LATE Southeast Asian studies doyen, the great Ben Anderson once wrote, “No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind”.

That is very true. No matter how some of us like to see ourselves as globe-trotting cosmopolitans, we are creatures of the nation-state system.

We have our passports – and the customs officers – to remind us where we legally belong. During sports competitions like the Olympic Games or the World Cup, our loyalty is demanded when our national team is at play.

The default assumption is always that everyone belongs to some ‘nation’ and from it, gain the full benefits of being a citizen.

I am sure anyone who has ventured out of their home countries to work or study will immediately realise that we have taken for granted benefits such as low school fees, almost free healthcare in government hospitals, and the ease of getting in and switching jobs.

Being in the non-nationals category will shift one’s position from one of inclusion to exclusion as you are no longer entitled to citizens-only benefits, be it subsidies or employment opportunities.

For example, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) only recruits Americans despite the fact that their spying networks technically covers everywhere but America.

Ideally, the system serves as a kind of equilibrium for everyone, in a sense that what is deprived of overseas can be compensated by the protection offered back home.

But, such ‘ideal’ hardly exists. For one, there is the bittersweet case of many non-Bumiputera Malaysians who return home to find themselves still excluded from the full benefits of citizenship in the many state-funded ‘Bumiputera Only’ benefits.

Yet, being in such a position of relegated citizenship is still way better than the inferno where most stateless people and refugees find themselves in.

The privilege of belonging

Having citizenship, especially when you are in a democratic country, means that you can still participate in many political processes to effect change on things one is not satisfied with.

Deprived of citizenship in a world of nation-states, on the other hand, implies that you are not only unrepresented by anyone, but in many instances, have no standing to represent yourself.

If we are living an era where Zomia is still present, stateless people might still have a chance of eking out a living. At one time, people could even choose to be stateless, argues renowned scholar James Scott.

But in the bureaucratic, ever-expanding (as emblematised by the ceaseless land reclamations today), omnipresent territorial state, the importance of belonging to a nation-state is almost at the base of the hierarchy of needs I would say, just after water, oxygen, food, and shelter.

We have already seen how the non-recognition of the Rohingyas as Burmese citizens is almost equal to cultural and epistemic genocide to those people, the actual acts of killing notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, as history has shown, the game of exclusion can be played rather easily. As all nation-states are artificial (‘imagined’ that is), so is citizenship.

There is nothing ontological to secure one’s citizenship other than the clerks, bureaucrats, and Ministers of the all-powerful state, which is also why citizenship hardly matters in failed states as there’s no functioning state to enforce ‘citizenship’ and provide its many benefits to begin with.

A case of exiling and the willing exiles

As such, recent happenings close to home are disconcerting as signs of the exclusion game are surfacing.

The Ahok blasphemy case, for example, stems from the defeated Jakarta gubernatorial contestant’s response towards others playing a game of exclusion on him – that he ought to be shunned by virtue of just being non-Muslim. Never mind he’s Indonesian and speaks perfect Indonesian.

I brought up the linguistic component because the ubiquity of use of Bahasa Indonesia has long been cited by Malaysian ethno-nationalists who tend to question the citizenship status of those who can’t speak our national language well.

However, as seen in the Ahok case, the criteria for exclusion in many right-wing discourses has shifted from an ethno-linguistic one towards a religion-based one. It appears that even speaking a common tongue today is not sufficient for one to be qualified, at least to some people, as an equal citizen.

Though some may argue it’s simply a political strategy, but anyone losing the ability to represent or be represented politically is basically a case of citizenship amputation.

And totally losing citizenship is always within the spectrum of possibility within such a game of identity-based exclusion, as seen in a recent case which saw the 1.75 million Malaysian citizenships being called into question.

As the incident arises from a confrontation between certain Muslim groups and non-Muslim groups with regards to the Permanent Resident (PR) status of a non-Malaysian – the controversial Indian preacher Zakir Naik – one can see that behind a game of exclusion is also a game of inclusion.

Many Malaysians who after 60 years of nationhood has settled into a national identity – for better or worse – are now baffled to see their compatriots favouring a foreign preacher over themselves as identity-card holding, tax-paying, born and bred Malaysians.

As most things are, there is always the double-edged blade conundrum. A game of religion-based exclusion of fellow Malaysians also saw some Malaysians excluding themselves from being Malaysian in favour of a perceived ‘higher’ form of community. One that is delineated only by religion.

The burnt passports of the many Malaysian Islamic State (IS) members and the avowal of non-return of a recently deceased Malaysian militant’s wife serve as testaments of such abandonment.

The specifics of familiality

To be honest, I am not sure how our nation-building can proceed if we forgo the concept of birthright nationality, which is already highly contested as a marker of national identity even in developed nations.

And that is only asking the bare minimum, knowing that many eligible Malaysians are still not recognised so by the state, and that proponents of an ASEAN community have been inviting us to think beyond the cover of our passports.

As even Malaysians differ when asked about what being ‘Malaysian’ means, will we ever find common ground other than our birthrights, never mind the tectonic nature of such ‘grounds’ to begin with?

Perhaps I am too romantic to think that citizenship is like family, we stick together through thick or thin, no matter the many acquired differences. – May 17, 2017.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.