making and belonging? And to bring the discussions of citizenship in Malaysia into relief, it is also asked how Malaysians abroad seek to enact and make meaningful their Malaysian citizenship. A diversity of experiences shapes the narratives in the chapters: of racialization, rejection, boundary-making and exclusivity, resilience and adaptation.

This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.