In this talk, Catherine Allerton (Lecturer, Anthropology, London School of Economics) examines the unique experiences of children (aged 8-18) who have been ‘born across borders’ to Indonesian and Filipino migrant parents in Sabah, East Malaysia. Such children are mostly undocumented and are considered at risk of statelessness. They are excluded from Malaysian schools, and are denied access to other state services. The talk engages with work on migrant illegality and noncitizenship and argues for the need to attend to children’s very particular forms of ‘differential inclusion'. Allerton also considers how Sabahan perspectives on these children are strongly shaped by the politics of race and ‘deservedness’ in postcolonial Malaysia.
Abdul Malik Mujahid is an Imam, award winning author, and producer with a focus on contemporary social issues, public policy and Islam-West relations. Imam Mujahid is founding president of Sound Vision. In a recent Huffington Post article he wrote, “...voices including Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, George Soros, and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi [are]—alarmed
that 150,000 Rohingya Muslims live in concentration camps and other ‘conditions calculated to bring about their destruction.’” Allerton and Mujahid will be joined by CU faculty member Carla Jones (Anthropology) and Dawa Lokyitsang (Anthropology) as respondents.