Reframing centuries of Cham forced displacement: Connections, interactions and networks across the South China Sea

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This project will investigate Cham Muslims who live across Southeast Asia, speak a Malayo-Polynesian language and exemplify the global and protracted nature of forced displacement. Between the 7th and 15th centuries the Cham occupied coastal plains and mountain zones in today's central and southern Vietnam. They never formed a unified kingdom but rather "a cultural-political space" built around fishermen, shipbuilders, pirates, traders and transregional trade (Taylor 1992: 153). From the 17th century the Cham became part of the Viet polity through gradual and often violent southward expansion and colonization that forced them to take refuge in the neighbouring polities with which they had long interacted. The painful memory of their ancestors' flight to Hainan from Vietnam is still alive among the Cham, who in China are classified as Muslim (Hui). In the 1970s, Cham from the Mekong Delta were among the many persecuted groups during Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime; thousands fled as refugees to Malaysia and as far as the United States, France, Australia and Canada. Today, both in Vietnam and China the Cham are officially recognized as ethnic groups, but remain economically and culturally marginalized compared to the dominant Kinh (ethnic Vietnamese) or Han (dominant Chinese). Although in Malaysia they could not fully escape poverty, the state constitution recognizes Cham rights to Malaysian citizenship and their Bumiputera status. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and museum representations across three countries on the ODA list-China, Vietnam and Malaysia-the proposed project will offer first hand insights into the multiple social and economic inequalities arising from the lasting repercussions of repeated historical displacements that continue to mark the Cham out as marginal, even centuries on. Focusing on the historically fluid cultural and political identities of those engaged in the South China Sea (SCS) region, we seek to illuminate how perceived ethnic and religious commonalities and differences are interwoven with legislation and domestic discourses in 'host countries' and how they might facilitate or constrain the integration of vulnerable and displaced groups like the Cham.The Cham have been inscribed into the present day nation-state order premised on homogeneous, bounded space that replaced pre-modern, unbounded understandings of space and territory. The proposed research is innovative in focusing on sea/land and translocal, transregional connections beyond the administrative boundaries and histories that are usually framed in nation-state terms, both politically and in scholarly analysis (methodological nationalism). The project's first objective is to critically examine how official discourse and ethnic categorization essentialise the ethnic minorities within the nation-state. The second objective is to trace how they sustain their centuries-old mobility, including political, religious and trade activities that straddle and transgress nation-state borders. The third objective explores how the connection to the global Islamic community spurs the Cham on to (re)define their ethnic, religious and national belongings. Finally, the fourth objective is to chart how the Cham history and mobile way of life is represented and/or silenced in Malaysian, Vietnamese and Chinese museums.At the intersection of anthropology, history, political science and museum studies, this project will play a vital role in building dialogue and knowledge exchange with museum curators and educators around the issue of ethnic and national representation. It will offer a fresh perspective on other displaced groups, such as Muslim Rohingya persecuted in Myanmar who - contrary to Cham - do not enjoy the same rights to Malay citizenship, thereby deepening and diversifying our understanding of different representations of vulnerable groups who do not easily fit into the nation-state frame and whose group identities are not fixed.