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This article explores dominant discourses on 'illegal' migrants in the context of contemporary Indonesian labour migration to Malaysia. By focusing on the particular case of migrant domestic workers, it discusses recent political moves undertaken by both nation-states to regularise migratory movements. These state-induced efforts at regularising transnational migration have been promoted as combating trafficking and 'illegal' migration, but they have led to the legitimisation of a migration scheme that has much in common with colonial indentured labour. Hence, the paper argues that this 'legal,' state-sanctioned migration scheme gradually leads domestic workers into 'legal' - but bonded - labour arrangements and that the labour contract, as such, needs to be analysed as an instrument of subordination. Through the counter-narrative of Arum, an Indonesian domestic worker performing her work 'illegally' in Malaysia, the paper then goes on to argue that to migrate through 'illegal' migration channels can be interpreted as an act of voluntarily circumventing the 'legal,' state-sanctioned migration scheme. Thus, 'illegal' migration can be equated with deliberately resisting a coercive system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper explores the rise of new social movements in Malaysia in the past year, with special focus on the transformations in civil society and the changing face of politics in the country. Recently, proselytisation and LGBT rights have become deeply politicised as a result of a revival in public activism and mobilisation. Here, I examine the discourse surrounding these issues through analyses of NGO websites, press releases, news articles and other sources. The analyses reveal three emergent themes beginning with the fragmentation of Islamic authority following experiments with state Islamism, the cosmopolitanisation of a society in a post-Islamist phase and finally, the increasing public visibility of social and political movements. I argue that Malaysian society is experiencing a shift from traditional ethnic politics to more critical cosmopolitan struggles, highlighting the encounter with globalisation and heightened awareness within public consciousness of the visible presence of minority communities in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Social theorists examining the impact of globalisation on state power argue that sovereignty is being respatialised and rescaled and that it is no longer adequate to understand state sovereignty as operating evenly on a national scale over a population within a bounded territory. Nevertheless, ASEAN states continue to adopt such a national framing of people and place, particularly in the construction of immigration control regimes. I argue that in order to understand the localised and spatialised exercise of graduated sovereignty and the selective introduction of neoliberal practices, it is necessary to recognise the significance of the immigration status of individuals and examine how the dividing practices of immigration control regimes permit the selective allocation of rights to non-citizens. This paper examines Malaysia's approach to international labour migration, noting that it makes different biopolitical investments in different types of non-citizens on the basis of a calculation of their potential contribution to the 'nation'. Malaysia creates a hierarchy of rights, giving greater rights to skilled workers, while restricting those of 'unskilled' workers. Malaysia punishes those who breach immigration laws severely. However, Malaysia's modernist approach to immigration control fails to achieve intended results and I highlight a number of reasons why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]