I was braver when I was younger’: contingent legality and noncitizen schooling among children of migrants in Sabah, Malaysia

This article explores the ambiguous zone between legality and illegality experienced by children of migrants in Sabah, Malaysia. It argues that, despite their systematic exclusion from Malaysian schools, and despite their largely undocumented status, such children experience forms of legality contingent on age, gender, ethnic appearance and the use of borrowed or informal documents. Such children’s acts of citizenship are very different to those of adults and may include working at a city market, travelling to a learning centre on a bus, or wearing a centre’s identity document around one’s neck. However, such practices are fragile, and attempts to pass as Malaysian may be rejected by the authorities. Noncitizen children in Sabah can experience temporary spaces and times of inclusion. However, their exclusion from Malaysian government schooling, and the ways in which they are ascribed migrancy as a master ethnic status, limits any possibility of more formal belonging.