CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Chuah, Ee Chia |
|---|---|
| Title | Nomadic marginalities: the case of Bajau Laut's status within states and local economies in Semporna, Malaysia |
| Summary | Nomadism and ‘high’ modernity tend to be antagonistic in many parts of the world, as states increase capacities to control populations within their boundaries. High modernism is an attempt to redesign society with scientific laws that excludes its practical and local knowledge (Scott 1998). This thesis explores a puzzle: an extreme case of persistent economic and political marginality of some nomadic and semi-nomadic communities within a territory controlled by state with a high capacity to implement policies. The majority of the nomadic and semi-nomadic Bajau Laut in Malaysia are not incorporated into the state (Ali 2010), unlike their counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines (Clifton and Majors 2012). Due to their statelessness, they have no access to public goods like education and health (Brunt 2013; Ali 2010). They are also unable to speak Bahasa Malaysia, the national language, and are considered as outcasts of the society. In recent times, they are surveilled by the states and considered as the “eyes and ears” of regional criminals. This thesis examines the reasons why this community is not incorporated into the state despite being permanent residents in Semporna for more than 40 years and why their lives remain fragile and worsen without access to public goods and amenities while the state exercises despotic control over them. Despotic power allows states to control and have power over people (Mann 1988). To answer the questions, I developed three theoretical hypotheses and tested them empirically. The thesis has the following main findings. First, the statelessness, mobility and subsistence living of the Bajau Laut are not a form of active resistance against the state. Second, the Malaysian government lacks state capacity to register them as citizens. And third, the lack of political incentives of political elites is a crucial reason for the Bajau Laut’s statelessness to persist. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 explains the theoretical framework which underlines the puzzles this thesis tries to solve, the three hypotheses, an introduction to the research sample and the Bajau Laut community, and the methodology. Chapter 2 answers hypothesis two and three by evaluating the state’s reaction to the Bajau Laut identity and statelessness status in the midst of an acute and unresolved immigrant crisis in Sabah. It also answers part of hypothesis one through my respondents’ inclination towards having a Malaysian identity card. It establishes Bajau Laut’s historical link to Sabah before and after independent to locate their position in the eyes of the state amidst a growing number of immigrants. Finally, chapter 2 analyzes the reasons the state, despite considering the Bajau Laut as stateless, conducts population census on the group by aggregating census information from three different sources: Sabah Park, Semporna District Officer and the Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM). Chapter 3 answers the other part of hypothesis one by investigating how the Bajau Laut’s livelihood is interdependent with the local economy. It also paints a picture of the economic lives of Bajau Laut to understand how marginalized they are in comparison to the Poverty Line Income (PLI) of Sabah. Next, it establishes how the stateless group contributes to the local economy despite being a non-entity to the state, in particular via their role as the main provider of the Live Reef Fish Trade (LRFT). This is followed by their perspectives towards public goods such as education and health from which they are excluded. Lastly, chapter 3 discusses how various non-state actors can provide public goods to the Bajau Laut in the absence of state service providers. Chapter 4 analyses one such initiative where community stepped in to provide basic literacy to the children of the stateless Bajau Laut. It is a peer-to-peer informal school that I cofounded during the course of my fieldwork in August 2015. |
| Supervisor | Corduneanu-Huci, Cristina |
| Department | School of Public Policy MPA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/chuah_ee-chia.pdf |
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