Childhood in the migrant city: Statelessness, exclusion and modes of belonging amongst children of irregular migrants and refugees in East Malaysia

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This research explores the everyday lives of the children of undocumented migrants and refugees in the city of Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of the East Malaysian state of Sabah. In KK, one in every four people is thought to be a migrant, mostly of Filipino or Indonesian origin. Moreover, despite Sabah's economic reliance on migrant workers, there is considerable public and political opposition to their presence, and workers are subject to detention and deportation during periodic crackdowns. This research focuses on children who, because of their parents' undocumented status or their own unregistered births, are at risk of statelessness. Through child-focused ethnographic fieldwork, it will investigate the prevalence of statelessness amongst such children, and the implications of this status for children's experiences of city life, work and education.Malaysia is a particularly interesting place to study these issues, because it has one of the highest rates of undocumented workers in the world, and yet the everyday lives of these workers and their families are virtually unexamined in the literature. Moreover, Sabah has long been connected to regional trade and migration routes, and there are many mixed marriages between migrants and locals. The research will compare the children of Indonesian and Filipino migrants, in order to explore the extent of their practical and emotional connections with their parents' place of origin. It will investigate the ways in which children move around the region, and will explore how children respond to hearing stories of the detention or deportation of family members. The research focuses on children not only to fill a gap in the adult-focused migration literature, but also to shed light on central questions in contemporary migration studies including issues surrounding immigrant rights. It will explore the specific ways in which illegal status is experienced amongst different families and communities in Kota Kinabalu, investigating the potentially illicit experience of everyday activities. It will examine children's reflections on their exclusions from schooling or healthcare, and will explore how children experience the Malaysian border in their daily lives. It will also analyse the ways in which migrant children, despite growing up in a context of anti-migrant sentiment and being excluded from Malaysian society, seek and engage in meaningful activities in the present.The research will consist of 12 months fieldwork in KK, and 14 months of analysis and writing-up. The fieldwork will involve both traditional anthropological techniques of participant observation and unstructured interviews, as well as innovative, child-focused methods. These will include involving children as co-researchers by asking them to draw, take photographs or write about significant places and activities in their lives. A small group of children will also be given camcorders to record video diaries or documentaries of their lives. During the analysis and writing-up stage, three academic events will be organised to stimulate comparative analysis of child-focused methodologies, undocumented workers in Southeast Asia and the denial of citizenship to children.The research will generate detailed qualitative data on the everyday, urban lives of undocumented children, and a new theoretical framework for understanding the ways in which children experience statelessness. Such a framework will be of relevance to anthropologists working on children and migration, as well as to research by political scientists, legal scholars and development experts. This research will also help Malaysian and International NGOs focused on migrant and child rights to more specifically target the help they provide to migrant workers. It will help to reframe debates about children and citizenship, both amongst advocacy groups and the general public.