Ghost Lives of the Pendatang: Informality and Cosmopolitan Contaminations in Urban Malaysia [1st ed. 2021] 9813361999, 9789813361997

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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN ASIA SERIES EDITOR: MIKYOUNG KIM

Ghost Lives of the Pendatang Informality and Cosmopolitan Contaminations in Urban Malaysia Parthiban Muniandy

Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia

Series Editor Mikyoung Kim Hiroshima, Japan

This Palgrave Macmillan book series addresses the rising interest in human rights topics in Asia. It focuses on the largely underexplored territory of Asian human rights topics highlighting its empirical manifestations, historical trajectory and theoretical implications. It also goes beyond the problematic dichotomy between “East” and “West” by engaging in rigorous case-specific as well as cross-regional comparisons within South-South context. China’s rise in world politics and its emergence as a massive donor, for example, has significant yet troubling implications. The member countries of ASEAN and Northeast Asia, on the other hand, would have different preoccupations and priorities calling for context-sensitive diagnosis and prognosis to promote human right causes. The series is multidisciplinary in nature and open to submissions focusing on international organization, ethics, criminology, development, freedom of expression, labour rights, environment, human/sex trafficking, democratization, governance studies, disability, reproductive rights, LGBT, post-/colonial as well as post-/authoritarian critiques and social movement, among others. The series publishes full-length monographs, and edited volumes.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16483

Parthiban Muniandy

Ghost Lives of the Pendatang Informality and Cosmopolitan Contaminations in Urban Malaysia

Parthiban Muniandy Sarah Lawrence College Bronxville, NY, USA

Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia ISBN 978-981-33-6199-7 ISBN 978-981-33-6200-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0 The print edition is not for sale in Malaysia and Singapore. Customers from Malaysia and Singapore please order the print book from: GB Gerakbudaya Enterprise Sdn Bhd. [978-967-2464-21-1] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Bhong-Jin Kim This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

At the time of writing this chapter, Malaysia, along with the rest of the world, is grappling with a global pandemic—Covid-19. The virus, which first hit a region of China, has now spread to countries everywhere, with Italy, Spain and the US being the worst hit. Malaysia has not been spared, with the state being forced to issue a Movement Control Order (MCO) upon everyone in the country, as people are forced to grapple with new restrictive measures of social distancing and self-quarantine. Containment of the virus has become a virtual global mission, yet it is unclear if we, as a globe, would be able to overcome our nationalist divisions and ethnocentrism to be able to tackle the challenge in a cohesive and purposive way. As it stands, each nation is being left on its own to tackle the challenge of the outbreak, and in many cases are being forced to compete and outbid others for critical supplies. This pandemic has exposed the reality of our global and planetary interconnectedness in harsh and undeniable way. For decades, we have dithered with addressing the issues of climate and ecological devastation wrought by human activity, as it has been largely easy and convenient for us to ignore the consequences that do not directly impact us. Now, we are struggling to deal with an outbreak that has spread across the globe faster than any before it, largely driven by the forces of human activity and mobility. Millions are expected to be affected by Covid-19, while many societies have moved to almost completely lock down their everyday lives. In Italy and several other countries, we are witnessing the emergence of a v

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frightening new surveillance regime that may very soon become the new normal across the world.1 With sad inevitability, the outbreak has been affecting the most vulnerable in our societies, with most deaths being people who have had preexisting conditions, the elderly and those with compromised immunities. There is an even greater tragedy likely unfolding with the shutting down of economies and precariousness of our global economic situation— a tragedy where a vast swathe of the invisible human population—the ‘ghosts’ of global capitalism—are likely to be affected by the outbreak, and are likely to be left to fend for themselves with very little care and help. There are severe concerns over the devastation that outbreaks of this pandemic will bring about to refugee and migrant camps in the Gaza Strip, Syria, Turkey, and Greece, as well as the massive refugee camps in Cox Bazaar, Bangladesh.2 In Malaysia, migrant and refugee settlements are particularly vulnerable, due to the population density and centrality of the informal economy that sustains the lives of communities such as the Bangladeshi, Indonesian, and Burmese Muslim ones. Some of the communities mentioned in this book are in places that are already being impacted by the outbreaks, such as the ones in Masjid India, Kampung Baru and Bukit Damansara, while others such as the Rohingya community near the Selayang wet market, are incredibly vulnerable not just to the viral outbreak, but an outbreak of severe xenophobia and violence. It is impossible for me not to think about and be afraid for the hundreds of people and families that I’ve worked with over the past decade in Malaysia who are going to be severely affected by the outbreak and the state-imposed restrictions that are meant to control the virus’ spread. These are people and communities who live largely on the fringes of mainstream Malaysian society, whose existence and every day lives are invisible to most local citizens, yet who play such a critical role in the day-to-day functioning of Malaysia’s economy, from construction, food service, care-labor, sex-work to all types of other sectors. An economic shutdown of the kind we are experiencing is likely to force many of these invisible communities into even more desperate conditions where they will 1 Harari, Yuval Noah. 2020. “The World after coronavirus” Financial Times. Accessed March 29, 2020. 2 Hannah Beech and Ben Hubbard. March 26, 2020. “Unprepared for the Worst:

World’s Most Vulnerable Brace for the Crisis” The New York Times. Accessed March 29, 2020.

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be forced to rely entirely on donations, charities and humanitarian aid for their survival, as their livelihoods from the informal service economies are stripped away. NGOs and other organizations are rushing to provide relief and assistance for some communities such as the Rohingya and other refugees, but many more are likely to slip between the cracks, trapped in worst spots than where they were in the first place. Migrant girls and women who were forced into prostitution by trafficking are likely being forced to remain without any help in their confined spaces, while undocumented migrants who work as day laborers are likely to lose their income without any fallbacks or access to assistance, while also not having the option to return to their home countries. Older migrant workers, particularly those who have been living and working in Malaysia as undocumented workers, might not be given any priority when it comes to receiving medical aid, while migrant-caregivers such as nannies and babysitters are likely to be forced to stay indoors with their employers at all times, further exacerbating the potential for domestic abuse and sexual violence against them. The coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak is exposing not just the epidemiological vulnerabilities of our human populations and societies, but it is also shining a painful light upon the human and non-human scaffolding upon which our economies have been built. Here, we are not just facing a crisis of the pandemic, but a crisis of bare life 3 where a state of exception might very well likely become a ‘normal governing paradigm’, as Italian philosopher Agamben explains it. A state of exception has to do with acts of governance by the state which enacts new restrictions and limitations on freedoms via executive decree, through which people are forced to remain in place, subject to surveillance and suppression, along with other exceptional measures. The state of exception is enacted with the rationale of doing what’s best for the population—or rather, the national population, which very often manifests in the suspension of rights and protections for the alien others, such as refugees and migrants, who are then subjected to even more violent and repressive forms of control. The ultimate manifestation of this Foucauldian biopower is the production of disposable bodies, or those that can be, or need to be, allowed to die

3 Agamben, Giorgio. 2020. “The State of Exception Provoked by an Unmotivated Emergency” Positions Politics.

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for the sake of the national body.4 In other words, some lives will be deemed disposable for the sake of the health of the population, and the logics of determining who is to be cast out very often takes the form of xenophobic racism. As countries rush to contain the outbreak, many are already being forced to make decisions about who to save, and who to let die. In a global context of more than 70 million people who have been forcibly displaced worldwide, many of whom live in limbo and states of exception and impermanence, the populations that are going to be viewed as ‘disposable’ will very quickly become obvious to many ‘host’ countries. Already, in the United States, prison populations and migrants stuck in detention centers are facing the brunt of the outbreak without sufficient protections and access to healthcare, while in the European Union, support services for refugees, especially for children, are being shut off.5 Migrants, refugees and other displaced groups are incredibly vulnerable to pandemics like Covid-19, not only because of the virus itself, but because of the economic structures and institutions that have systematically rendered them vulnerable and precarious over the past three decades. These groups are likely to suffer the devastations wrought by the outbreak upon their families, loved ones and livelihoods, but they are likely to suffer in silence and invisibility, as they become left out and ignored, pushed further into the margins and contained there in camps, prisons and slums. The refugee and migrant communities that I’ve worked with, whose stories fill the pages of this book, are incredibly resilient out of necessity and have had to rely on improvisation and creativity to make ends meet and find ways to live with dignity. In the absence of public provisions and protections, such as formal recognition, access to health services, and formal employment opportunities, they often resort to community caregiving and collectivist practices to provide for one another, relying on spaces such as madrasahs, public squares and sidewalks as essential communal resources. As they get further left behind due to this outbreak, displaced communities will be forced to rely even further on their own capacities to provide care for their communities, and in the context of a

4 Foucault, Michel. 1976. “Chapter 11” Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France. 5 “NGOs raise alarm as coronavirus strips support from EU refugees” The Guardian.

March 18, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/18/ ngos-raise-alarm-as-coronavirus-strips-support-from-eu-refugees.

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rapidly spreading and highly infectious viral disease, these communities will become ticking time-bombs. The stories of the migrants and refugees presented here were collected between 2011 and 2018, from well before the outbreak of the coronavirus. They were compiled and presented under a very different circumstance, originally, yet under the light of Covid-19, such stories of the displaced take on a very different hue. Some of the ideas presented in the book, especially around the terminology of ‘ghosts’, ‘ghost lives’ and cosmopolitan contaminations, were conceptualized and presented from what feels like many years ago, but they now have taken on a profoundly haunting and ironic resonance for me as an author. While I am close to many of the people who inspired the stories presented here, there a many others of whom I have come across that I have no way of being able to contact to know how they might be doing, or even if they are safe and protected. Not being able to leave one’s home, let alone travel to visit the most vulnerable and precarious communities—something that I regard as my job as a sociologist and ethnographer—represents an unwanted privilege at a time when economic and socio-political inequality is about to expose those very communities to one of the greatest threats to their lives. We’ve all become ghosts now, but for some of us, it’s likely to become a permanent condition, as we contend with the prospect of dying alone. In such moments, Zygmunt Bauman’s words in Wasted Lives resonates eerily: “For the greater part of modern history, however, huge parts of the globe (‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’ parts, when measured by the ambitions of the already modern, that is obsessively modernizing, sector of the planet) stayed wholly or partly unaffected by modernizing pressures, thus escaping their ‘overpopulation’ effect. Confronted with the modernizing niches of the globe, such (‘premodern’, ‘underdeveloped’) parts tended to be viewed and treated as lands able to absorb the excess of the population of the ‘developed’ countries; natural destinations for the export of ‘redundant humans’ and obvious, ready-made dumping sites for the human waste of modernization. The disposal of human waste produced in the ‘modernized’ and still ‘modernizing’ parts of the globe was the deepest meaning of colonization and imperial conquests – both made possible, and in fact inevitable, by the power differential continuously reproduced by the start

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inequality of ‘development’ (euphemistically called ‘cultural lag’), resulting in turn from the confinement of the modern fashion of life to a ‘privileged’ section of the planet. That inequality allowed the modern part of the globe to seek, and find, global solutions to locally produced ‘overpopulation’ problems.”6

New York, USA

Parthiban Muniandy

6 Bauman, Zygmunt. “Introduction” Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Polity Press.

Contents

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1

Introduction

2

Life in the Kongsi Settlements of KL and Penang

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3

Seeking Refuge in Invisibility: Rohingya Communities in Malaysia

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4

Transitory States: Ghosts in the Shadows

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Cosmopolitan Contaminations

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Conclusion

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References

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is about ghosts, the surplus populations who are, by sovereign fiat, subjected to the suspension of the rule of law, to be rendered exceptional, dangerous, and excluded from the body of regular citizens. The processes and mechanisms through which these ‘ghost populations’ are produced may vary but are largely similar in outcomes. Systemic displacement, economic dispossession, and mass expulsions of people and communities are among the major drivers of exclusion and forced migration today. In Southeast Asia, ghost populations are a common everyday presence in our lives, an open secret that everyone is aware of but would happily ignore. They are the people who clean, cook, build, and serve those of us privileged enough to not be in the positions of precarious servitude. They are those who work in the hidden spaces and places where most of us would rather not see or go, unless in search of very specific services. They are people who perform functions and fulfill tasks that most know to be essential, yet we would prefer if they do not make demands for fair compensation. They are part of the scaffolding of local and global

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_1

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economies, whose work has been systematically undermined and rendered invisible.1 The ghosts among us work and toil at jobs that are important yet are severely devalued in social and financial terms—work that is considered dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. Street-cleaning, construction work, food service, and sex-work, among a host of other forms of work, fall within the category of undesirable labor. But it is more than simply the poor, proletariat, and subaltern classes stuck working jobs that are unviable, precarious, and terrible (Hennebry 2014; Lewis et al. 2015; Piper et al. 2017; Saltsman 2016; Standing 2011). The current form through which people are turned into ‘ghosts’—that is, groups of workers who are no longer seen as part of the demos in any meaningful way—represents a very modern form of disenfranchisement and exclusion, entailing technologies of marginalization and displacement that render certain populations as temporary, in limbo and transitory, stuck in a state of constant impermanence and unbelonging. These are the subalterns who are cast apart as a global servant class, a global precariat produced by advanced capitalism.2 These subaltern ghosts serve the purposes of contemporary capitalism in its most severe and dehumanizing manifestations. For many of us, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the kinds of working and living conditions that the ghosts have to endure. This could be a deliberate fact that we are not meant to see, feel, or hear of these conditions, nor of the ghosts themselves. Zygmunt Bauman describes these ghosts as forms of wasted lives3 —outside the realm of the civil, the clean, and the pleasant. We don’t think of what it might be like to be living every day at the potential risk of being captured and deported, of existing under conditions of being invisible or having to face total separation from one’s family and community, of being compelled to work upwards of 14 hours per day, just to be able to pay off insurmountable debts under indentured servitude. Most of us are certainly unable to imagine the experience of being forcibly displaced from our homelands only to be pushed to seek refuge in a new society that sees us as nothing more than human waste. 1 Raghuram, Parvati. 2009. Which Migration, What Development? Unsettling the Edifice of Migration and Development. Population, Space and Place 15 (104): 3–117. 2 Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Classes. London; New York, NY: Bloomsbury. 3 Bauman, Zygmunt. 2003. Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts. Polity.

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To be a ghost today is to be stuck permanently in a state of impermanence, as non-citizens subject to total control, management, and governance by the state and authorities. As a ghost, one becomes trapped without recourse in a cycle of exploitation and violence, where aspirations and hopes are tiny flickers in the distance. Time stands still, and days of toil can feel endless in this state of permanent precarity, and each day becomes a test of endurance and resilience against uncertainty. To be a ghost is to be subjected to the conditions of bare life,4 where one is stripped of basic rights and protections afforded to regular members of the nation and becomes devoid of political agency in the formal sense. A ghost is forcibly rendered to be nothing more than a biological body, to be regulated, surveilled, and controlled so as not to contaminate or threaten the health of the regular citizenry. These bodies are always kept separate, except when called to perform those tasks and jobs that the rest are unwilling to do. They are out of sight, housed in makeshift camps and settlements, in the unseen back alleys and streets where one is not supposed to traverse other than to seek forbidden pleasures. To be a ghost is to also be disposable. Once reduced to the state of bare life, where the body is the only matter of significance while it serves a function for economic production, it can be easily replaced by other ghosts. One’s viability is contingent upon a healthy and strong body, malleable for heavy labor, enduring enough to survive the arduously long hours—but not more than that. For a strong body can always be replaced, if it remains a passive resource that makes no other claim and requires minimal sustenance and compensation. In the urbanized crevices of Kuala Lumpur and Georgetown, in Malaysia, we find these ghost communities living and cohabiting, desperately seeking to build a new life by remaining largely in the shadows. Undocumented migrants, stateless people, refugees, and other temporary populations make up a substantial part of the adult labor force of the Southeast Asian country, estimated at about 2.2 million, at least in official numbers,5 Among these populations are scores of migrants from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal, and Thailand, 4 Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 5 International Organization for Migration (IOM). “Malaysia”. https://www.iom.int/ countries/malaysia.

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Rohingya refugees fleeing their homelands in Burma, and countless others who are trafficked into the country as indentured and sex-slavery. The Malaysian economy relies upon ghost labor in several crucial sectors—construction, agriculture, manufacture, services, and care-work all depend upon the work performed by those who are temporary.6 In the rapidly urbanizing parts of the country, real estate residential and commercial development moves at breakneck speeds thanks to the capacity to call upon a mobile, flexible, and very cheap labor force made up of both documented and undocumented migrants, who are often housed in large makeshift labor camps or kongsis, as they are referred to. In the outskirts of Malaysia and Penang, informal settlements and kampungs of Rohingya refugees are gradually integrated into informal economies such as food and agriculture, as well as factory labor and cottage industries, or as manual day laborers.7 In the tourist-centric places such as Georgetown and the commercial/retail districts of KL, sexwork continues to be the invisible foundation upon which the economy is sustained, largely due to the hidden work of migrant women and transgendered sex-workers living in anonymity and secrecy.8 This book attempts to share an intimate look into the everyday lives of some of the people who find themselves living as ghosts in the margins of urban Malaysia. It is meant to provide ethnographic detail into the mostly mundane, sometimes unexpected, often unsettling, and shocking realities of daily life that migrants, refugees, and other displaced people face while they seek to find ways to live with dignity. For the most part, the book does not seek to provide solutions or answers to how we should ‘fix’ the problem of migration and labor exploitation—the book aims instead to reveal the subaltern and hidden forms of cosmopolitanism, solidarities, and diversity of experiences of these ghost communities, to show the vibrancy of informal life beyond what we might otherwise notice, amidst the violence, exploitation, and ever-present precarity. In the chapters that follow, readers are given a glimpse into the homes and 6 Kaur, Amarjit. 2014. “Managing Labor Migration in Malaysia: Guest Worker Programs

and Regularization of Irregular Labor Migrants as Policy Instrument.” Asian Studies Review 38 (3). 7 Wake, Caitlin, and Tania Cheung. 2016. Livelihood Strategies of Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia. Overseas Development Institute. 8 Chin, Christine. 2013. Cosmopolitan Sex Workers: Women and Migration in the Global city. London: Oxford University Press.

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communal spaces of migrant workers, documented and undocumented, refugees and asylum-seekers, and other displaced groups as well. Each chapter explores the themes of cosmopolitanism, brotherhood, family, hybridity, and love, alongside broader discussions about economic relations and political tensions in Malaysia and the region that contribute to these grounded experiences of the displaced.9

At a Crossroads Scholars and students of Southeast Asia have long highlighted the very distinct history that this region and its people can lay claim to. It is a history not of national identities or ethnic supremacy, but a history of resiliency, intermixing, and exchange. Even before there was a Malaya or the idea of the nusantara, this is a region marked by the crossing of cultures and communities, constant changing and transformation, cultivation of new and different identities built from what came before. Most importantly, hybridity is ingrained in the various societies of Southeast Asia, and Malaysia is no different. This is not by accident; this is a result of the unique historical and geopolitical location of Malaya/Malaysia as a crossroads of international contacts and exchange. It is not a coincidence that the country’s birth originates from the establishment of important old port towns—Malacca, Penang, and Klang. As Farish Noor and others have highlighted, we are a society that is deeply resistant to attempts to categorize or define our boundaries of identities and cultures (Noor 2002). In fact, such attempts are largely ineffectual if not outright antithetical to who we are. It took a massively oppressive and violent act of colonial hubris by the British to establish the tragic divisions of ethnicity and race which Malaysian society has had to carry like an unshakeable curse for so long. The idea of the crossroads is important in many ways, when reflecting upon the characteristics and history of Malaysia. I should, in fact, say ‘histories’ rather than history, as there is no one narrative that can truly

9 For the safety of participants and informants who were part of the original research

informing the narratives in this book, no real names of people are used. The exception are public figures and activists whose statements are already publicly available. The narratives are also ‘fictional’—they are inspired by actual experiences and stories, to which they adhere closely, but are presented in a way to not render any individual identifiable in the real world.

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capture the full picture. We need only look at the histories of ‘indigeneity’ here to appreciate the multiplicity of narratives and stories, which look wildly different depending on the perspectives and standpoints one looks from. Add to that the rich history of migration, from South Asia to East Asia and even further, and the picture is always one that defies singular narratives—it’s a picture that defiantly resists the ‘single story’ that Chimananda Adichie warns us about.10 For generations, those in power in Malaysia have perpetuated and fostered the false belief, buttressed by historical revisionism, that nationhood in the country is defined by a singular ‘people’—this is the founding myth of the insider and the foreigner, the children of the soil – the Bumiputera. This myth is not founded upon any sociological or historical truth—it is purely a deliberate construction of colonialism, meant to perpetuate the idea of the ‘inferior races’ that need to be ‘guided’ or patronized into betterment (The Malay Dilemma: Mahathir Mohamad: 9789812616500: Amazon.Com: Books, n.d.; Mahathir’s New Malay Dilemma: Address Both Poverty and Prejudice 2018). It deeply contradicts the real identity of the rakyat —an insecure refusal of the intrinsic adaptability, fluidity, and dynamism of being ‘Malay.’ By imposing a racial logic upon an intrinsically open and dynamic notion of ‘Malayness,’ the history becomes contrived, and written through very narrow lenses, in the supposed name of nationalism. ‘Malayness,’ in its very historical essence, is a category that absorbs, embraces, and accepts different peoples, cultures, and knowledges, in non-antagonistic but always moderating ways—we still see this in the profoundly humble and quiet ways in which workingclass Malay communities in the city and elsewhere have gone about offering refuge and sanctuary, as well as opportunities to move forward, to new refugees and displaced groups such as the Rohingya. This is nothing out of the norm or ordinary for our society—it is a historical reflection of how we’ve always been, despite attempts to create a different narrative about nationhood and exclusion. It is vitally important that we reflect and come to terms with our identity as a nation of crossroads, at a crossroads. As a society that is striving to fix the wrongs of the past and move forward in a slightly more humane direction, there must be a fundamental rethinking of how we choose to understand our past and our shared genealogies. Do we 10 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 2019. The Danger of a Single Story. TED Talk. https://tinyurl.com/nkuwtu5.

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persist with the notion of the ‘nation of citizens’ vs the others? Or do we acknowledge that, for Malaysia, such a notion is fundamentally opposed to our history as a people, and that we need a new, more grounded way of thinking about civic membership? There are still a lot of agendas and interests in reinforcing the racial structures that have constrained us socially and politically for so long, and those need to be addressed with more progressive and humane voices and perspectives that draw upon actual lives and experiences rather than myths and ideologies about people and communities. The reality about ‘ethnic’ relations and underprivileged, vulnerable, and precarious communities in Malaysia today is not one of the burdens to the state and society. It is the reverse in many ways. The vulnerable and precarious communities—our refugees and other migrant groups— have in fact served us far more in attaining the comfortable, wealthy, and materially decadent lifestyles that many Malaysians enjoy today. While some seek to blame these communities for leeching off our social welfare, health care, and other resources, the truth is that they’ve done much more to subsidize and buttress our needs and demands, with very little in return in terms of their own development and welfare. An example is the very common myth of refugees as a burden on the rakyat and country. Some commentators are quick to point out that as a non-signatory of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Convention),11 Malaysia should not have to bear the burden of providing refuge to displaced populations, that we shouldn’t be spending so much resources on them and should simply stop letting them through our borders. The irony here is that the same commentators fail to recognize that since we don’t officially recognize refugees, there actually is no clear indicator for how much ‘resources’ we’ve genuinely spent on them. The economic labor and service provided by refugees and other displaced communities in Malaysia far outweigh any real and tangible resources they might be taking from the rakyat or the government. Whether in the formal or informal sectors, these undocumented communities commit a lot of crucial labor that subsidizes our needs more than their own. They are essentially a fragmented and disposable serving class for most middle-class Malaysians and transnational capital (Chin 1998, 2013; Ong 2008).

11 UN Convention on Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-conven tion.html.

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A precarious, invisible, and disposable workforce is a formidable resource for the purposes of rapid economic growth and modernization, and Malaysia has benefitted from cheap access to that resource as much as any other developing country in the Global South. A lot of the labor that is demanded, but unrecognized or undervalued, happens to be some of the most essential for the daily lives of middle-class and elite Malaysians. From agricultural work, construction, food service to cleaning, waste management, and recycling, migrants, refugees, and other displaced populations such as the indigenous orang asli have become an essential but hidden workforce. The work that’s involved is often referred to as ‘3-D’ work, or Dirty, Dangerous, and Demeaning, which is a reflection not necessarily of the nature of the work itself, but more importantly of the demeaned and devalued status of the workers who are pushed into those sectors. The devalued labor and the precarious workforce attached to this essential work have been crucial to the growth of the Malaysian middle class, as mentioned previously. Economic ‘growth’ and the expansion of the middle class that is aspired to by most developing countries tend to be successful on their projects by facilitating the exploitation of already poor and marginalized groups for the purposes of creating a dispossessed labor force who are pushed into 3-D work. A state working in tandem with multinational organizations, corporate interests, and other (generally poorer) states form channels and networks that enable key processes leading to dispossession of land and land rights, the forced and coerced movement of vulnerable communities, and the establishment of ‘managed migration’ policies for labor. Dispossession and expulsions on one side are followed by precarity and exploitation on the other, as the case of various displaced communities today attest to. The experiences of Rohingya refugees and other undocumented communities in Southeast Asia are prime examples of these formations. This is an important point, one that needs to be situated within the broader social history of the region and country of Malaysia. We have a complex history of hierarchies and stratification that can be traced back all the way to the Bujang Valley kingdoms. Slavery and indenture of both Asli (indigenous) and foreigners have always been a part of our social fabric, no matter how much we might try to erase that history (Zawawi 1998; Noor 2005). Lest we forget, the British recruitment of indentured migrant labor from India and China was happening at the same time the local sultans and kings were fighting for their right to retain

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hamba (slaves). Innocence and virtue were very much elements written in by historians with clear-cut interests in constructing a specific narrative. Moral and ethical ambiguities in historical accounts were always deemed inconvenient for the construction of the new nation. The story of our ‘nation’ will look very different when told from the perspective of the thousands of stateless Tamil orphans in our country whose indentured ancestors perished working on rubber plantations, or from the perspectives of the many indigenous communities whose languages and histories have been almost entirely wiped away from existence (Belle 2015). As we try to move forward and decide on a path to take at this current crossroads, Malaysia cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes of the past by reconstructing a white-washed and politically motivated history of nationhood. We must confront, head on, the highly ambiguous, complicated, and entangled reality of our multiple histories, and herstories, and theirstories. We must confront some very uncomfortable truths and realities about how our society has come to be what it is, and why we cannot rely upon arbitrarily constructed notions of ‘national identity,’ the ‘races’, and the labels we attach to these. We must confront and engage with the question of belonging in a far more grounded and unsettling way, because therein lies the very real source of empowerment for the rakyat. Once we are able to get over our hang-ups about who is in and who is out, we can start to draw strength from the fact that we’re a much more diverse and dynamic society, one that is capable of tremendous feats of inclusion, acceptance and integration of people who are otherwise excluded or left out—this is what makes us special, and this is what makes us, especially in today’s rather dark and depressing world, a potential model of a better way. A Micropolitics of Displacement In writing the chapters and narratives in this book, I have been contending with different ways in which we try to understand migration and mobility, as well as other attendant processes, phenomena, and practices. We are currently living in under conditions some call ‘hypermobility’—because of globalization expanding into even further and distant parts of the planet, enrolling increasingly large numbers of people into circuits of movement and displacement everywhere. Couple this with the prime motive of advanced capitalism today—the drive toward insatiable accumulation and commodification of labor, and money taken to

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the furthest extremes—and we find ourselves living concurrently in a period of tremendous inequality and variously suffering from the impacts of climate change. These processes have led to the rise in both documented and undocumented migration, an unprecedented surge in forced migrations, and displacement as a whole, producing new forms of precariousness and uncertainty for vast swathes of people around the world, including but not limited to people fleeing war and terror in the Middle East (Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq), Africa (Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, and South Sudan), Latin America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and increasingly climate refugees from Haiti and other Caribbean Islands), and Asia (Burma, China, Philippines, and North Korea) (Forced Migration or Displacement | Migration Data Portal, n.d.). The UN Refugee Agency estimates about 68.5 million people as being ‘forcibly displaced’ worldwide, of which 25.4 million are categorized as refugees and another 3.1 million as asylum seekers. The most recent 2017 report by UN DESA estimates that there are today 258 million international migrants around the world—a stunning 43% of which live in the aforementioned ‘developing countries’.12 This is a truly eye-catching statistic that reveals how far we’ve come from the days of South-to-North migration being the dominant flow. One common, and grievously damaging, misperception in popular discourse is that refugees and displaced people and communities tend to end up in developed countries in North America and Western Europe. This could not be further from the truth—85% of displaced populations are in what the UN refers to as ‘developing countries,’ of which Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey represent the highest refugee-hosting nations. In Southeast Asia, Malaysia is major receiving country for migrants and the different displaced groups. Here, we have a long and enduring history of subaltern mobility and movement that goes hand in hand with intermixing, exchange, and sharing that have facilitated and continue to facilitate the accommodation and dispersal of precarious and vulnerable peoples, including, for instance, the Rohingya from Burma(Wade 2017; Ibrahim 2016). While Malaysia is not officially a signatory of the UN Convention on refugees, the country is still an important destination for displaced, 12 http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/ estimates17.shtml.

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stateless, and forced migrants. The country’s international and global standing as a successful, modernized ‘Islamic’ society has helped it become an appealing destination for refugees and forced migrants such as Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Uighurs from China, and the Rohingya. Like other non-Western, non-North countries (alongside Singapore, Korea, China, India, and others), Malaysia’s role as a ‘destination’ or ‘receiving country’ will only become increasingly important as displacement and forced migration escalate for a variety of reasons (Refugees, n.d.). As a neighboring country to Indonesia and Philippines, and a host of other smaller island communities, Malaysia is likely to see an uptick in ‘climate refugees‘—that is, populations of people moving due to the impacts of environmental disasters such as tsunamis, cyclones, and hurricanes. What makes Malaysia a prime destination country for migrants, besides the relative stability both politically and economically, is the promise of opportunities that exist despite the precarity inherent to being unrecognized and undocumented. It is well understood by policymakers, analysts, and researchers that opportunities for decent work and income are a major motivating ‘pull’ factor that attracts new migrants to the country. But this is just one side of the coin that obscures another equally important truth—that migration to Malaysia, even when documented, is structural and has very little to do with choice on the part of migrants. Most lowskill migrants, documented, undocumented, forced or otherwise, are here because of the ways in which transnational circuits of migration—or what I prefer to call displacement —have emerged over the last four decades. I use the term circuits in the same sense as Saskia Sassen (Sassen 2014)— to indicate the structured, consistent, and regularized flows of very specific migration, such as migrant women care-workers from Philippines, temporary workers from Bangladesh, and sex-workers trafficked from Vietnam—these circuits emerge as critical consequences of the desperation of poorer nations that have been affected by underdevelopment, crippling debt, and structural adjustment. Circuits are meant to depict forces and conditions that produce types of migration to help us move beyond thinking of migration purely as something people decide to do on their own. While we do, for the most part, understand that forced migration—as it applies to refugees and stateless populations—is externally imposed upon people and communities, thus involving degrees of involuntariness to the act of movement, we do not necessarily think the same of other categories of migrants, such as temporary workers, guest workers, and undocumented or trafficked

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migrants. These groups occupy differentiated positions on a hierarchy of legitimacy—or to put it simply, they are assessed differently on a basis of who is ‘deserving’ to be allowed to come to a country. Their movement is not seen as forced, but a matter of choice that may be determined or influenced by factors beyond their individual control (family, community, ethnic divisions, and expulsions from the homelands). More recent studies and approaches to understanding these ‘circuits of survival’ have led to insights into contemporary cases of debt bondage, sexual slavery, and indentured servitude that prop up the transnational migration circuits—from young girls who are trafficked into sex-tourism in Asia to construction workers in Qatar, to caregivers as part of a global care-chain in Canada and United States (Parreñas 2015; Chin 2013; Bales 1999; Sassen 2014). The circuits’ view of migration helps us understand mobility not through the classical lens of immigration/emigration, or push-pull factors, but through the lens of displacement. My use of the term displacement, which has for the most part been limited to forced migration in a more formal sense, is broader and applicable to both human and non-human movements. Here, displacement is used as a way to understand multiple elements—people being an important one, but also labor, reproduction, capital, families, communities, commodities, and even waste. A structural view of transnational migration helps us understand this notion of ‘displacement’ better. Following the work of Faranak Miraftab (2016), who examined the experiences of migrant labor from Togo, Mexico, and Detroit that find themselves working in a large meatpacking factory in a small town in rural Illinois, this transnational view takes into account not only the lives of the migrants in their new setting, but also the critical role played by their relationships and networks back in their homelands. Here, Miraftab is concerned with the question of what makes low-wage precarious labor ‘affordable’ for migrants but not for the residents of the former predominantly white sun-down town. It is only by understanding the ways in which social reproduction (the work culture and caregiving, among others) is restructured globally, with home communities taking on much of the burden of providing for the needs of the migrant workers that should have been provided through employment benefits and protections. Miraftab reveals, through extensive multi-sited ethnographic work in three different countries, not just the displacement of people who become migrant workers in Illinois, but also the displacement of social reproductive work onto the ‘home’ communities.

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This expanded notion of displacement is especially important for our consideration of migrant labor in Malaysia because of the extent to which the dynamics of migration has been misunderstood. On the one hand, the diversity of migrant backgrounds and identities very often becomes undermined by the tendency to lump entire groups of people under the labels of ‘foreign workers,‘ ‘maids,‘ ‘pendatang,‘ or illegals. The implications are that these are largely economically motivated individuals who are here of their own free will or choice, seeking to make an income that they would otherwise not be able to make in their own countries. What often gets left out are the structural dynamics which lead to their displacement in the first place, which are critical but also different from one another. More recently, there have been news and investigations into the syndicates of ‘agents’—middle-men—who are involved in the exploitation of poor migrant workers from Bangladesh, extorting large sums of money from people desperate to find work by traveling to Malaysia, often under the premise of agent’s fees (Migrant Workers | R.AGE, n.d.; Malaysia and Bangladesh Ink Deal to Recruit 1.5 Million Workers—Nation | The Star Online, n.d.). These unscrupulous agents take advantage of lopsided immigration laws, bilateral agreements, and poorly focused enforcement that renders (displaces) the migrants themselves as targets of surveillance and control rather than victims of exploitation. In contrast, women from Philippines have been migrating in search of work, primarily as careworkers and domestic helpers, for decades, urged on by their own state government as ‘agents of development,’ thanks to their contributions in the form of remittances. These women have become part of a transnational ‘care-chain’ within which some scholars identify the displacement of parental labor (care and love) onto the elderly or next of kin as consequences of fragmented families(Muniandy and Bonatti 2014; Kofman and Raghuram 2015). Transnational displacement, in a more traditional sense, applies to refugees and other forced migrants, as well. In Southeast Asia today, the ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing in Burma may seem like the archetypical case of politically motivated persecution of minorities, but seen from this wider transnational viewpoint, the displacement of Rohingya and other Muslim minorities can also be another means through which subaltern, ‘ghost’ labor is produced. The Rohingya have become incredibly vulnerable to the exploitative tendencies of profiteers and capitalists, who often receive the implicit support of states and public

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authorities. The Rohingya refugees are torn apart from families, neighbors, and communities and very often struggle to reconnect, but they are also left in very uncertain circumstances where some may end up in camps in Bangladesh, detained in immigration centers in Thailand, or lost at sea on ‘ghost ships‘ that are part of the massive fishing industry. Still, many others may also end up becoming invisible migrants in the urban centers of countries like Malaysia, quickly relinquishing their ethnic and cultural practices and identities to adopt more locally appealing ones (unrepresentedkl 2016; Hoffstaedter 2017). ‘Displacement,’ rather than immigration, is the term that I feel better characterizes many of these migrant narratives that are contained within this book. These are not narratives and stories about how people ‘make it’ in their host societies, or simply about how they face the challenges of being ‘immigrant’ or pendatang . These are, just as importantly, stories about connections and belongings, to the ‘elsewhere,’ and of fragmentation and rupture, along with rebuilding and reconnections that form the transnational lives of diverse migrants who happen to be in Malaysia. My hope, ultimately, is that this ‘transnational’ understanding of displacement and displaced voices would help us move beyond simplistic stereotypes and one-sided views of the ‘immigrant’ solely looked at from the standpoint of the national community. On the one hand, the oftused reasoning of ‘they contribute to our economy,’ while well-meaning, is also harmful and disempowering. These are stories not of people who are complete victims depending on our benevolence, kindness, and generosity, but people who are trying to build (and rebuild) their lives with dignity and self-determination following often traumatic disruptions. My hope, utopic as it may be, is that ‘we’—those of us with the privilege of not being displaced—might be able to recognize migrants and their communities as active members of our communities deserving of the same social and political recognition as the rest of us.

The Art of Living with (Subaltern) Others In a prior book, Politics of the Temporary, stories and experiences of temporary labor migrants are framed by the advent of new regimes of temporary labor migration and managed migration, which entails synergistic and parasitic relationships between the state, private industries, and transnational recruiting and trafficking networks, all of which work to sustain the surplus of cheap, flexible, and disposable non-citizen labor

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force—the foreign worker. Temporariness is not just a formal condition imposed upon migrants, but a way of life and living that migrants negotiate every day. It has implications upon individual’s and communities’ notions of time, relationships with families and home, and their strategies in the short and long term. Temporariness also relates to production of precarious populations and is further exacerbated by increasing displacement of vulnerable communities in the region. In an important study of urban societies in the Middle East, Asef Bayat13 highlights the importance of coexistence and mutuality in the lives of the urban poor. In contrast to other urban studies, scholars such as Mike Davis and Bayat suggest that it is not fatalism, chaos, and a politics of inferno that characterizes the subaltern poor living in informal settlements and slums, but a different type of politics—an everyday cosmopolitanism that represents living with differences and finding ways to coexist. At the heart of his analysis of informal life in cities such as Cairo and Tehran is the notion of dignity—peoples’ compulsion and need to always find ways to live their lives and build toward betterment regardless of the limitations on resources and formal avenues that they might have. In Life as Politics, Bayat characterizes everyday cosmopolitanism as necessary for the practice of living with ‘agonistic others’—in the case of Cairo, for example, Muslims and Coptic Christians finding ways to live as neighbors. In a similar vein, urban Malaysia is a home to groups and communities split along too many religious and ethnic lines to account for, to the point that being antagonistic to others becomes merely acts to political power—which unfortunately becomes mobilized through nationalistic and populist agendas. At the everyday level, the subaltern poor of Malaysia, many of whom come from displaced communities, do not have the luxury nor the privilege to be ideological or outright political. For the scores of temporary labor migrants, refugees, and undocumented and stateless populations, sharing resources and networks among each other becomes a means of both survival and stability, albeit often in an informal sense. The migrant or ‘PATI’ (Pendatang tanpa izin—undocumented/illegal immigrant) is often seen as a threat to the public order, particularly when groups become associated with crime, violence, and poverty. In

13 Bayat (2010) Stanford University Press.

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Malaysia, different migrant groups—the Indonesians, Bengali, Burmese, Nepali, and others—are often seen to be at odds with one another, competing, sometimes violently, to establish their presence and dominance, particularly in the low-skill sectors and manual labor. However, what is misunderstood in this context (and many others) is the reality that most migrant communities are largely peaceful and accommodating of one another, despite the perceived differences. It is possible to see this cosmopolitanism when one pays attention to the myriad ways in which different migrants interact and engage with each other for mutually beneficial reasons, such as cooking and sharing meals, helping set up homes, finding work, and even starting relationships and families. A key transformative aspect of these unseen forms of cosmopolitanism among subaltern migrants is their capacity to find ways to ‘play’ and have fun. Particularly among the younger migrants, finding ways to have fun, especially when they have been subject to institutional restrictions on their rights and freedoms, becomes a way to passively resist their oppressive conditions without overt resistance. For migrants like Faizul, Adam, and Siti, learning to have fun during their everyday routines offers them ways to disrupt the mundanity of work by engaging in playful activities and hobbies. Young men moonlighting as bartenders in Penang, for example, also use their ‘downtime’ to hang out with one another, flirt and spend time with local women, and go for walks at the beachfront. As temporary and undocumented people, migrants are deemed undeserving of ‘fun’ by the state—through its immigration regimes and enforcement agents. There is a fundamentally disruptive character to migrants who can engage in activities and relationships that bring them joy and pleasure. As foreigners and aliens, their role is primarily to work and nothing else. They are not politically active in a traditional sense. However, the critical significance of subaltern laughter should not be underestimated or overlooked. Sometimes, it is in these spaces of joy and fun that we might find the biggest secret of migrant life in the city—that people, even the poor and marginalized, are able to find ways to be happy despite their precarious conditions and despite the state’s best efforts to keep them down.

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The Loneliness of Ghosts Some images and memories from my fieldwork in KL and Penang have taken on a fixed solidity in my mind. They’ve crystallized over the time I spent going to different places, listening to people tell me their stories: The smiling face of a Bengali man, obediently taking yelled orders from a patron at the restaurant he works at. That unfading smile, even as he endured the insults and diatribes that was directed his way, for something he had no control over. The young Rohingyawoman, sitting on the sidewalk, with her back straight as she gracefully prepared the betel leaves for customers in the community of refugees. The Russian woman sitting on the side of the steps leading to a hotel, smoking her cigarette and staring off into the distance, as she talks about her work as an escort . I can remember vividly the puffs of smoke, the look of sheer loneliness as she tells me about the only friend she had in Malaysia - another, older, call-girl. A young transgendered Filipina sex-worker waiting in her hotel room for hours and hours, in the hopes of getting calls from clients that may never come, constantly fearing whether she has enough money to make it to the end of the week. Three Nepali men, sitting on the ground next to some hedges that lined the side of the street, and taking brief naps under the midday sun, in between shifts as cleaners at a shopping mall.

I struggle with these images—some are informed by real observations and interactions and others formed by what people tell me. Either way, these images possess a power, an energy, that will not let me be. They have been haunting me. There are likely more objective, rational, and ‘scholarly’ ways in which I can (should?) be writing about my work with migrants and migrant communities. But, deep inside, I know that it would be dishonest to not acknowledge the visceral and the persistent. These images, and some of my informant’s stories, have started to follow me around, like wraiths attached to my shadow, not allowing me peace unless I tell the stories of pain, of loneliness, of feeling broken. I have heard stories of displacement and resettlement, of struggles to find and build new lives, of love and family. Those are, in surprising ways, a lot easier for me to document and write about. It’s a lot easier to frame them within broader processes, to use these realities to address structural and systemic conditions affecting many societies. But there are other

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stories that don’t lend themselves too well to theorizing or academic framings, but have come to feel so important, so unavoidable and inescapable. Stories of fracture, fear, inevitability, and, most importantly, loneliness. Utter, heart-breaking, soul-crushing loneliness. Truth be told, I don’t know how to even begin writing about loneliness. Perhaps it’s not even worth doing so. After all, the stories are here for a reason, and the voices can speak for themselves. But what I do want to state is that these stories speak to something far more visceral and unfiltered, they don’t fit and conform easily. But this does make them profoundly human, and maybe that’s all that needs to happen.

References Bales, Kevin. 1999. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bayat, Asef. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Belle, Carl Vadivella. 2015. Tragic Orphans: Indians in Malaysia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Chin, Christine B.N. 1998. In Service and Servitude: Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian “Modernity” Project. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2013. Cosmopolitan Sex Workers: Women and Migration in a Global City. New York: Oxford University Press. Forced Migration or Displacement | Migration Data Portal. n.d. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/forced-migrationor-displacement. Hennebry, Jenna L. 2014. Transnational Precarity: Women’s Migration Work and Mexican Seasonal Agricultural Migration. International Journal of Sociology 44 (3): 42–59. https://doi.org/10.2753/IJS0020-7659440303. Hoffstaedter, Gerhard. 2017. Refugees, Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 15 (3): 287–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2017.130 2033. Ibrahim, Azeem. 2016. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide, 1st ed. London: Hurst. Kofman, E., and P. Raghuram. 2015. Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction, 2015 ed. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Lewis, Hannah, Peter Dwyer, Stuart Hodkinson, and Louise Waite. 2015. HyperPrecarious Lives: Migrants, Work and Forced Labour in the Global North.

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Progress in Human Geography 39 (5): 580–600. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0309132514548303. Mahathir’s New Malay Dilemma: Address Both Poverty and Prejudice. 2018. South China Morning Post, August 1. https://www.scmp.com/comment/ insight-opinion/asia/article/2157622/mahathirs-new-malay-dilemma-tacklepoverty-among. Malaysia and Bangladesh Ink Deal to Recruit 1.5 Million Workers—Nation | The Star Online. n.d. Accessed June 14, 2018. https://www.thestar.com.my/ news/nation/2016/02/18/bangladeshi-workers-malaysia-mou/. Migrant Workers | R.AGE. n.d. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://rage.com.my/ berbuka-di-kongsi/. Miraftab, Faranak. 2016. Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives, and Local Placemaking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muniandy, Parthiban, and Valeria Bonatti. 2014. Are Migrants Agents or Instruments of Development? The Case of ‘Temporary’ Migration in Malaysia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (11): 1836–1853. https://doi. org/10.1080/1369183X.2014.907738. Noor, Farish A. 2002. The Other Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfishbooks. ———. 2005. The Other Malaysia: Writings on Malaysia’s Subaltern History. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfishbooks. Ong, Aihwa. 2008. Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia. In Anthropologies of Modernity, 81–104. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/978047077587 5.ch3. Parreñas, Rhacel. 2015. Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work, Second Edition, 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Piper, Nicola, Stuart Rosewarne, and Matt Withers. 2017. Migrant Precarity in Asia: ‘Networks of Labour Activism’ for a Rights-Based Governance of Migration. Development and Change 48 (5): 1089–1110. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/dech.12337. Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. n.d. UNHCR Global Trends 2017. UNHCR. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/statis tics/unhcrstats/5b27be547/unhcr-global-trends-2017.html. Saltsman, Adam. 2016. Engendering Precarious Mobilities: Producing Masculinities and Femininities on the Thailand-Myanmar Border. Conference Papers— American Sociological Association, January, 1–38. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions. Harvard University Press. http://www.jstor. org/stable/j.ctt6wpqz2. Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London; New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. http://www.dawsonera.com/depp/ reader/protected/external/AbstractView/S9781849664547.

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The Malay Dilemma: Mahathir Mohamad: 9789812616500: Amazon.Com: Books. n.d. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Malay-Dil emma-Mahathir-Mohamad/dp/9812616500. unrepresentedkl. 2016. Writing and the City (Week 3 & 4): Pasar Borong Selayang, a World of Its Own. The Daily Seni (blog), April 17. http://www. dailyseni.com/v4/unrepresentedkl-pasar-borong-selayang/. Wade, Francis. 2017. Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim “Other”. London, UK: Zed Books. Zawawi, I. 1998. The Malay Labourer: By the Window of Capitalism. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

CHAPTER 2

Life in the Kongsi Settlements of KL and Penang

In mid-2017, a large group of neighborhood and homeowners associations came together to form a group called Save Kuala Lumpur. They had mobilized around what was seen at the time as rampant encroachment and unregulated (as well as corrupt) hyper-building in the city, undertaken without any oversight and any concern for existing communities and, just as importantly, the critical greenspaces of the city. The group was heavily engaged in pushing for the drafting of the Draft KL City Plan 2020, a guide and regulatory framework to govern building and construction of urban space in the city to combat what their deputy Chairman, M. Ali, described as ‘free-for-all situation where anyone could apply for a development project and it would be approved.’ SKL has been struggling to get the framework gazetted, which would effectively make it law and allow for far greater oversight and democratic participation when it comes to managing bids and plans for new projects. In effect, it is meant to slow down and regulate future projects, but the draft has been shelved by the City (DBKL), leading to SKL deciding to take the issue to the courts (Save Kuala Lumpur Coalition Mulls Taking DBKL to Court 2018). At the center of SKL’s many concerns is the insensitive, rampant, and primarily profit-oriented approach to new development projects taking place all over the city. Several high-profile cases of eviction of poor communities, squatters, and demolishing of public spaces and parks have © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_2

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been cited as prime examples of how commercial development has come to be prioritized above the actual needs and concerns such as sustainability that residents and local communities are looking to address. Examples include the proposed building of a condominium on the site of a public park, Taman Rimba Kiara and the ‘Highway Protest’ which gained massive support against the construction of several major new highways for the seemingly exclusive purpose of connecting luxury, private residential spaces in Damansara Heights, among others. These are seen by groups such as SKL as unfairly favoring private elite conveniences at the cost of working-class and poor urban communities, as well as the environmental resources that sustain KL. Building a World-Class City is an officially stated goal of the Dewan Perbandaran Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), outlined in its KL Structure Plan 1984. Among the criteria through which the status of being world-class is meant to be achieved is by turning KL into a center for global financial and investment activities, a globally attractive tourist destination, and an international shopping paradise (DBKL). Rapid growth in the form of infrastructural developments (Mass Rail Transit, a massive International Airport, new major urban highways) and virtually uncontrolled private and public construction and hyper-building projects have become the main form that this vision is executed. It is difficult not to notice the massive slew of construction projects that litter the KL skyline, from the City Center to its many satellites in Cheras, Bukit Jalil, Damansara, and other parts of the Klang Valley. The current and most eye-catching construction project is ironically located in the very heart of the City Center—the imposing Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) tower. TRX represents the spirit of experimentation and hyper-building that infuses this global city, but it also stands as a reminder of the hubris and feckless leadership of the recently deposed former Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. Initially conceived as one of the major projects under the scandal-ridden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDC), the TRX tower has come to symbolize the reckless, greedy, and narcissistic approach that Arundhati Roy described as ‘gush-up economics.’ It is possible to look (from an elevated position) at the massive construction site of the TRX— from the hundreds of foreign construction workers spending hours at the site in the heat to the incomplete top section that sticks out like the most fitting indictment of the corruption and scandal-ridden investment company that started it.

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These experiments in world-class city buildings share common elements that mark them out as very different from previous developments. Firstly, these ‘slew of mega-projects scheduled to transform the Kuala Lumpur Skyline’ are exactly as described—incredibly massive and imposing constructions that absolutely dominate their surroundings. Even low-cost and so-called affordable housing condominiums and residences are being built as massive tower blocks under the public auspices of the state and called ‘Prima’ projects. Private luxury residential constructions can be seen mushrooming across the skyline, casting shadows over the older neighborhoods and tamans. Secondly, these mega-projects follow the same playbook of rapid construction strategies—tight, short deadlines, subcontracted project management, planning and execution, and a workforce that is made up of large groups of surplus, marginalized labor. Big companies such as IJM Corp, Sunway, WCT, and Gadang are heavily involved, with long-standing reputations, but much of these development projects are also entrenched in practices of subcontracting and sub-subcontracting—a form of trickle-down that is enabled because of the lucrative economy that is real estate and property development. Sub-subcontracting is, according to local NGO, Tenaganita, a way for employers and firms to ‘likely get away with non-compliance with occupational health and safety standards.’ This was reported in relation to the death of one Sakiful, a Bangladeshi worker who had been working at the site of the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) tower. He was reported to be the fifth migrant worker to have died while working at that site.1 Sub-subcontracting is very common practice in Malaysia and is seen as a boon to the private sector, especially in construction and development. The practice, as mentioned above, seems to be meant as a way to create spaces and opportunities for exploiting legal loopholes and bypassing regulatory standards, especially when it comes to labor and human resource management. As one supervisor who works at a construction site told me, ‘HR for us means finding ways to make sure whatever problems the worker might have is not related to us—if the guy gets dengue fever, for example, the contractor just pays him off and tells him to admit that he got the fever off site.’ This, by extension, allows developers to not be responsible for the conditions and statuses of the workers 1 Malaysiakini. 2015. Sub-Subhuman Conditions Under Sub-Subcontractors. https:// www.malaysiakini.com/news/299919.

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themselves, particularly those on the ground doing the actual day-to-day building and constructing. Sub-contracting is not an unheard-of practice—it is common in most parts of the world. With regard to developing societies, and in particular those that are experiencing very rapid growth (well-known examples would be the Gulf cities of Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai) rely on subcontracting for a very widespread but specific purpose—the management of displaced, indentured, and often enslaved migrant labor. The use of middle-men and recruitment agencies, temporary labor recruiters, and other similar employment firms is very popular means of getting access quickly to a cheap, highly disposable labor force(Muniandy and Bonatti 2014; Pande 2017). In Malaysia, this practice is taken several levels further—hence the notion of ‘sub-subcontracting’—to the point where big chunks of the cheap, disposable labor can be called into existence and blink out at the sound of a whistle or a hint of rumors. This is the subsubcontracting that produces makeshift encampments such as the kongsi. Sub-subcontracting involves layers of agencies and firms who shift the responsibility of worker recruitment, management, and (minimal) welfare away from the top levels of development. The practice is different from the logics employed by MNCs that outsource manufacturing to sweatshops in China, Indonesia, and India, for instance (Sassen 2014). Here, the logic is not outsourcing the production, but about ‘accessing’ a ghost labor force—a labor force that is responsive to tight deadlines and short project timelines and makes little to no demands for better working conditions. The ghost workers—Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Nepali, and a host of other nationalities—are largely undocumented migrants who move from job to job, kongsi-to-kongsi, while they are still fit and able to do so. More workers are recruited through formal, informal, and outright criminal means to feed into this system, while thousands of others become pushed into it due to forced migration and displacement, such as the Rohingya. This ghost labor force can appear and disappear quickly, because they are not really supposed to be there, after all. The groups of mobile undocumented workers are not the formal workers and supervisors officially employed by the contractors and subcontractors—instead they are an additional group of workers who are brought in at a moment’s notice, for the duration of a particular project, to speed up the work and help meet

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deadlines that would be virtually impossible to meet with the formally employed workers alone. These sub-subcontracted ghost workers are often made to share the same living spaces and kongsi camps as the formal workers. For instance, in a kongsi that is made of shipping containers and plywood structures meant to house the workers, one is likely to find 8–10 workers sharing the same container, rather than the 3–4 who are ‘officially’ given that space. These additional workers are brought in separately—some may even arrive on their own in search of work at the sites. As one site supervisor describes, ‘as far as the developer is concerned, you want to work, and you’re willing to put in the hard hours, then we pay you, no questions asked. The Chinaman companies are all like this—they don’t really care about any other thing but completing the projects, so as long as you do the work, no problem. But don’t complain, don’t ask for more things.’ This feeds into a way of organizing formal and informal labor that inevitably takes on racialized forms. At a few construction sites and labor camps, there is a clear division, or hierarchy, between the local ‘supervisors’ and foreign workers. Some site managers, out of perceived necessity, ensure that local, Malaysian, employees are never given the same work status as the migrant workers—they are often given higher-level positions to clearly demarcate superiority over the lowest-level workers. This, as one supervisor put it, ‘is to prevent the migrant workers from getting all kinds of ideas and making more demands, which will happen if they suddenly see that they can occupy the same levels as the local employee. The hierarchy is very important… the Bangla workers are very sharp and can quickly mobilize if you give them even the slightest chance.’

Kongsi Life ‘Kongsi’ carries different meanings in Malaysia, depending on the ethnolinguistic usages. In Chinese, the word refers to ‘companies’ or collectives, usually in reference to older, working-class ethnically Chinese communes. The migrants of the colonial period, upon settling in the old mining and port towns in KL, Ipoh, and Penang, set up kongsis to establish a somewhat self-sufficient, largely informal arrangement through which resources and networks could be shared and invested. A famous example is Khoo Kongsi in Georgetown, Penang. In 2016, a special report by a local Malaysian newspaper, The Star, highlighted the presence and prevalence of a new type of kongsi—the

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makeshift labor camp—which have become a common and seemingly unavoidable aspect of the type of neoliberal hyper-construction that Malaysia has been witnessing for more than two decades now. In between the shadows of monstrous new commercial and residential buildings exist ramshackle, improvised settlements where hundreds or thousands of displaced and temporary migrants live and spend their days. These ‘kongsis’ function like other labor camps, yet are also unique in that they are incredibly portable and flexible, as well as disposable. In Malaysia, the demand for cheap, flexible, and invisible—‘ghostly’—labor is such that the kongsi also becomes a hub-like space that draws workers in, and then disperses once the work is done. The migrant ‘kongsi’ is often a space marked by an impermanence, of both people and material, and functions as a space of exception and exclusion, as well as invisible subaltern cosmopolitanism. In this chapter, I draw attention to how these kongsi spaces emerge as sites of exclusion and exception, where migrants—both formal and undocumented (including refugees and asylum seekers)—become pulled into the world of hyper-construction and hyper-building (Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, n.d.) that Malaysia has been engaged with. Kongsis are essential to the provision of cheap flexible labor, operating under what Aihwa Ong refers to as graduated sovereignty, where the control and management of different populations are subject to the variegated, hierarchical control of a mix of state and private actors, both formal and informal (Ong 2008). Real estate developers and construction firms who work within the hyper-construction paradigm do so under severely restrictive and timelimited conditions—they are operating under intense competitive pressure to ‘deliver on time,’ as one agent put it, or risk paying a hefty penalty to buyers whenever they are late on delivery. In the outskirts and suburbs of Kuala Lumpur such as the areas of Bangsar South, Damansara, and Hartamas, it is hard to miss the sheer scale and quantity of these hyperconstruction projects, which continue to reshape and transform the skyline of the city in drastic ways—to the point that threatens the lives of older communities and residents in fundamentally disruptive ways. Critical to any construction project at the scale of which these developers plan is a labor force that is large and cheap, enough to work long, arduous hours in the sweltering humidity of Malaysia while also docile and powerless to make demands for better conditions.

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Such a labor force must exist outside the official purview of the state, while simultaneously being easily called upon when needed. This ‘ghost army’ of workers should be mobile enough to reach the sites where their labor is needed, and mobile enough to leave when they are no longer needed. They should also be outside the responsibility or management of the developers and construction firms—this is where informal, under-table deals with local subcontractors, syndicates, and gangs become a key part of producing and sustaining an extremely precarious but abundant ghost labor force. The kongsi is the interstitial space where the eye of authorities often skips over, where the actual numbers of workers at any given time can vary from hundreds to thousands depending on the demand, and where the management of the developers and firms end, and the rule of the ‘kepala’ or gangster begins. Unsurprisingly, such spaces of exception are harsh, impoverished, and restrictive, even more so when the populations of workers who end up in the kongsis are undocumented and temporary migrants—people who lack basic protections and legal rights who have little capacity to seek formal opportunities and resources and are forced to rely upon the informal and sometimes illegal opportunities to make a living in Malaysia. The workers in these kongsis are not only temporary migrants and guest workers— many are also coming from situations of forcible displacement (such as the Rohingya and other persecuted minority groups), while others still may be victims of trafficking (such as the numerous numbers of Indonesian and Thai women who end up as sex-slaves operating near or in the kongsis. Yet, not all the kongsis in Malaysia are similar in this sense. There is also a second type of kongsi, broadly defined—perhaps best described as a ‘wasteland settlement.’ These kongsis are largely improvised, makeshift settlements that are constructed near or within the sites of former labor camps, where the construction projects have long been completed or abandoned. Such settlements, as the ones near the pasar borong I describe in this chapter, have a more enduring and permanent quality about them and tend to take on the characteristics of a kampung (Malay village) over time, largely due to the everyday practices and work of the residents who are seeking to assimilate into the local Malay society. These settlements are built on top of the rubble and waste of construction sites—in this sense, they are critical to the hyper-construction process as absorbers of waste materials, and the people who live there often engage with recycling, reusing, and sorting through materials that they receive or gather from those sites.

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Kongsis, whether they be labor camps or wasteland settlements, are not just spaces of exception—they are also spaces of subaltern cosmopolitanisms. Owing to the sheer diversity and plurality of identities and backgrounds of the migrants who find themselves sharing the kongsi, co-existing with racial, ethnic, and religious others is an absolute necessity. Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Indonesian, Bangladeshi, Burmese, Thai, and Indian migrants live and work next to one another. They often share resources—food and water, especially—on a regular basis, and many of the people I was engaged with also pick up multiple languages as a result of their life in the kongsi. As some of the stories in this chapter show, the cosmopolitanism of the kongsi also extends to more intimate spheres such as romantic relationships and family, in surprising and unexpected ways.

Into the Ghost Towns… I followed Murthi and Rama as they led the way through the alleyways along Jalan Peel and Cochrane, to the kongsi settlement they called home, conveniently hidden away behind the massive new shopping mall built recently in the area. The kongsi where they lived, along with countless other migrants from all over, was much larger and more expansive than I had imagined. It was so well concealed from the view of the highways and main traffic routes that it would be almost impossible to notice unless you accidentally happened to stumble upon it while aimlessly wandering the area. I remember this area vaguely from a long-ago period of my life. It was close to where my primary school, S.R.K Jalan Peel (Peel Road), used to be, a small but busy little public school that no longer existed. Where my old school used to be now stood another gigantic Tesco supermarket and parking block. As I followed the two young South Indian men toward the migrant settlement they now use as their temporary homes, I felt a strangely discombobulated being in this area after more than two decades—it used to be a largely Malay kampung area, with small, rural-like attap houses lining the rows of unpaved roads and small food stalls lining the streets as on walks past. I remember the very spot—a bus stop—where I used to stand as an eight-year-old waiting for my father to pick me up from school each day. This is a very different place now. The kampung is all but gone to be replaced by the migrant kongsi, the ramshackle slum-like assemblage of tents, camps, containers, abandoned vehicles, and all manner of

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other impermanent spaces that poor, largely undocumented migrants call ‘home.’ Or at least, a temporary place to sleep and rest at night. I was glad to be wearing shoes this evening—the paths were rough and unpaved, with muddy potholes everywhere. The kongsi was quite crowded and lively even at 2 am on a Friday. The men far outnumbered the women, at least those who were out and about, standing and engaged in conversation or crouching down and sharing supper with one another. The only women who were up at that time were the Indonesian and Rohingya migrants who were entertaining the men and providing sexwork. The women generally don’t live in the kongsi, but in the brothels and rented flats located close-by along Jalan Cochrane. It was late, but this tends to be the best time for the women to be out providing their services around here, as the police would largely be done with their random raids and the migrant men would likely be up and about anyway. Murthi and Ram had just returned from the area nearby, called Jalan Rantai, that was famous for being one of the major hotspots for cheap sex-services provided by largely Vietnamese and Chinese women. The two men were not there seeking companionship or sex—they had been working, moonlighting as lookouts and security bodyguards for some of the pimps who ran many of those brothels. I met Murthi in 2013, when he had been working at a convenience store nearby. He still works at the convenience store, but as he now needs to find a way to return to India after his permit expired, finding other sources of income had become essential for him. Murthi is 38 now and significantly thinner and less healthy than I remembered him. He seemed to have aged much more than the four years that had passed from our last meeting. Another from Tamil Nadu, Murthi, and I used to have conversations about family, food, and relationships during that earlier period, often while he was off work and enjoying his late evening meal at a mamak stall, which I would always buy him in exchange for the conversations. Murthi is very different from back then. He was still relatively pleasant in demeanor, especially toward me, still using the affectionate term thambi (little brother) when speaking with me. But his old sense of humor and wit were no longer as prominent. He spoke less and was more abrupt and curt with his responses—not to me necessarily. The change was alarming. When I had reconnected with him yesterday, at the convenience store, he had been happy to see me but was angry about something which he did not mention. He asked about the research, and if I had been able to make something good out of it. He then had suggested that we meet

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later in the evening in order to ‘show me something I’d never imagine.’ We didn’t speak much that time, but he had quickly mentioned that he had started moonlighting in different places and had moved to stay in a kongsi rather than a shared flat which he could no longer afford. It was nothing he could control, he had said. I was surprised that Murthi was now working as a guard and lookout at Jalan Rantai. The place was a den of sexual slavery and forced prostitution. Murthi said that his friend Ram, another Indian migrant, had relied upon some of their local Indian connections to find this opportunity for work, which didn’t pay much, but was certainly better than nothing. It was close enough to where they lived that a walking commute in the later evenings was not bad, perhaps even pleasant. Murthi asked that I meet him at 2 a.m., close to when his shift would be done and he would be going back to his living quarters in the kongsi. When I arrived at Jalan Rantai, the place was awash with pedestrian and vehicular traffic—it looked more like rush hour at 8 pm rather than two in the morning. Cars were backed up waiting to find available spots to park. Men, young and old, of all ethnicities and races, ‘cruised’ by on foot, motorcycles, or cars, while many sat at the numerous open food courts, being entertained by the young women from Vietnam, China, and Philippines. The area was even busier and hectic than when I visited years ago. Murthi and Ram’s work involved standing and patrolling the openair parking spaces along the street where lines of young women stood waiting for customers to greet them. The two men were part of a much larger group of informally employed protection, meant to provide assistance to any of the girls if they were to be visibly harassed or mistreated by visitors—which happens regularly. They were also there to make sure that the girls are paid and do not try to make underhanded deals with clients that might involve taking revenue away from their pimps and hens. In this regard, Murthi and Ram were visibly uncomfortable each time they approached a girl that had just finished with a client to make sure she had gotten the correct payments and was not holding back any extra side income. “See, brother, these girls are also being smart, which I understand. If they can make a bit extra money, and charge a little bit more than the rate set by the pimp, why wouldn’t they? You see how pretty some of them are, men will pay. My job is to stop that from happening, and make sure the girls don’t tell higher prices to the customer. Otherwise, if they are caught

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doing that, then the girl can get into serious trouble, with the pimp. But, when you think about it, their lives are already so difficult and sad, why wouldn’t they try anyway?”

Ram, Murthi’s friend, is slightly younger but has been working as a lookout for a bit longer. He is also from South India and was originally working as a restaurant worker before ill-fortune befell him and he had to seek different alternative sources of living. Ram can’t return to India, just like Murthi, until he is able to secure sources of funding and repay the huge debts that he was saddled with. Together, the two men lived and worked side by side, though there seemed, from an outsider’s view at least, very little warmth between them. They rarely spoke to one another and often ignored the other’s presence, but Murthi tells me that Ram was like a brother to him, a comrade, and he is mightily loyal. “We’ve suffered together, this past few years, and whenever we needed help, the only person we turn to was one another. That’s a special bond, Tamil-born. We both had to leave our homes to come here, and then after working here we also couldn’t afford to pay the rents, so we decided to find a new place to stay, and new opportunities to work together. If we don’t protect each other’s backs, we’ll drown. That’s for sure.”

We walk together toward one of the makeshift shacks which were barely more than pieces of large plywood arranged together along with halfcement, half-concrete blocks and covered with corrugated metal that was Murthi’s living quarters. It was small, just enough for him to have a tiny stove, a sink and tap connected to an exposed pipe leading behind the construction (and presumably to a water main), a stack of boxes, and a reed mat on which he slept. Murthi kept a small fan next to his bed. The mosquitoes were awful and unbearable; it was a small wonder how anyone could get any rest or sleep in such an exposed space. I was still struggling to process how dramatically Murthi’s life had changed, and for the worse. Murthi’s living quarters were hardly that. It was small, cramped, and offered little protection from the mosquitoes, heat, and dust from outside. There was a smell of wet cement and mud that permeated the area, along with smells of food being cooked on paraffin stoves. And cigarette smoke. It wasn’t hard to breathe, but certainly took a bit of adjusting to. I had to resist the urge to constantly rub my eyes due to the irritation.

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Murthi invited me to sit with him in his little room. There were no chairs, so we sat cross-legged on the floor. He took out his phone, checked for messages, and put it next to his sleeping mat. “Have you had dinner, brother?” I asked, worried that I was impinging upon his time. He shook his head. “We already had our meals before going to work, little brother. Otherwise we won’t be able to stand around working on an empty stomach. It’s mostly easy work, but sometimes it can be quite hard to stay awake and pay attention.” “Have you ever had to deal with anything serious or bad at that job?” He thinks for a while. “A few times… there’s always some over-eager or nasty idiot who tries to pull girls into cars or refuse to pay and bully the girls, and then we have to step in. At least three times, we had to stop a guy and take him to side streets and whack him up a bit because of what he was doing. Usually too drunk to care, but this is the nature of the area we work in. A couple of times, there was a police raid, and we had to quickly rush to get the girls all back inside and in their rooms. That was the scariest moment, when the cops are trying to find the girls and catch anyone who might still be engaging. Sometimes, we have to grab and push out the guys who are with the girls at the time, and that can be difficult and embarrassing.” “How’d you end up with this job, brother?” “Don’t ask… I’ve had really bad luck, but some of it was my own fault. Two years back, without telling me, my mother had gone to the same agent that had borrowed money for me to come here in order to ask for more money to help build a new house for my younger brother and his wife. They didn’t tell me they did this, and then when I found out through the agent, they had already taken and used a big chunk of money telling him that I will be able to pay it off because I am working in Malaysia. But you know how hard it is for me to try and pay the original loan off anyway? Now on top of that they borrowed a lot more money and the agent is charging even more interest on it. And they had taken it using my name, brother! But the problem is that it was also my fault because I had been lying to my family, by telling them everything was okay and I was making good money here to help them. They must have thought it was no problem for me if they took an even bigger loan. By the time I found out, the agent told me that I would have to pay more than twice what I was paying each month in order to meet the minimum for the loan. I was desperate, little brother, so I had to stop paying the rent for place I used to be staying, and had to pick up new jobs just to be able to make the monthly payments.”

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“How many jobs are you working?” “Four currently. In the daytime I still work at the convenience store, but after that in the evenings I do different jobs, including this late night shift (in the red light district). I’m also working on and off as a stall vendor in the evenings for a pasar malam (night market) nearby, that’s only two times a week.” “Is it enough to be able to make the payments?” “Not really, but I made an agreement with the agent to extend the time on the loan so I can take longer to pay it off… from 5 to 10 years.” “I’m sorry, brother… did you ever speak with your family about this?” “How can I? You know well, you’re also an Indian man - we can’t tell our parents and our younger siblings that we’re struggling and that we can’t afford to take care of them. If I tell my mother what the truth is about my situation, she would be badly heartbroken and might commit suicide. I can’t let that happen to her. She thinks I’m doing well, and she’s very proud that both her sons are okay. If I told her the truth, then it would crush her. I can’t tell anyone else either. It’s shameful, little brother. What can I tell them? That I work as a bouncer for khozhi (slur for sex-workers)? What will they think?” “How’d you find out about this job?” “You know there are always those young Indian boys who like to spend time around this area and near where I work… these boys from the gangs mostly, coming from the slums. I knew one or two of them and their families, because they would come to the restaurants and the shop sometimes, and found out through them that there was this type of work. Mostly it was very young boys who did it - they would ride motorcycles so they could go after anyone who tries to cheat or bully the girls. But the pimps also wanted more steady protection and these boys were too unreliable. They would spend more time smoking and chit-chatting then actually working, so they started hiring us to the job. The pay is not bad, which is why I decided to take it.” “And how did you find this place to stay?” “This? Ram brought me here. He has been living here a bit longer than I have, so he knows what it was like for those of us who have no choice. He told me that there were places like this all over the city, especially close to construction sites, where a lot of workers stay. He suggested that I should come to this one because it was emptier and had basic things like water. It’s terrible, you can tell. I would much rather be back in my rented room, which wasn’t that much better, but that’s not really possible anymore.”

∗ ∗ ∗

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Most of what used to be the old Indian and Malay kampung and slums around the area known as Kampung Pandan have gone, disappeared. Removed and demolished by the real estate property developers keen on kick-starting their massive new condominium and high-rise apartment projects. Some of these massive new constructions have already been completed or near-completion. Tall, imposing, and almost overwhelming tower blocks that absolutely dominate the immediate skyline, blocking out the views of the mountain ranges in the distance and even closer landmarks that dot the KL skyline such as the KL Tower and the Twin Towers. These tower blocks were built on the ruins of slums that used to be the homes of hundreds of very poor, working-class Indian and Malay families, many of whom relied upon and worked in the informal sectors that used to drive local small businesses and economies, from crafts and food to scrap metal and recycling. I grew up around these parts, my family home located right next to one of the major slums, where I would often bike and walk around with friends, playing soccer or other games that kids used to play around here. Not all the slums have been eradicated or demolished, those that remain were too far away from the construction sites that they were left to be. Except no one who used to live there remained. These ghost slums now host a different population of precarious denizens—migrants. Workers—mostly, men—were the primary labor force fueling the rapid construction and development of these new hyper-buildings mushrooming all over KL. The slums that used to be called Kampung Melayu and Kampung India now bear a different name—that of the kongsi. These are little different from labor camps for the migrant workforce—pockmark reminders of the (in)human cost of hyper-modernization and ‘growth’ in Malaysia. Blink, or look away, and you’ll never be able to find these ghost camps again, so well are they hidden and pushed away into the margins of the city, conveniently situated out of view by sheet metal barriers and fences that block out construction zones and neighboring buildings. When I try and recall memories of the slums of Kampung India, back from when I was a child, I remember a cacophonous, chaotic, and lively community of people who spent most of their time outdoors, either working, socializing, or playing. Perhaps, in my childish immaturity, I remember people who were happy and smiling for the most part, or gossiping animatedly with their neighbors, talking about politics and sports and food. I remember a liveliness to the community, despite the clearly impoverished conditions people lived in. For a long time, this

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was a community that was left alone in the margins of KL’s urban core, irrelevant to policy-makers and city planners due to their abject peripherality and the greater emphasis to developing new suburbs away from the center of the city itself. That all changed in the space of only half a decade, when a return to the urban center precipitated efforts to revitalize and modernize the heart of KL, thus heralding the mass eradication and removal of older slums and village communities to be replaced by constructions that were more becoming of a global city such as Kuala Lumpur. Similar projects took root in areas such as Pantai Dalam (now called Bangsar South), Cheras, and Puchong. The life that used to characterize the slums no longer exists, but the old beat-up dirt paths and the occasional shack, hut, or Hindu shrine serve as haunting reminders of what, and who, used to be here—the marginalized, disenfranchised descendants of indentured laborers and slaves left behind and forgotten by history. It does feel like these ruins are a fittingly tragic marker of the ghosts of our colonial past that we are still trying desperately to shake off. But the past has a way of returning in ways that are least expected, and in this case, through a renewal of the colonial tragedy of indenture and bondage through the pseudo-modern projects of globalization and modernization. Here, in the ruins of slums past reside the groups of ghost people tasked with building our city. ∗ ∗ ∗ Mohamad Rashyed, or Syed, as he introduced himself, offered to have some teh tarik with me on evening, at a small street-side food stall just outside the kongsi where he lived with his fellow construction workers. Syed was in his thirties, lean, wiry, and deceptively strong, like many of his colleagues. They must be, considering the nature of their work which involves spending hours each day under the hot sun performing heavy construction work. Syed spoke English a bit better than most of his compatriots—I had met him while walking through the kongsi earlier in the day and attempting to speak with people before he had eventually overheard and come over to introduce himself. Syed’s story is one that I hear echoed repeatedly among so many Bengali, Nepali, and Indian migrants to Malaysia. He had come here having borrowed a lot of money from an agent who had promised that he would be able to find well-paying work and opportunities in Malaysia, only to discover upon arrival that he had been involuntarily recruited

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to become a construction worker under the employ of a subcontracting agency in KL. Syed, like those he works with, had his passport and documents withheld and was prohibited from leaving the premises of the site or the kongsi. He was also subject to strict curfews, though recently, he tells me that many of these restrictions have been ‘loosened’ thanks to the recent elections and the new government coming into power in Malaysia, which has left a lot of local firms and employers cautious about their labor practices. “Last time (before the elections), you can never come outside of the site during work hours. They would have the whole zone closed off, and locked, except for when the lorries and tractors need to come through. We would be expected to keep working, have our meals together at the site, where they have a small kitchen and food tent, and then continue working. Even after work, we were supposed to go back to the kongsi and not be outside. That’s changed, since the elections. We have a bit more freedom to move around, after work hours. We don’t have the thugs that guard the kongsi anymore, but the supervisor still holds all our documents, so we can’t really afford to disobey them, if they tell us to remain inside.”

From where we were seated, I could see one of the shared living spaces inside the labor camp, where a few workers were sitting on the ground or on cement blocks watching a small TV, which apparently one of them had scavenged from a scrap dealer recently. Most of the place looked like it had been scavenged from bits and pieces of what used to be the homes of families—pillows and old mattresses, torn sheets, plastic tables, broken shelves and other furniture, lamps, buckets, old radios and generators, and even utensils and dishes. It looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic setting—a Mad Max meets Slumdog Millionaire aesthetic. At a stretch, this reminded me of many of the descriptions of urban chaos and deprivation that Mike Davis described in Planet of Slums, and one can easily fall into that line of thinking just by looking at the space of the kongsi. Returning to Syed, who does not speak much but provided succinct answers when he did, I tried to see if he would be able to provide some insight into daily life in the kongsi. “How much time per day do you think you spend in the kongsi, as opposed to at the construction site?” “We all work at least 12 hours each day at the site, from 6 am to 6 pm. It is normally 7 am to 7 pm, but the scheduled was moved to

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accommodate fasting month. Since we have start fasting normally around 5.40 am, we would be awake and head to work at 6, then we can come back in time to break our fast, usually around 7.15 in the evening.” Syed, like most Bengali migrants, is Muslim. “Do you break your fast with together?” “Yes, of course… we can hear the prayer call because there is a nearby mosque, so we are usually ready by that time, and prepared the food, so we gather and break our fast together. It’s a good time of day, for me, and for the others too. We get to observe our faith without interruption, so for that we’re thankful.” “If it’s not too wrong, may I ask how you manage the long work hours while fasting? In the heat, without any water?” Syed smiles and shrugs his shoulders. “That’s what it is, sir… what else can we do? Sometimes we have to manage by drinking because it’s too intolerable. Some of us try to handle it, but not all of us can. We’ve also been warned by the management that we should be careful to avoid exhaustion and dehydration during fasting month, but their work is still the same. If you’re smart, you need to know when to take a break and slow down, so you don’t strain yourself too much. My work involves carrying and lifting things, usually cement pails, bricks, and so on, so it’s very draining work. I get thirsty all the time, sometimes I have to drink my own sweat.” “Has anyone been hurt or suffered from heat stroke?” “We’re always having one or two of the workers who would collapse or faint during the day, and we would have to carry them to the shade and leave them to recover. That’s when the supervisor comes and scolds us for not drinking or taking water in while we’re working. He’s Chinese, he doesn’t care about our fasting, and told us a few times that if we’re smart, we’d be more concerned about our health than our faith. But after a few more workers kept fainting, they are a bit better to us, especially because they are afraid of something bad happening or someone complaining outside.”

∗ ∗ ∗

“How is life here? In the camp (kongsi)?” “It’s bad, but that’s what is fated, maybe. I wish I never came here, and that I was back in Bangladesh. I would have been happier doing my old job as a repair-man. I used to fix things for people, like electronics, broken

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pipes, that sort of thing. It didn’t make a lot of money, but at least I got to stay happy and in a decent home with my family. I thought coming here would help us become much better off, that it would be about making a lot more so we could be more comfortable. But I ended up in this place (points at the camp). What for?”

The workers’ camp that I visited in Kampung Pandan is not even that large in comparison with some of the ones that are in the suburbs of KL, in areas which are being developed at a much faster rate such as Puchong. However, this ‘small’ kongsi easily had at least 200 people, at a very rough estimate based on the traffic and number of individual ‘rooms’ that I was able to count walking around. It wasn’t only workers from one site, but also includes people working in different places who had no other place to stay. I was struck as well by the diversity of the kongsi. It was not just the Bangladeshi workers, who did make up a visible majority, but also a fair number of Indian, Nepali, Indonesian, and Burmese migrants, living side by side in relative peace. Mostly, they went about their own business, preferring to stick to their own co-ethnic neighbors and friends, but there was no overt tension or issues between the various groups. It helped that so many of them shared faith and religious practices, and it was clear that the fasting month was a period that brought the whole kongsi together a bit more, as meals were often shared as a community rather than as groups or individuals. There is a precedent to the ways that these kongsi encampments or makeshift housing arrangements are set up. These are possible largely because of the lack of legal requirements and enforcement that are imposed upon contractors and developers to provide secure, stable, and decent housing for their workers. It becomes easy—and many argue necessary—to cut costs in terms of providing for the workers in order to sustain the high rate of development. The property market in Malaysia, especially in the urban areas, is booming due to speculation and foreign investment seeking to capitalize upon the prospects of this Southeast Asian country becoming the new South Korea or Japan—a global hub. Property and real estate prices have already soared past what the average Malaysian is able to afford, at least in the city, leading to difficulties in securing home loans and an unprecedented number of bankruptcy and insolvency cases in the country. Nonetheless, the construction of new buildings—private residences and commercial—continues to progress at a rapid rate. As an example,

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the current massive project called Exchange 106 which was initiated by the former Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak via the scandal and corruption laden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) initiative, and located along Jalan Tun Razak (aka the Tun Razak Exchange financial district, KL’s attempt at Wall Street), represents an attempt to build the tallest building in the country, stripping that particularly title away from the Petronas Twin Towers (Tun Razak Exchange Investors Seeking Clarity— Business News | The Star Online, n.d.). The site of the building is a massive construction zone that is largely closed off to the public—worker camps are barely visible but spread out across different areas in Bukit Bintang and Imbi. Similar major construction projects that include highclass luxury residences (Pavilion), commercial high-rises (in areas such as Mid Valley, Sentral, and Sunway), and others all largely take place almost in identical fashion, with migrant workers being brought into stay in makeshift camps as they work on the buildings. In November 2017, an editorial by The Star Newspaper covered details of life in a kongsi in KL, highlighting the precarious, vulnerable, and dangerous conditions that workers were subject to in these makeshift housing encampments, and how many had been forced to ‘suffer in silence’ due to lack of protections from the law. The editorial also touched upon the problem of human trafficking in the form of scams tricking people into coming to Malaysia to study in local colleges. These colleges, as the journalists discovered, were nothing more than fronts that were looking to bring in workers from countries like Bangladesh with the implicit intent of putting them to work in places such as construction sites. Migrants are often caught by surprise to discover that their journey had been part of this scam, and they would quickly discover that they have little choice but to comply as a result of not having their documents and not being able to apply for the status of international students. To add insult to injury, many migrants would have taken out significant loans in order to make the journey to Malaysia in the first place, further making them unable to do anything but work as they are told. Syed and Amirul both worked at the same construction site. They were part of a workforce tasked with completing a new tower block of apartments that were designed for middle-income residents. The work was supposed to have been completed two months ago, but due to delays that were out of the workers’ control, it was projected for completion by November 2018. Syed didn’t fully understand the reasons, since the workers were rarely informed—they were given directions only to

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complete the jobs that they were supposed to, by the set timelines. The delays had nothing to do with the workers, as far as Syed knew. Amirul was Syed’s closest friend at the kongsi, who also came from Bangladesh with the assumption that he was going to enroll in a college somewhere in KL. Amirul arrived recently in November 2016. He spoke little English and very broken Malay, and Syed explained that Amirul had wanted to take English classes in business when he had come to KL—which was the ‘program’ that had been advertised for him by the supposed college. It was not until he had arrived that Amirul discovered he had been cheated and that there were no such colleges in the city. Instead, as Syed explained, Amirul had been told to go to a bus station in Pudu where he was then taken on a bus along with a few other migrants and brought to the site where they were told they would be staying and working. Their passports and permits were also confiscated. When he had tried to explain that he was not a worker but was there to study at a college, he was informed that no such college existed, and that if he wanted to remain in the country without being detained or arrested, he would have to agree to work at the construction site, where he would be paid and given housing in the kongsi. Syed and Amirul referred to one another in brotherly ways—the latter was at least six or seven years younger, and clearly relied upon Syed a lot, mostly keeping quiet and listening. There was a deference to the older man. Syed himself was a bit more talkative and forthcoming today than the first time I had had a conversation with him. They were relaxed, in the evening having already broken their fast, now enjoying a late-night cup of sweet tea at the roadside stall. We had some jeruk and rojak in front of us, local snack food that both men seemed to like a lot. They were still hungry, having fasted the whole day and not having had much to eat when they broke their fast for the day. Amirul also checked his phone regularly—he was texting with some friends and his family back home. “Does the contractor help if you have any issues or problems in the kongsi?” “What kind of problems?” “I mean… if you have water supply problems, electricity… flooding..?” “No, we manage everything mostly on our own. We get the electricity from the generators for the construction and the nearby sites, but we have to be careful not use too much otherwise we get noticed. Water, we get from pipes that are drawn from the mains supply for the site. That’s also

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only for the bathroom toilet, and to fill the big tub that we share for bathing, so we have limits for each person for using the water. We cannot wash too much, but because we’re also praying, we need to use the water to wash before prayers, so have to be very careful to use a small amount.” “what happens if you use too much water?” “The contractor will sometimes turn the control valve down for the mains, and reduce the supply for us if we hit the limit for the week. But it’s not so bad nowadays, we use a bit more but they don’t stop or reduce the water. Also, we’ve learned how to get water from other places as well, like the public washrooms nearby, and there’s a padang (soccer field) nearby with a water spout which we can go to fill our pails every night. We use that water for boiling and drinking, and for washing in the morning.” “How far is the field?” “Not too far, it’s just behind the school over there… we are going there after this. It’s a five minute walk.” “Wait, do you mean the field that belongs to the primary school?” “It’s next to the school… that’s where the children play bola (soccer)…, and they use the spout to wash their feet after games, and to drink water…” “How do you get into the school in the evenings, won’t they be closed?” “It’s not that hard, brother, the field is not closed off, and it’s easy to get to the pipe. We get the water in our buckets and then bring them back to the camp. This water we only use for our own rooms, for boiling and cooking.”

Syed did most of the talking, while Amirul would often nod his head in agreement and smile frequently. He didn’t speak a lot of English, and his Malay was very rudimentary. He spoke a few words to Syed in Bengali on occasion, and Syed would convey his meaning. “It’s not only the construction work that we do. Some of us also have other jobs, that we do later in the evening or when we don’t have shifts at the construction site. Amirul here also works at a recycling center. He sorts through garbage. It’s not bad work, he says.” “Do you also have another job?” “Scrap metal. I collect and deliver scrap metal to a big junkyard nearby. They don’t pay much, but I’m hoping that in the long term I might be able to start working for them more permanently, because you can make quite a lot of profit in that business in KL. It’s hard, because many of these junkyards and scrap metal businesses are controlled by local gangsters, who don’t always like foreigners.”

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“Where do you get the scrap metal from?” “Oh that’s very easy, brother. You can find scrap metal from almost anywhere. You should really see the kinds of things people throw away, and also the amount of cars that get stolen or abandoned in this city. I don’t even have to go very far to find things. Sometimes people would come and dump their TVs, fridges, radios, even old motorcycles and bicycles near the kongsi - for them, they think this place is just a dumping zone, because of all the construction waste, so they think it’s okay to just throw their own stuff. The supervisor would often ask some of the workers to go through the dumpsters to make sure there’s nothing but construction waste in there.” “Do you mean that local residents around here would use construction site dumpsters to get rid of their own waste? How do they even get in?” “They don’t need to, sometimes they just come next to the site and throw their things over the fence, where the dumpsters are. Or they just leave it by the side of the kongsi because they know someone will have to come and clean it up. If not, we get in trouble if the streets and sidewalks near the kongsi is full of trash. I used to work in a junkyard in Bangladesh, with scrap metal recycling and reselling, so I have some experience in this kind of work, so I thought it would be possible to make some small money out of this things that people like to throw away. Some of the other men also help with this, and we each get small amounts of money. Not much, maybe we get RM 200-300 each month. For me, it’s more the long term possibility of going into that business. I’m good at it and would be very happy if I could start a scrap yard business in KL. There’s a lot of money in this business. Have you seen the cars that some of the guys drive, from owning the scrap metal business here? The owner of the big one nearby drives a really big BMW. He probably earns millions from this business.”

Orphan Murthi’s ‘fixer’ is a young Indian man, named Siva, who had been working for organized crime gangs and local businesses. Siva, as far as he was able to tell, was born in Malaysia and grew up here. He had never known any other place aside from KL, having been left as an orphan from a very young age. “Annae (Big brother), you want to write about my story… it’s very sogam (sorrowful). I hear you always write about these other (migrants), why not about your Tamil brothers? We’re also migrants, too, no? I can tell you my story… my takkapan (father), I never knew… probably some drunk,

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wife beater who fucked my mother and left the next day. My mother was a whore, that much I remember. She dropped out babies as often as she took a shit, with all the men she was with. I stayed with her for a few years, me and all my siblings. I don’t even remember how many anymore. And we had no money, whenever we went to ask her for help, she would tell us to go away, or tell my sisters to go sell their bodies for money. Whenever we needed money because someone was sick and needed medicine, two of my sisters would have to whore themselves out just to make a bit of money. They were maybe 15, 16… We used to stay behind, in the slums in Kepong, when I could remember, but never in one place. There, I still remember, every evening she would bring all these men back to the flat, even with all of us children in the house, she would still do it inside the room. They would use her like a toilet. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I left with one of my annae, and we decided to join a gang, which was letting us work and make money selling protection. That was, maybe, 7 years ago. I was 13, or 14… I don’t remember. Brother, I actually don’t know when I was born. No birth certificate. Ammakari (mother) probably gave birth to me in a toilet…”

Siva is not the first young Malaysian-born Indian boy I knew who was in the type of situation he finds himself in. This is a story that I come across often enough for it to strike home in a very personal way. The only difference between Siva and me is one of fortune and relative privilege—of being descended from grandparents who had slightly more presence and status as indentured laborers from South India. I’m the lucky one—my grandparents had not died from working the plantations, leaving behind orphaned children to fend for themselves. Siva is from the countless young people who have become the generation of tragic orphans that Belle writes about—effectively several generations of stateless South Indians born and living in Malaysia with little representation and recognition. Only the kind hand of fame and fortune prevented me and members of my family from sharing the same life as those like Siva. The term ‘big brother’ was more than just a simple way to refer to each other; it often felt like a plea for help and guidance, laced with bitterness and perhaps even slight contempt at the fellow Indian, whom, despite his success, doesn’t seem to be much helpful to his fellow Tamilians. I could understand that. “Thambi (little brother), have you been working with the gang since then?”

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“No, annae. I am in the gang, but I work other things too… not all is crime or bad. I also try to do clean work whenever it’s possible, like I would help work for the local temples, they would sometimes give us money for buying supplies and carrying things, so I try to do that. It’s also good work, maybe it will balance the bad work I have to do. I have some of my young siblings who are staying at an ashram (orphanage) now, since they can’t stay with that whore anymore. They are better, they are safe and get a lot of things they need. And I like to go visit them, bring them gifts, food… that sort of thing.” “The work I do for the gang is out of necessity, brother. I don’t have a choice… you won’t really understand, you obviously come from a nice family, you have education and a nice job. But you know why I didn’t have a choice, besides not having a good family? We don’t have birth certificates, so we cannot get I.C.s (National citizenship cards), so how am I supposed to find proper work? The only people willing to hire is the gang, and they pay decent money to help us get by, so of course we join… Brother, you believe this, don’t you? If we all had the kind of chance and opportunity you had, then none of us would be doing this karmum (nonsense)?” “Of course, brother… I know. I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I didn’t believe that…” “When people look at us boys doing this work, when they see my sisters whoring out, they think we’re all good-for-nothing. They look and spit at us. They don’t think or treat us like people. What can we do? I’m telling you, if we could, don’t you think we’d want to go to school too, or study well and become professionals? Like you? But what’s the point? They won’t even let us go to school… at least my younger siblings are getting some schooling at the orphanage. Maybe they will be luckier than me…”

I stood with Siva under a tree in the corner of a parking area while we conversed. He was leaning forward on his motorbike—a kapchai (scooter) immensely popular in Southeast Asia, with a cigarette in his hand. Siva had long, wavy hair, combed back, and a gold stud in his right ear. He was at work, technically, looking after the parking zone for the men who were visiting the district in search of sex. Along the same street, other young Indian boys like Siva were also present, likely doing the same job. “We’re all being paid by the Chinaman, there… he’s the khozhi thalai (head pimp). Our gang does the protection around this area, and he pays us to run his business. We get discounts with the girls, too, not that we can afford to have a lot. These girls are expensive, even though they are all filthy Vietnam and Myanmar whores. Trust me, brother, they look

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very nice on the outside, with their dress and make-up, but they’re all completely dirty, especially down there (gestures between his legs). If you try with them, guarantee you’ll get itchy for months in your balls. Just ask Rao over there… dey, kamnati (yells at his colleague standing across the street from us), how are your balls doing? Still itchy from fucking that Vietnam lady?” Siva laughs loudly, as Rao gestures an obscenity back at him.” “Where else do you work, brother?” “Here and there. I sometimes go help a cousin of mine who works in Kepong for one of the big gangs there – a lot more money. I’ve been thinking of joining them but they do a lot more dangerous work. They work in that Selayang area, where there a lot of these Myanmar gangs who are really scary. There was once me and a few other boys went to Selayang to just for fun, to look for pussy, cos there’s a lot there. But when we got there, and tried to have some of the Burma girls, suddenly these guys started coming with parangs (machetes)… and we got really frightened and started running away on our bikes. We’re used to being the ones doing the scaring, but those Myanmar fellows, they are truly intimidating, brother. They don’t care about what happens, if you mess with them or their people, they will chop you up. My cousin has told me stories about how they like to cut off your penis if you try to fuck one of their girls. He has friends who got caught like this…Not sure if I want to be working in an area like that…at least here, the worst I have to worry about is police raid or some asshole trying to mess with the girls a bit too much.” “Brother, if I’m honest, I don’t want to be doing all this work forever. It’s the only way I can make money, buy food, and help my siblings. What I really want to do is start my own business, maybe scrap metal, bottle recycling… then I can change into a clean line of work, maybe buy a house… of course, I also want to marry a nice girl, have children. Don’t know if that will ever happen.”

The Ghost Builders of KL LL works for a Chinese multinational construction company that is currently responsible for several projects, primarily condominiums and apartments, in and around Kuala Lumpur. She works as a safety inspector for the company itself and is often jokingly referred to by her colleagues at specific sites as the ‘bad guy’ who comes into check and make sure proper procedures are being followed. Her colleagues are those who work for the same Chinese contractor. The developments are primarily approved by

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the Malaysian government—many were established during the recentlyousted government’s rule. Like so many of Malaysia’s construction and development projects that have taken place and are currently ongoing, there hangs a constant cloud of suspicion of corruption and scandal, often tied to issues such as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) firm, or links to private Chinese, Russian, or other foreign multinationals interested primarily on capitalizing on the booming real estate property market. LL’s job involves frequent travel to different project sites, though she states that it’s usually only one site for any given period, depending on the assignment. She doesn’t usually travel between multiple project sites but has done so several times. Her work is mainly on checking and ensuring the company’s own safety policies and standards are observed, in addition to any that are nationally regulated or enforced, at construction sites. “It could be anything from making sure manhole covers are properly affixed or protective barriers are set up otherwise, making sure if there are any sites that are being dug up that the right type of barricades and warnings are in place to signal to everyone… to checking the conditions in the labor camp for things like pollution, hazards, mosquitoes (aedes )… that type of thing. But really, it’s all mostly just for show. Here’s the thing, the way that it’ usually handle doesn’t have anything to do with actual safety. Let’s say a worker comes and says they have dengue fever, all it takes is for the supervisor to offer to pay him some extra money, let’s say RM500, for him to then claim that he got the dengue from off-site, not in the site itself, in case anyone asks. So that’s the ‘safety check’.”

LL has some very strong feelings about construction companies, developers, and contractors in particular. This, despite the fact that her employer is a Chinese multinational. LL herself is a Malaysian citizen, a graduate from a local polytechnic institute in engineering. She had found employment opportunities not the easiest to come by, at least ones that are well-paying in Malaysia. There was a lot of money in real estate development, and contractors and construction companies tend to treat the opportunity to take up these building contracts as if it was a gold rush. “I started this job more than two years ago, with the same contractor, and they pay a shit-ton of money. Not just to the top level workers, engineers and supervisors, but all the way down to the fucker who cleans the shit and crap on site. You know, the guy who follows behind with a shovel, with

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pasir (sand) to cover the shit then carry it away? Even he earns RM 3000 per month. So who wouldn’t want to work for these companies? But, I tell you, that doesn’t mean they are good, you know… these Chinaman (sic) companies are all evil and bad, they really don’t give a shit about anything except profit, and they only follow the rules when they can’t get away with it, otherwise, it’s all about doing the bare minimum so they can reduce costs. I’ll give you an example which is really fucked up… I worked at a kongsi labor camp somewhere in Damansara once, where there were maybe 500 workers. And you know what, because the company is not subject to any outside law except their own policies, they are not required to provide a standard minimum of toilets for the workers at the housing site, as long as there’s two that’s considered fine enough. Can you believe that? Two toilets for 500 workers? Of course that’s not really what ended up happening, and of course the workers got more toilets eventually, but the point is that there was no need by labor law to provide anything more than that!” “These Chinese construction companies are everywhere nowadays, and they are the main source of the problem if you ask me. I know I work for one, but they are fucking assholes when it comes to certain things. Especially with the labor camps. These guys basically live in containers and plywood cabinets - if they are lucky or happen to have families - and sometimes these places can become shitty fire-hazards. There was a fire once at one of the sites, just before I joined, which had been started because a worker had forgotten to turn off a rice cooker, and immediately there was a big fire that took 8 fire trucks to put out. And after that everyone at the site had to go for mandatory bomba (firefighter) training. Thankfully no one died… but that’s the other shitty thing. Let’s say that someone does die in an accident, like a fire or falling down a pit… as long as we can say that we followed the right protocol, that we had set up the correct amount of barriers and warnings, it’s like nothing happened. It’s so easy…” “These Chinaman companies don’t care about workers from Bangladesh or Indonesia, or wherever. In fact, they are happy to just ignore and pretend they’re not really their problem as long as they pay them, and they work. Legal or illegal is not our issue. If immigration comes to check on the worker’s status, and they start asking us about specific workers, we just say that we don’t know who it is, if it’s someone illegal. We just tell them they’re not our worker and we don’t know anything about them. Immigration can’t do anything. So, really nothing for the company to worry about. Many times, if there’s any sound or news about immigration coming to conducts checks or raids, the illegal workers will all run away from the site

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and go into hiding, so it looks like there’s only legal workers there. Of course this is standard practice. Sometimes they’ll come and tell us that we cannot have the labor camp inside the construction zone itself, but then we’re located right next to a national reserve land, meaning we can’t house the workers outside as well, so then what happens is there is this constant back and forth every two months between us and the inspectors, where they will give a reminder, we will apologize and say that we will look into it, until the point where the project itself is complete and it’s no longer a relevant issue. Clever, isn’t it?”

Despite her personal feelings and opinions about the construction companies themselves, LL also had some startling opinions about the countless low-level migrant workers, predominantly Bangladeshi, who she often visits and interacts with at work sites. Her response and comments below came up during a point in the conversation when we were talking about trafficking and international student scams. “I know there’s been that story recently in the news about how many of these Bengali workers actually come here thinking they are going to be in a college or become students, but seriously, I’m telling you that’s all bullshit. It’s not true, you know… these buggers are not coming here to become students! They are fully aware of what they come here for, because they know they can make a lot of money even working in these construction sites. It’s all bullshit and a cover for them to earn pity by saying that they got tricked when they came here, that they thought they were going to be joining a college. But then when you go to the site, you see these buggers laughing and enjoying themselves, they don’t look depressed and they don’t look like slave labor at all. I’m telling you, they know exactly what they want and what they are doing. Most of them are here because they are happy to do this job for the money that they make. Just the guy who is cleaning shit or holding and passing a hammer can make RM2000-3000, why wouldn’t they want to do this work? This who students who got scammed thing is really bullshitlah… I take it from me, I actually know so many of these guys personally at different sites. They’ve got no problems with what they are doing.” “That doesn’t mean that what the companies are doing is right - they are terrible and they are taking advantage of the workers and not doing enough to make sure they have sufficient basic needs. But at the same time, I think some people can be too soft or too sensitive about the Bangla workers, because those guys are always so good at looking pitiful and like they are

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in need of help. They’re really good liars (she laughs), and they are also very good at having fun. You know, these guys get their drugs and pussy whenever they like in their camps… there’s always young Indon girls who go there and the guys can fuck them for dirt cheap. Then we sometimes have extra problems because some of the girls get pregnant and decide to move in with the Bangla worker in the camp, so we have to provide private living space for them also. I don’t (know) if this is true, but I’ve heard rumors that sometimes they can even organize orgies, cos it’s cheaper to share the hooker at the same time. So really, does that sound like they are living like slaves?”

∗ ∗ ∗ Sunway City is an immaculate, serene, and very green township—not as the chaotic, always congested, place that I remembered it to be a decade ago when I started my college years. It used to be a township that was primarily for residential and young college-going Malaysians, somewhat of a hub for international and local private college campuses like Sunway, Monash, Taylor’s, and Inti. It certainly wasn’t the type of ‘eco-friendly,’ hypermodern model city that it is clearly trying to project itself as now. In fact, I don’t remember it being called Sunway City at all—just by various sections of Subang, which locals would refer to as SS 15, 16, or 17. As with many of the new up-and-coming townships of greater Kuala Lumpur, Sunway City’s skyline is littered with high-rise luxury condominiums and new corporate and commercial buildings. Unlike most other areas, however, there seems to be a sense of better coordination, perhaps even an intentionality, to the way the developments here have been constructed. At the very least, the seeming chaos and lack of planning that riddles most private property development in the rest of the city is not as apparent here. There even seems to be a very deliberate aesthetic that is shared across the buildings in Sunway City—a mix of dark green, light yellow, and deep brown that is shared across single home residences, condominiums, the bizarre Sunway Pyramid hyper mall, and the commercial area that surrounds it. I came here to visit one of the newer development sites close to one of the ‘quays’—Sunway City is built on top of a former mining town, one of the largest in the country. The ‘Lagoon’ upon which one of Malaysia’s most famous theme parks is built upon is a remnant of the derelict mines that were here. The projects—or ‘concept’—of this city are built with a prime focus on security, surveillance, and convenience, according to the

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developers. Heavily advertised on the website for the developers is the number of CCTV surveillance cameras placed all over the city to promote safety, and the developer even set up something called a ‘Tourist Police Service Center.’ Pollution is the other major concern that the Sunway Property is trying to address, through the construction of shared transportation and public systems. At least to my perception—which, granted, is reliant upon memories from a decade ago—there are significantly less congestion and smog around the township. Or it could just be that it rained heavily overnight and it’s the Tuesday after a major public holiday weekend. I was able to walk from a parking lot close to the mall to the development site located at one of the corners of the township surprisingly easily. The stretch had wide sidewalks, which was not necessarily common for KL, and well shaded thanks to the foliage and trees along the road. The development project site was located in one of the quays, essentially a large pit at the end of the road that’s being transformed into a greenspace with small lakes and pathways, in addition to a new luxury living ‘ecofriendly’ private residential complex. The artist’s rendition of the complex on the billboard outside the site looked very impressive—a shiny, all-glass building with smooth, curved edges, in the middle of a very lush green park. All very impressive. *** “You should ask them what safety and security means for them,” my contact suggests, as we sit on the stairway leading down to one of the construction sites. He’s a site supervisor, primarily tasked with ensuring Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA) standards are being met at the sites. Like another informant from earlier, he is often jokingly referred to as the ‘bad guy’ - the one who brings up annoyances that might cause delays and slowdowns for the development. He doesn’t really do that much slowing-down, as a matter of fact, since he is employed by the construction company itself and therefore not subject to independent scrutiny. “It’s a strange situation”, he admits. “I’m not really sure why this works this way - I can go and work and pretend to do health and safety stuff, but really, the rules are all internal to the company itself, and not really something that is enforced widely, so it’s not like what I do actually has that much effect. I guess, it’s just more for a show that there are standards that the company has when it

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comes to occupational health and safety. Something that can be put on the brochures and the websites to show off.” He laughs. “You know how I would describe OSHA here, especially with the workers on the ground? It’s a magic trick. I’m sure you know that there’s a lot of migrant workers… here, it’s almost all Bangla, but also quite a lot of local Malay and Indon (Indonesian) workers. I like to think of it as a magic trick because it’s about finding ways to make problems seem like not-reallyproblems. Let’s say a worker has an accident like they hurt themselves by falling into a dug pit - all it takes is to show that there were enough signposts indicating that there is a pit there, telling people to be careful, so as far as the company is concerned it’s not really their responsibility. Of course, the other part of the magic trick is to make sure the worker doesn’t make a complain. Which means they will be paid a bit of money to keep quiet. Most won’t complain of course, they are happy to take the cash, and if it’s not a very serious injury, they just try to fix things on their own. The ones with serious injuries are much harder to deal with of course - but so far, the company usually pays for the cost of medical care. I don’t really know how much to be sure or if they cover everything, but as far as I know, they don’t really want any bad news about worker injuries getting out. The reputation is also important for them.” “Where do the workers live? Is there a shared housing complex?” “Temporary ones, yes. It’s not too far away from here, in Puchong. I’ve never been there, myself, but we have inspectors who are supposed to check on the living conditions of the workers now and then. They come to work on the bas kilang (factory buses that used to transport workers to manufacturing centers) early in the morning.” “How much contact do you normally have with the workers? Do you know the migrants personally?” “Yes! Of course! I know a lot of them actually… quite close with a few of the guys who’ve been working longer here in Malaysia. We would go yamcha (drink and eat) sometimes, when there’s a slow day. Some of these guys are super-friendly, and quite nice to hang out with. Sometimes the stories you read about the migrant workers, they are not really true lah…. The ones about them being criminals, or bad people. They are just people here to work, and sometimes doing a lot of very hard work that no one else is willing to do also. There’s all that nonsense that migrant workers are

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taking the jobs from local Malaysians, but trust me, local Malaysians will never be able to do the work these guys can do. If you hire a Malaysian to do this type of work, they will spend more time standing around, bitching and complaining, rather than actually working, and then on top of that you have to pay them more, just so they can bitch and moan. I’m a Malay dude, so shouldn’t kutuk (‘talk down’) my own kaum (race), but trust me, you put a Malay guy to do this kind of job, all the projects will take three or four times longer, and cost three or four times more, and you’re more likely to get elevators that don’t work, or walls that have more lubang (holes) everywhere. Oh, and then on top of that, they’ll be busy spending more time outside lepak-ing (loitering) with their crew and their awek (girlfriends). Can’t be trusted to work hard. No wonder most of the developers would prefer to hire migrants… they really don’t have much choice. Maybe they can hire more local Indians, but they are also not much better, la…. No offense, yeah?”

∗ ∗ ∗ Getting into labor camps and kongsi settlements was not easy, but they were not as difficult as I initially feared either. After trying to visit the sixth camp that I was able to find and actually get to, I realized a fairly common routine. It usually starts with looking for a security guard and talking to them, seeing if they could either let me in or point in the direction of someone I should go talk to. Usually ends up being the latter. This often works out well enough—site supervisors and managers might be curious enough to want to know more about what I was doing. Sometimes, the routine would be different, especially for informal camps that are not situated within or really close to the construction sites themselves. These tend to be larger, less regulated, and more permanent camps, often under ‘protection’—by local gangs and organized crime. As it happens, many of the gang members or men working for the organized crime syndicates are fellow Tamilians. These predominantly young men happen to come from underprivileged and marginalized backgrounds, usually from urban ghettoes and slum areas in the city and find themselves having few options but to go into gangs and syndicates as a way to find community and a living. These men—and boys—include school dropouts, orphans, and runaways. As part of my work, I encounter quite a number of these youngsters, who almost always are present in the neighborhoods and districts where there are also a significant number of migrants.

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For the kongsi which are under protection by some of these local gangs, the name of the game is usually extortion. The young Indian youth would often hang around the area as lookouts and ‘security’ for the camps, but most of them would simply treat it as an excuse to spend their time hanging out with their friends. In my time with these communities and areas, I have yet to witness cases of violence or conflict involving the gangs, though there are always plenty of rumors and tales of gang violence and crime that hangs over these neighborhoods. This seems to go hand in hand with some pernicious stereotypes about the different ethnic groups such as the local Indians—stereotyped as a source of violence and crime in the city. Being a local Tamil-Malaysian-Indian myself often leads to unusual and revealing encounters. My identity—which I sometimes play up through how I dress and assert myself for the sake of engagement—is quite frequently used to make character judgments by a lot of people I meet, local and foreign. As an Indian man, I would be ‘accepted’ in unique ways—such as gang members (usually younger than me) treating me with brotherly deference and paying attention to what I say to them, elderly Chinese business owners regularly assuming I was there looking for sex-workers, or Nepali security workers and local site supervisors often mistaking me for someone who was there to ‘collect.’ Recently, perhaps as a signal of my age, I’ve also been subject to far less harassment by local police, who also tend to react with greater hesitation and nervousness around Indian men. It’s a racially charged tension, somehow one that operates to keep a very tentative balance and order between some rather different groups—Nepali security guards, local site managers/supervisors, multinational construction companies, Bangladeshi migrant workers, Indian ‘thugs,’ and local law enforcement. Sometimes getting access to a kongsi means having to speak with one of the local gang members to explain why I wanted to go into the camp. The first time I encountered this situation was when I had to meet two young Indian men, who looked to be college-aged, to get into a large camp in Klang. I remember initially being nervous, but then quickly realized that they were both very young and were completely confused and uncertain about me, and more concerned that I was working for some large, scary organization or syndicate. They asked me what I wanted to do by going inside, and I explained that I just wanted to observe and talk to people, without providing any details. Taking as a cue the fact that they kept referring to me as ‘big brother,’ I took a more patronizing

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tone and began asking them questions about the place, which seemed to make them even more uncomfortable, until they eventually decided it was perhaps not worth the trouble bothering me and let me into the camp, ‘as long as I promised that I wasn’t working for the police or immigration.’ On one cloudy, wet afternoon in June 2018, I visited a kongsi located in an up-and-coming new township called ‘Bangsar South,’ which was built on top of what used to be older residential neighborhoods and kampungs. The township has emerged rapidly, like many other new developments around the city, with a similar style and approach to construction—i.e. very tall apartment and condominiums, one or two ridiculously large hyper-malls, and specialized, exclusive elevated roads and highways for access. This particular camp is small and scattered— in fairness, it was hard to describe it as a kongsi per se, since many of the living spaces (mostly containers) were placed almost randomly around the work sites. However, there was a cluster a shipping containers-cumworkers quarters that were set up virtually on top of one another, in something that resembled an actual shipping yard, close to the edge of a small cliff that loomed over a major highway. Sitting in front of the containers, it was possible to get a jaw-dropping view of the ‘Valley’—an emerald and azure toned island of brand-new skyscrapers that densely clustered around one of Malaysia’s older megamalls, Mid Valley. Under the dark gray clouds and moisture-dense air, the view made me think of a science-fiction setting, a cyberpunk city of technological and architectural wonder, hiding away the dystopic underbelly. Less than ten years ago, this entire ‘Valley’ was entirely different—with the exception of the mall, there were no other tall constructions, just much older low-cost housing ‘flats,’ and many smaller kampungs, predominantly Malay. Most have been demolished and removed for the purpose of redevelopment—where there used to be informal and affordable housing now stand luxury condominiums that cater to an entirely different class of society. The ‘Valley’ is a fitting example of the logics of new development and construction projects in KL, especially for areas that used to be seen as being on the fringes of urban life, where informality and working-class communities lived. Changes often begin with a major iconic ‘centerpiece’ around which the new projects spring up—and this inevitably happens to be a massive shopping center. Within the space of a decade, the Mid Valley shopping center ‘grew’ a twin—called Gardens and very soon after an entirely new township mushroomed with the malls at the heart, taking

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on the shape of an island city thanks to the quirks of the geographical layout and the ways in which several major highways intersected to create this massive, almost elevated space between them. From the kongsi I was visiting, it was possible to imagine the entire Mid Valley city almost as a floating Emerald City. Similar logics can be seen to be working at new ‘old’ urban areas such as Puchong, Subang, and Damansara, again centered around famous and iconic shopping malls and districts such as 1Utama and Sunway Pyramid. Proximity to megamalls and highclass shopping districts is unsurprisingly a massive selling point for those interested in buying property and real estate. Bangsar South came as a bit of a surprise to me. I always knew of this cluster of townships and villages by their older names—Pantai Dalam, Kerinchi, and so on. In 2018, while having conversations with others, people around the much older ‘uptown’ area of Bangsar frequently suggested that I should visit the new township of Bangsar South, which many claimed to be the place to find new luxury residences and condos. Bangsar, it should be noted, is famous for some of the most decadent and expensive homes and residences in the country, designed and built on the side of the many hills in a style that are meant to evoke Beverly Hills, California. It is tricky to try and describe Bangsar South. The area ‘looks’ like a hyper-modern township where more than half of the constructions are either unfinished, or possibly abandoned. Many were completed residences with people living in them, right next to what has to be incredibly loud and aggravating new construction sites. I can’t help but imagine some of the inhabitants who bought or rented homes in the completed buildings being incredibly angry at the fact they would have bought units that initially came with gorgeous views of the skyline only to find out that within a year or two all they would be able to see out of their windows is another condominium complex that probably is more luxurious and better looking than their own. That has to hurt, especially knowing just how materialistically competitive many Malaysian urbanites are capable of being.

Penang Island It was by coincidence that I found the kongsi on Penang Island, driving along the stretch of winding road along the Straits Quay waterfront. It was almost dark, the sun setting, and I had been driving to get to a dinner

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appointment with another informant. The kongsi was hidden away relatively well—blink and you miss it. It was by chance that I had a bit of time to kill that evening, before dinner, and had decided to take the longer route through a beautiful residential neighborhood by the waterfront, about five kilometers away from Gurney Drive. The roads were empty for the most part, as were the gorgeous luxury villas—they were not open for moving in yet. This neighborhood was new, built largely on reclaimed land. Three-story villas with their own gardens and swimming pools, along with private access to the waterfront walkway that gave a spectacular view of Mt. Merbuk on the mainland and the Georgetown skyline. In light of the setting sun, the view was breath-taking. The Kongsi was located at the edge of the neighborhood, where there were unfinished buildings and compounds. The place was still being built. While stopped at an intersection, I could just about make out the top of the shipping containers stacked on top of one another, and it took a while for me to register that they were housing for workers. The workers at this kongsi camp were mostly Bengali and Indonesian, the latter being the larger group. Che Zan, an amiable middle-aged man, thin and lithe, was one of the ‘chiefs’ at the camp, someone the others deferred to. He acted as the proxy for the workers and the contractors, and was happy to meet with me to have a conversation, later that evening. Three of the Indonesian men invited me into watch the match between Mexico and South Korea being shown at a nearby food stall across the road, and I offered to pay for dinner if they would be willing to chat with me. Che Zan, Amin, and Zaidi, along with a group of other men from Indonesia, got together at the stall most evenings to watch the games. I noticed that there weren’t any Bangladeshi workers in the group. It was a challenge for me to keep up with the rapid and heavily accented bahasa Indonesia that they spoke, but Che Zan at least was thoughtful enough to speak a bit slower when addressing me. The men were mostly interested in the game and didn’t speak much directly to me, except to ask my thoughts on players and the games. They were strongly in favor of the South Koreans, claiming Asian solidarity. Che Zan spoke a bit about the work that they were doing, building, and developing the neighborhood by the waterfront. “We get different assignments - building the homes, digging up the land for pools, laying the sidewalks… it’s a lot of different types of work we

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do. It’s not easy these projects, and we usually have very short deadlines to finish them. These luxury houses (he points to the surrounding area) need to be ready by the end of the year, otherwise the developers become very angry at the contractors.” “Do you know why they hire so many Indonesians workers over here, abang?” one of the other men, sitting next to us, asked. I shake my head. “It’s because these days, we’ve become much better than anyone else at building skills. We’re very quick and tahan lama (durable)… if they hire local boys, they will only be able to work half the day in the hot sun. We can last the whole day, and we can also do much more in the same time. Even the Bangla boys can’t keep up sometimes.” Che Zan interjected, “It’s also true we can keep working through the night, when there’s a tight deadline. I used to work at another site where the date to have the site completed was really close and we had only a month to finish everything, so we spent four to five days a week working throughout the night, and managed to complete the work in time. No one else could have done it. It took a lot, I remember being awake for three days straight, only taking short naps. There were other workers as well from Bangladesh, but they were only able to work the day shifts, and couldn’t take the overnights.” “How were you able to get that much work done? And how many hours?” “I don’t remember, but somedays it would be from morning about 8 am until 4 am the next morning, with just short breaks and naps in between. We would all take turns but had to make sure the work never slowed down. It wasn’t a problem, no forcing or something like that, we got bonuses for the extra hours we worked. And very good pay, too. How did we manage to keep working? We used to take things that help us stay active.” Che Zan doesn’t specify the types of things that were taken. The men really loved drinking the sweet syrupy beverages at the stall, which was so full of sugars and artificial flavoring. They cheered and moaned loudly at the close chances, poor passes, tackles and goals during the game. “When we first come here to work in Malaysia, most of us don’t know anything about building or construction. But after we work at a site,

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we learned very quickly. We gained skills that we can actually put to use and make money from. So as Indonesians, we can quickly become more employable when we develop a reputation for efficiency, speed and good quality work. It’s our chance.”

Kongsi Murni The word Kongsi has another meaning in Malay. It means sharing, or to share. Its use is mostly colloquial, but very common. The kongsi camps are very much spaces of sharing, whether such sharing is desired or not. Its inhabitants have little choice in the matter of the accommodations and square footage that they are provided as individuals or even as families. Depending on the camp itself, workers would be lucky if they could get a relatively private plywood shed that they could share with their partners and spouses. More likely they would have to share the same shed or container with five or six other workers, sometimes more. On top of that, they might find themselves having to share the same two or three toilets with most of the people in the kongsi. Sharing, then, becomes both a necessity and a way to make life manageable for the migrants in the kongsi. These camps tend to have a sense of temporariness that permeates—most don’t last beyond the duration of the particular constructions, although some migrant kongsis, particularly those in the city centers and former slums, might remain inhabited by those who have nowhere left to go. Developers and construction firms may or may not bother to get rid or demolish the camps upon completion of projects, if the camps happen to be out of the way and out of sight. Some of these camps, such as the one close to Sri Murni, are abandoned by developers and are quickly taken over by different migrants and their communities in search of shelter and a roof over their heads. These kongsi become the homes of those left behind essentially. Formerly the site of a labor camp for a number of nearby highrise luxury residences, the Murni Kongsi (not actual name) looks like a bazaar at times, a run-down cowboy town during others. It’s mostly unpaved, with rocks and muddy earth all over the ground aside from main walking spaces. This used to be the makeshift homes of Bangladeshi and Indonesian construction workers, who presumably would commute to the various nearby sites by bus or by walking. There was not much in the immediate surroundings, aside from a small lake and a smattering of

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older residential neighborhoods. The view in the distance was not bad—it was close enough to the Batu Caves area, so it was possible to get a view of the hills and mountains of the gorgeous Titiwangsa Range (Banjaran Besar). Nowadays, the kongsi is rarely used by construction workers, since many of the new development projects have moved to different parts of the city, as the area around here is seen as less than ‘prime.’ The kongsi has changed. There’s a more diverse population here, and more women and children. Many of the Rohingya refugees who recently arrived have moved into the kongsi as well, to live alongside the Bangladeshi and Indonesian migrants who decided to remain there. It was difficult to estimate how many people lived in the kongsi. The space was very dense, but also widespread with swathes of overgrown foliage covering entire sections of the kongsi. There was little to no attempts to clear these sections, and many became de facto dumping grounds for garbage and waste. It did not take long for me to realize the rodent population was thriving exceptionally well here, as I had to avoid several piles of rat-infested garbage dumpsters set to the side of unpaved roads, almost getting a nervous breakdown upon seeing the size of the vermin. The two Bengali men I was with at the time laughed heartily upon seeing me jump at the sight of the rats, one of them clapping my back and telling me it was alright, ‘just the neighbors.’ Atiqul, who was 46, and Rahman Hashim, 40, were ‘brothers’ who lived at Murni kongsi with the former’s wife and children. They were not related by blood, but had been friends and co-workers for many years, ever since they met while working at a site in Sunway. They had since moved between four different construction sites around KL and finally decided to remain in Murni after Atiqul had met his future wife, a Rohingya woman known as Azmah and her baby daughter. Atiqul explained that it had not been their choice to live in Murni, and that it was just a temporary place while they sought to find a nicer place that they could actually have a family at. “The wife is new to Malaysia, we only met last year, when she had just come to Malaysia with the girl. I felt very sorry for the baby girl and for Azmah, so young and beautiful but ended up being pushed away from her own village. It’s a very sad story. I wanted to help them, because I would always see her sitting in the corner with the baby strapped to her front, trying to sell things, and do odd jobs. She would always get disturbed and

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harassed by all the boys, and I can tell she was always scared and helpless. I started helping her by buying food for her and the baby girl, whenever I could.” “You have to understand, brother. I’m also not that young, been working so hard for so many years, but I cannot go back to Bangladesh, because I still owe money and if I go back I will be shamed. I also want to have a wife and start a family, have children. Azmah is beautiful, young, and very grateful, so we decided it would be good idea for us to be husband and wife. She was very happy when I asked. Also, as you know, it’s very hard for a single woman with a baby to ever find another husband. Without a husband, she’s always in a bad spot, there’s a lot of men around here who would see her as just someone they can disturb but not have to take responsibility for.”

I was surprised when meeting Azmah, who could not have been more than 25. She was a petite young woman who spoke jovially and always with a ready laugh at the end of each sentence. Her daughter—Amalia— was old enough to walk but stuck close to her mother’s side, clinging shyly and hiding her face each time I looked at her. She smiled a lot and seemed very curious about me, eyes drawn to everything I was doing. Azmah would occasionally chide Amalia for tugging at her side, urging the little one to go say hi. Amalia decided it was best to stay put. The two of them were in ‘kitchen’ space that they shared with a few other families—it was basically an open-air space enclosed on three sides by corrugated metal sheets and plywood attachments. It was spacious, with room for at least eight or ten people to be cooking and preparing meals. The kitchen was equipped with basic paraffin stoves and wood pits dug into the ground, on which large metal pots were placed. Azmah was helping another woman, a neighbor, cook. At one of the ‘main’ spaces of Murni kongsi, there was a gathering space for the community. This space was used for different purposes, but most often for evening prayers throughout Ramadhan. Most of the people at the kongsi had been fasting—Puasa—for the whole of last month, and this was where they would often gather together to pray and break their fast in the evenings. Unlike most other parts of the kongsi, this space was kept tidy and swept. It was laid over with smooth cement and had straw mats rolled up in a corner that presumably would be laid out for the evening prayers. A group of older women—in distinctive clothes of the Rohingya—were sat at one corner of the gathering space, working

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together to prepare betel leaves that would then be sold at the pasar close by. The group of women brought back unexpected memories for me, of a very long time ago when I was no more than 6 or 7 years old, visiting my grandparents in their old rubber plantation home in Sungai Petani, Kedah. My grandparents used to live in a colonial era rubber tappers’ settlement in the middle of the plantation—a place that would scare and give me nightmares each time we would go for a visit. I recall memories of my paatti (grandmother) sitting outside her home and chewing on betel leaves, her mouth and lips stained orange, sometimes with her old friends in the community. That old settlement is no longer there—just like the tall imposing rubber trees that used to surround it, the whole area had been demolished and cleared up for new residential projects and commercial development. Most other members of the former Indian plantation workers community had dispersed to various parts of the state and the country over the years, though my grandparents still live in a nearby house bought for them by their children. I sat with Rahman and Atiqul on the community space—they call it the ‘ruang tamu’ (living room) though I couldn’t tell if they were being serious or pulling my leg. We sat and shared the packets of food and cold drinks that I had bought for them in exchange for their time, as they each told me bits and pieces about the kongsi and the people who lived there. “There used to be just men who lived here, when it was just a camp for construction workers. We maybe had a handful of women, usually brought in by the pati (undocumented workers), but otherwise no other women around here. Of course, at night, you will see a lot of Indonesian women coming into do their work with the men, but they don’t stay in the kongsi, only in the nearby areas. I still remember those days - it was very different. Harder, more dangerous… sure, most of us made good money by working at those sites, but the life was terrible. The bosses would pretend to do all kinds of favors for us workers, they would even pay the Indonesian girls to come to the kongsi and entertain us, but at the end of the day, they wouldn’t really bother to help us when we needed urgent things, like medical aid and leave. It’s hard to compare, but I would definitely say this is so much nicer now - more peaceful, not as dangerous. Even though everyone here is very poor and jobs don’t pay a lot, but you can see there’s a community. And the children make it a very happy place.” Atiqul wistfully suggests.

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It was hard to disagree. Compared to the other two kongsi camps that I had been to, this was significantly cheerier, more communal. It didn’t feel depressed—people didn’t seem as isolated or solemn all the time. Perhaps it was just a misperception on my part, but the presence of many children running around and playing games, occasionally causing minor problems and annoyances for their parents and guardians, gave this kongsi a greater sense of life. It was by no means in better condition than any of the other ones—in fact, many of the containers and living quarters were dilapidated, rusty, and in generally terrible conditions. “Still, this is still a lot harder than home (Bangladesh). Not even close. But that’s so long ago now I barely remember what it was like. Bangladesh has changed a lot now, don’t you think? I sometimes see the news or watch on TV, and I talk to people back home, and they give me stories about how things are going on. I don’t know… sometimes they say things are good, sometimes not as good. But you never know, unless you are there.” Rahman says. “Here, it’s a different story… here, we have to live like this, because we’re not allowed to be anything else, or do anything else. We’re foreigners, and in Malaysia this is the life of the foreigner, unless you’re really very lucky. At least, we get to work and make some money, but what’s the use in that when almost all of it you have to spend to pay debts and send back to family? In the end, there’s very little left and you also need to worry about your own needs. Right?” he adds. “At least for us (Bangladeshi men) it’s okay, we’re able to move around and find work easily enough. There’s always sites and places that are looking for easy foreign workers, they hire ‘no problem’. But you see a lot of these Burma people, especially the women and girls, for them it’s very sad. Very sad. They can’t find work like us, on construction sites, unless they are willing to do all the cleaning work which can be very difficult. Many of them stay here, trying to sell things and work in the market, but many also end up working as prostitutes, because that’s the only way they can make an income.”

∗ ∗ ∗ Atiqul gives me a brief narrated history of the camp, from his own perspective. Being a makeshift labor camp means that documented historical records are likely non-existent—I was only able to find references to

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a kongsi in the wider area, without any specificity, and certainly nothing more than general indications. There was nothing listed on the public records of the property development companies that had built the megaprojects around here, at least not easily accessible records. According to Atiqul, who had been living in Murni kongsi for almost three years with Rahman, the camp used to house at least a thousand workers, at any given time. It was used to house workers from different sites, not just one. “We had people who would work in several different sites - you see that large condo, over there (points in one direction, at a looming tower block about 2km away), that’s one site, then there’s that one (points to another, which from the distance looked like a luxury residential apartment), and that one. Those three were being built at around the same time. The site I was working at is a bit further away, you can’t really see it from here. But all the workers stayed here, in the same camp. We knew each other a lot were PATI (undocumented) as well, so sometimes they would have to run away to avoid being caught. This was all over maybe one and half years ago, after all the buildings were completed, and there were not many other projects around here. People move away to different areas, like Bukit Jalil, Damansara… Damansara is very popular now because there’s a lot of new development projects, so that’s where a lot of us are going. Most of the new kongsi are around there.” “After all the construction workers started leaving, that’s when the others started coming in, especially a lot of these people from Burma. Actually, I think that was already happening even before then, there were already quite a few of the (Burmese) here, mostly girlfriends, wives, and children of some of the workers. Like myself, I decided to stay because of Azmah, and some of the other men from Bangladesh also did the same. Rahman here is also staying because he has an Indonesian girlfriend nearby.” Rahman laughs, embarrassed. “A lot of the other Bangladesh boys keep telling us we’re stupid for remaining here, but that’s because these younger boys are only thinking about one thing, which is how to make the most money as quickly as possible. For them, these days, the rule is simple: minimize how much you spend, make as much as you can, and then go back and enjoy life. They are young, so they can do that. It’s different for some of us who came here much earlier. For my part, I came here and started working when it was very difficult to save any money - the pay was so little, and on top of that the debt I had to repay was never-ending. So I spent years working

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and working without any hope of actually going back. Until now, you see me, I’m older, I don’t have too much time so I need to think about a wife and children. For me, this is not about making money anymore. That really doesn’t bring much happiness, after all. Ever since I started to help Azmah and the girl, I’ve been feeling more content. This is good enough for now, I feel.” “But of course that’s not enough. Have to think of the future as well. (Amalia) will grow up, she will need schooling. There’s a center nearby for the Burmese children, which I can pay a bit of money to send her, but after that we also need to think about moving to a better home, somewhere a bit more stable and nicer than here.”

Inter-ethnic and international relationships and marriages between Rohingya, Indonesian, and Bengali migrants were not uncommon or unheard of. In many ways, it is a somewhat unexpected by-product of the ways in which these differently displaced communities often come into contact with one another—at the kongsi, at new migrant neighborhoods such as Little Bangladesh (Kota Raya), and so on. It is also a consequence of the work that they find themselves having to do—as construction workers, restaurant staff, sex-workers, and sellers at the market, where they have to interact across ethnic lines as part of their jobs. Sharing a faith as Muslims and a shared sense of precariousness helps cultivate a deeply grounded form of cosmopolitanism. People seem to understand each other’s plight and situations in spite of linguistic and cultural differences, and they are far more willing and open to become part of each other’s lives than one might expect.

The ‘Urban’ and the Right to the City Take one unexpected turn along the numerous alleyways of Jalan Bukit Bintang or Jalan Sultan Ismail, and one is likely to stumble upon a vastly different and alien world—a far cry from the cleaned up, posh façade of the expensive shopping malls and five-star hotels of those two major streets in the heart of KL. Locked away, not-so-neatly ensconced, and away from the views of unassuming tourists are Jalan Alor and Changkat. The former is an older neighborhood famous as a hub for poorer working-class residents, small businesses, and vice. It is also famous for having some of the best street food in the city. Recently, the city has undertaken revitalization projects to renew and ‘clean up’ the streets of

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Jalan Alor, with new centers that function as ‘heritage’ sites and formally designated ‘food court’ centers. But Jalan Alor and its neighboring streets retain a stubbornness when it comes to the practices and ways of life of its inhabitants. Aside from being a ‘hidden’ space of urban entrepreneurship, it is also an important sanctuary of sorts, for people and groups of all manner of backgrounds. Undocumented migrants, drug-addicted backpackers, transgendered sexworkers, stateless local-born Indians and Chinese, refugees, and many more. A sanctuary for the invisible subaltern denizens of Kuala Lumpur, its waifs, strays, and ghosts. From the outside, it might sound like a dystopic urban space, the perfect storm exploding into the urban inferno of Mike Davis. But this zone of exception, this sanctuary of strays with its haunted alleyways, is embedded with a logic and sense of order that get obscured at the surface level. There is a way of life, both protective and predatory, that follows particular patterns, rules, and norms that people are able to learn and navigate, relatively quickly. There is space for unexpected cosmopolitanism, just as there is for exploitation and violence. These urban spaces, hidden away, provide just as much as they obscure, mainly through the complex, seemingly mundane yet obtuse ways in which its people and their practices synthetically and organically transpose into the materiality of the spaces themselves. The myriad of people, their relationships, aspirations, and needs give these spaces its meaning, making it a place, and in return, these streets, buildings, and walkways provide spaces of hidden mobility and presence that enable displaced subaltern life to regain a foothold. The urban is more than a clutter of large buildings and highly dense numbers of people. To be urban implies a sharing that often tends to disrupt the formal rules and institutions governing society. At the heart, urbanism is a way of negating the oppressive forms of private property regimes that emerge out of neoliberal capitalist ‘development.’ Notions of what it means to be urban arenot about gated enclaves, private luxury residences, high-rises, and expensively gentrified neighborhoods— these all speak to the anti-urban tendencies of the privileged classes. Urbanism—more precisely, the subaltern struggle to reassert the ‘right to the city’—implies a cosmopolitan sharing, and a way of living alongside differences, that compels people and communities to acknowledge each other’s presence and find ways to cohabit rather than shut themselves off behind beautifully built private homes.

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In place of public parks, amenities, and spaces of common use, increasingly ‘urban’ development takes a very anti-communal form, in which segregated, enclosed, privatized, and gated lots are the norm. Sometimes, we refer to this under the umbrella of gentrification, where the rapid invasion of new wealthy groups into a poorer or working-class district brings about rising costs of living, shutting up of smaller businesses, and inevitably the displacement of older residents who can no longer afford to live in these spaces. Both Bukit Bintang and Georgetown, in Penang, as well as other cities such as Ipoh and Perak, have been experiencing forms of gentrification, for various reasons, where costs of living begin to skyrocket and many local residents begin to feel resentful toward the newcomers. But gentrification represents one slice of a broader neoliberal urban project that is fundamentally exclusionary and anti-humanistic, one in which the ‘public’ or the commons is seen as a problem that needs to be cleaned up, reconfigured, and ultimately done away with in favor of privileged access to certain creature comforts such as walkways, private gardens, expensive cafes, and boutique hotels. Parks and squares are no longer treated as spaces to assemble, mobilize, and express collective presence, but merely as spaces to see and move through—passive spaces, rather than active ones, to echo ‘Asef Bayat’ (Bayat 2010). But this tendency is not unchallenged, as the examples of spaces like Little Bangladesh in Pudu, Jalan Alor, and a host of other places in Kuala Lumpur tend to reveal. With the push toward more gated and exclusive spaces occurring largely in upscale districts and newly developed townships and suburbs—where resistance is minimal if not non-existent— certain older districts become critically important hubs for the social and highly public life of new and old migrant communities. The spirit of the kongsis —that of subaltern cosmopolitan sharing and cohabitation— extends to these revitalized ‘ethnic district,’ in Chinatown, Little India, Pudu, Alor, and other similar areas. In Penang Island, refugee communities and other migrant groups have taken up residence and established new and diverse communities in former kampungs and squatter settlements littered across the island, as well as some of the older parts of Georgetown itself. The curious case of Komtar, which had been built with the purpose of becoming a major commercial and shopping center but ultimately failed, is today a lively, bustling center of myriads of migrant social and economic life in Penang.

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These challenges to the anti-public, anti-humanist tendencies of neoliberal urbanization offer crucial ways for us to understand the importance of the commons and shared spaces of social life in the city, which, curiously enough, is most apparent through the everyday practices and lives of precarious migrants in cities of Kuala Lumpur and Georgetown, as an extension of the kongsi’s cosmopolitanism.

References Bayat, Asef. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Muniandy, Parthiban, and Valeria Bonatti. 2014. Are Migrants Agents or Instruments of Development? The Case of ‘Temporary’ Migration in Malaysia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (11): 1836–1853. https://doi. org/10.1080/1369183X.2014.907738. Ong, Aihwa. 2008. Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia. In Anthropologies of Modernity, 81–104. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/978047077587 5.ch3. Pande, Amrita. 2017. Mobile Masculinities: Migrant Bangladeshi Men in South Africa. Gender & Society 31 (3): 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124 3217702825. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions. Harvard University Press. http://www.jstor. org/stable/j.ctt6wpqz2. Save Kuala Lumpur Coalition Mulls Taking DBKL to Court. 2018. The Edge Markets. February 22, 2018. http://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/savekuala-lumpur-coalition-mulls-taking-dbkl-court. Tun Razak Exchange Investors Seeking Clarity—Business News | The Star Online. n.d. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://www.thestar.com.my/bus iness/business-news/2018/05/28/trx-investors-seeking-clarity/. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. n.d. Wiley.Com. Accessed March 10, 2019. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Worlding+Cities% 3A+Asian+Experiments+and+the+Art+of+Being+Global-p-9781405192767.

CHAPTER 3

Seeking Refuge in Invisibility: Rohingya Communities in Malaysia

Malaysia is home to an estimated 150,000 stateless Rohingya Muslim minorities who had to leave their homeland in Arakan, Burma. Historically, as a predominantly Muslim country with a pro-Islam state, Malaysia has been seen as a sympathetic and stable destination for Muslim minorities facing persecution in neighboring countries such as Burma, Thailand, Philippines, and Cambodia (as well as Syria, India, and Afghanistan). Stretching further back, the Southeast Asian country has a long history for being a ‘crossroads’ of cultures and peoples, where hybridity, mixing, fusion, and contamination are crucial elements of its unique ethnic, cultural, and social dynamics (Noor 2002). Unofficial estimates of the number of Rohingya and other Muslim minorities from Burma in Malaysia range anywhere between 200,000 and 450,000, potentially making it the second largest population of stateless Rohingya second to Bangladesh—of this number, close to 89,000 are registered with the UNHCR as of December 2018.1 This despite the state’s continued refusal to recognize the formal status of refugees under the Convention on Refugees.

1 UNHCR. 2018. Refugee Situations—Bangladesh. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situat ions/myanmar_refugees.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_3

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Why do stateless Muslim minorities from Burma prefer Malaysia as a sanctuary? How do members of these communities negotiate and adapt to life in a host society that does not offer formal recognition of their refugee status and no pathways to legal residency? Unlike Bangladesh, Malaysia does not recognize them as refugees, and most are dependent on the temporary protection provided by special identification cards provided by the UNHCR, which prevents them from being arrested, detained, and deported by immigration enforcement. Despite the risks associated with being undocumented and stateless, many Rohingya refugees view Malaysia as a far better destination than even states that do provide recognition and official refugee status, such as Bangladesh. For many, Malaysia offers unique chances to rebuild their lives and move forward, even if largely through informal means. The ‘slow-burning genocide’ of the Rohingya is a long-standing and ongoing crisis, tracing back officially to 1978 and the reconstitution of Burmese nationality. It was in that year that the military regime in Burma, under Ne Win’s rule, began large-scale campaigns to systematically expel Muslim minorities in the Rakhine (Arakan) region of the country, bordering Bangladesh. The Rohingya, a predominantly ruralbased ethnic minority, bore the brunt of the expulsions, with most fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh (Cox’s Bazaar) and countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan, and Thailand. Since August 2017, more than half a million Rohingya people have been forced out of Burma. The group has been variously described as the world’s ‘most persecuted minority’ (Ibrahim 2016b; Azis 2014; Milton et al. 2017). International attention has largely focused on two dimensions of the crisis—firstly, the political situation in Myanmar under the ruling party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the military, and the role of Buddhist fundamentalists in extenuating and perpetrating violence against ethnic minorities, and secondly, the plight of refugees and stateless people and their communities who end up in camps and temporary shelters on the Bangladeshi border. Humanitarian efforts, at least from an international front, run up against the problem of restricted access to the Rakhine, and many actors and stakeholders have turned instead to relief efforts in camps in places such as Cox Bazaar. Even neighboring states such as Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia have either remained silent or focused their attention on putting pressure on the Burmese government to deal with the refugee situation domestically (Ibrahim 2016a; Calamur 2017; Dali and Abdullah 2012).

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Far less attention has been given to the experiences of stateless and undocumented Rohingya refugees who end up in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Despite historically being an important destination and ‘sanctuary’ for persecuted Muslim minorities from neighboring Thailand, Philippines, and Cambodia, Malaysia has yet to formally ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not officially provide asylum— refugees are considered undocumented and illegal in the country. Temporary protection for groups such as the Karen, Chin, and Rohingya (as well as Syrian and Afghan refugees) exists in the form of the ‘UNHCR card,’ which prevents them from being arrested and held in detention in Malaysia. Yet, as the participants in this study as well as other scholars have highlighted, Malaysia represents something of a preferred destination for the most persecuted and marginalized Muslim minorities including the Rohingya, evidenced also by the presence of communities of such undocumented groups who have established a life in the country since the early 1980s. A very important rationale for the perception of Malaysia as a good sanctuary for refugees is the powerful discourse of Muslim solidarity and the plight of the ummah. In spite of the non-recognition of refugee status, the notion of Muslim solidarity provides for a different but equally important insurance against denial of acceptance and space—many Malay communities, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas, are motivated by the sense of responsibility and duty toward Muslim brothers and sisters facing persecution in other countries. The experiences of the Rohingya, for example, are almost always discussed in the same sentence as that of Palestinians—a historically more familiar and instantly recognized example of oppression of Muslims by foreign imperialists. Muslim solidarity of the ummah is ‘tempered by prevalent racism’ that is unique to Malaysian society. Because of the problematic construction of Rohingya as ‘illegal Bangladeshi immigrants,’ this population is often subjected to the racialized discrimination suffered by Bengali migrants in Malaysia. The latter group are predominantly temporary migrant workers who make up a substantial portion of the manual labor sectors in construction and services and are the primary victims of xenophobic and racist discourse in public discourse. The belief that the Rohingya are Bangladeshi migrants is not one that is exclusively in Burma but is prominent even among many Malaysians. In spite of this, existing studies of Rohingya experiences in Malaysia show that the belief and sense of shared responsibility and obligation

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among Muslim communities remain an extremely important justification for assisting the incorporation and assimilation of ethnic Muslim minorities. This manifests prominently at the grassroots level, through largely informal efforts of humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism that lie outside the purview of the state and international NGOs. Here, the role of local Malay activists and communities needs to be better understood if we are to grasp the reasons why hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have been able to find a relatively stable foothold in a country that does not recognize them or provide them formal protections. The role of Malay-Muslim humanitarianism and solidarity also helps inform the centrality of assimilation as a form of refugee incorporation in Malaysia. I invoke the notion of ‘making space’ to talk about informal forms of accommodating foreign Others through material, economic, and sociocultural, but distinctively apolitical, means. To help elucidate this notion of making space, it would be useful to clarify what is meant by informality and accommodation of Others. Informality here is a concept drawn from the fields of urban sociology and urban studies to refer to the material, economic, and political practices of people and communities that lie mostly outside the surveillance and jurisdiction of formal institutions of governance (Bayat 2010; Roy 2014; Ananya Roy and AlSayyad 2004; Caldeira 2001). Informality enables communities and groups to seek and secure resources that are critical to their everyday lives and their mobility, and can involve personal relationships, families, religious affiliations, and entrepreneurial endeavors that are either ignored or invisible in the realm of the formal (official institutions, laws, and enforcement). In the developing South, informal strategies have long proved essential for facilitating grassroots development when formal avenues and channels are either non-existent or insufficient (Simone and Pieterse 2017). Simone and Pieterse introduce the notion of the ‘makeshift’ to describe the continuous and unpredictably complex, seemingly incomprehensible, arrangements and practices that go into making everyday life possible among the poor and precarious in the South. This notion of the makeshift as a mode of informal life characterizes the experiences of the Rohingya in Malaysia well, along with the grounded and critically embedded forms of cosmopolitanism that allow for these communities to ‘disappear’ into the fabric of subaltern Malaysia. Subaltern life in Malaysia is strongly influenced by what Bayat refers to as ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’—‘the idea and practice of transcending self—at the various levels of individual, family, tribe, religion, ethnicity,

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community and nation—to associate with antagonistic others in everyday life.’ A more mundane, modest, and grounded cosmopolitanism that compels people with vast differences to engage with one another in a peaceful coexistence. As conversations and experiences interacting with fellow Malaysians from different ethnic and class backgrounds reveal (as well as the popular media discourse, online forums), feelings and attitudes towards migrants such as the Rohingya and the Bengali are by no means positive and tend to be laced with hate and prejudice, yet there is an acceptance and mutual acceptance of each other’s presence in spaces like these. By no means ideal, but certainly not overtly antagonistic either. The makeshift informality of life coupled with everyday cosmopolitanism among poorer and more precarious, but highly diverse, subaltern populations in urban Malaysia allow for the practices of making space for refugee communities such as the Rohingya. Members of the community are able to find homes and opportunities to work, to send their children to school and madrasahs, largely because of these interstitial pockets of informal life that are made available to them. These concepts help frame the following descriptions and narratives of Rohingya life in Malaysia.

The Pasar I learned about the pasar borong in Selayang recently—a wholesale market that is apparently now almost entirely staffed by Rohingya and other Burmese migrants. A group called UnRepresented KL, who are writers focused on narratives about marginalized and hidden lives in the city, published a piece on life at the pasar in April 2017—highlighting many of the daily experiences and life stories of the migrants who work there. It is estimated that the pasar is at the heart of a community of 20,000 Burmese (mostly Rohingya) refugees, who come to Selayang having heard of the opportunity to work in the market. Depending on who one listens to, there is also a strong belief that the community and the market itself are ‘guarded’ and under the protection of two major kongsi gelap (organized crime/syndicates) run by Burmese nationals. Reports of tensions and armed conflict between rival gangs, local and foreign, around the area are available. The pasar is massive. It is an important hub for local businesses, especially restaurants and grocery stores, where people would get their week’s supply of fresh meats and vegetables. The entire compound is an overwhelming and difficult space to be in, for anyone who is new

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and unused to the seemingly well-coordinated chaos. First thing that hits you is the smell—the pungent, eye-watering, and downright nauseating smell of butcheries and meat shops. In between the slaughtering of animals and the odor of fresh seafood, it is quite difficult to try and build up the courage to not walk out of the market. The compound itself is like a massive warehouse, but not fully covered. Rows and rows of tents and tables line the entire floor, with people noisily haggling and talking, while making their purchases. It is not clear at first sight, but upon walking around, listening, and watching the people who work there, it becomes quickly clear that the vast majority were fairly recent migrants from Burma. Many were indeed Rohingya, though it isn’t too clear whether they were recently arrived refugees or members of the surrounding communities who have been around in KL for longer. Walking around the pasar, it is hard not to notice people conversing and talking in Burmese, Thai, Chinese, Malay, and English. Most of the vendors were speaking Rohingya (Ruingga) to each other, though they were clearly cautious about speaking quietly and not being too obvious. Many would immediately switch to Malay with customers, mostly phrases and single words, but some would be fairly fluent in Bahasa Melayu. Conversations with customers would often be very brief, involving a mix of curt, brief verbal exchanges, followed by gestures toward vegetables, produce, and items that they wanted, which the workers would bundle and prepare quickly and efficiently. Many would already have items packaged for pickup, having put in their orders beforehand, which further reduces the amount of interactions between the workers and the customers. Language barriers were clearly there, but the people in the pasar seemed very much used to it and have found ways to go about their routines normally enough. These interactions reminded me of the type of ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ suggested by Asef Bayat (2013): ‘the idea and practice of transcending self—at the various levels of individual, family, tribe, religion, ethnicity, community and nation—to associate with antagonistic others in everyday life.’ A more mundane, modest, and grounded cosmopolitanism that compels people with vast differences to engage with one another in a peaceful coexistence. As conversations and experiences interacting with fellow Malaysians from different ethnic and class backgrounds reveal (as well as the popular media discourse, online forums), feelings and attitudes toward migrants such as the Rohingya and the Bengali are by no means positive and tend to be laced with hate and prejudice, yet there is an

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acceptance and mutual acceptance of each other’s presence in spaces like these. By no means ideal, but certainly not overtly antagonistic either.

Kongsi Gelap The pasar and the surrounding community, businesses and stalls, were all apparently under the protection of organized crime gangs, called kongsi gelap. The term is an old one, the word kongsi here referring to company in Chinese, and a reference to the old Chinese entrepreneurial initiatives that grew to become fairly powerful governing institutions around parts of the Malaya. Kongsi gelap loosely translates as a ‘dark company’ and is used in reference to the criminal and underground world of syndicates, mafiosi, and organized crime that operate around the city, usually involved in protection rackets, blackmail, the drug trade, and ‘scrap metal.’ Kongsi gelap are usually made up of members of specific ethnic groups, and tensions and turf wars manifest along racialized divisions. The Pasar Borong KL and the community of Rohingya refugees and migrants are claimed to be under the protection of major Burmese kongsi gelap who operate in the area. These groups are said to be well-armed and capable of providing ‘real protection,’ rather than empty threats, according to some of the business owners in the area—they don’t ‘mess around.’ Based on conversations with police officials, the presence of the Burmese kongsi gelap does deter many of the other local organized crime syndicates from taking advantage and harassing the Rohingya community, largely due to a sense of fear that the Burmese ‘aren’t afraid of killing and violence’ and are happy to resort to brutal tactics if needed. The community itself is governed by a number of ketua (chiefs) or kepala (heads)—usually men who act as go-betweens and leaders who speak on behalf of the community members. These leaders and go-betweens tend to be relatively wealthy and locally powerful, connected to the kongsi gelap as well as local authorities. The ketua and the kepala act as resources and networks for newly arrived refugees, who are seeking work and places to stay in KL. Many come here only vaguely aware of an area known as Selayang, with little knowledge of the specific forms of work and arrangements that they will be subjected to. The chiefs bridge the connections between local business owners, the crime-bosses, and local authorities—obviously, there is a great deal of profit to be made from the recruitment of impoverished and desperate refugee communities, even among fellow co-ethnics. Work at

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the pasar borong can be long, thankless, and wholly unpleasant, on top of being underpaid and exploited. But for the Rohingya refugees, this represents one of the better ways to integrate themselves into the local economy and to establish a sense of community away from their home. “My sister and I have been working here since July last year,” says Jahir, a young Rohingya man, who spoke Malay surprisingly well despite having only been here for such a short while. He and his younger sister are vegetable vendors. The line of six large plastic tables in front of them had bundles of fresh produce - spinach, cabbages, potatoes, rows and rows of chillies, onions, garlic and others. “we came here to Selayang, because another Rohingya person here in KL told us that there would be work and place to stay here, near the pasar. We met the (chief) and he helped set us up for work and a place to stay.” Jahir also explained that one of the local madrasah’s had an intense evening Malay language class for new Rohingya who arrived in the area, taught for free, which was how he had been able to pick up the language. His sister was currently going as well - though she did not speak much to me. Matthew, who regularly came to pick up groceries for his store in Cheras, explained that it was becoming a strange situation at times at the pasar. He had been doing his shopping here for more than 20 years. “It’s different now, very different. Almost overnight, you see the workers here went from being Indonesian and Malay to being Burmese. It’s okay, I guess, because I know where these people are coming from and we Malaysians need to be understanding. But it’s very strange, and hard to get used to it. It’s very hard to talk to most of them… I usually just put my orders directly through my friend who owns some of these stalls, and he is Chinese. I can just come here and pick up my orders. I think I spend much less time here now, because I used to know more people, sometimes I would have drinks with some old friends at the kopitiam that used to be across the road, but now it’s not there anymore. Plus the traffic to come here these days is so horrible, and finding parking is impossible, so everyone’s just ‘get in, get out’.” Mia, who sells local sweet drinks - air mata kucing, sirap, and watermelon juice, is a young Rohingya refugee, who looked to still be in her teens. Her stall was located close to the entrance of the pasar. She spoke broken Malay. “I’ve been here for more than one year. I came with my parents and brother and sister, and we take turns (tukar) working here. My parents also work here (pointing at the other end of the market). They sell vegetables.”

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“do you make the drinks yourself?” “No, my mother makes them in the morning (she indicates with her fingers, 4 am) and then they set up here, and I just work preparing in cups and the money (points to cash box).” “No school today?” She laughs, covering her face for a second, “school in the evening, learning Malay.” “Madrasah?” Mia nods.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ghost Town The town that surrounds the pasar is not that large, but it is densely populated. Walking along the alleyways and streets here, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that this was more of a halfway town than one that is lived in, established… permanent. It reminded me of some of the old ‘ghost’ towns that one could drive past along the highway going north. Except, unlike those, this was very much inhabited, by people who seemed to be ever on the move, ever only there as a temporary stop. One gets the sense, by spending time here and speaking with its inhabitants, that no one is ever planning on being here long. That everyone wanted to go on to better things, or at least that’s the hope. It shows. The streets are dirty, littered with trash and refuse, reeking of old food, urine, and sewage. The alleys were worse, with piles of cement and concrete and rubble lying by the side of broken-down buildings. The town was not by any means abandoned, however. It was, for all intents and purposes, vibrant with the activity and sounds of the predominantly Rohingya community. The pasar that was right in the middle of it was always bustling and busy, crowded, and noisy. Unlike the KotaRaya and Little Bangladesh area, though, this town did not feel like it was becoming established. There was no sense of permanence, or a more settled community emerging. It felt transitory. A stopping place. A town of halfway-houses filled with ghosts—people from a dead land who no longer had an identity they could safely call their own. It was Saturday morning, and I had decided to spend the day in the town, getting to know the people who lived there and the daily routines they go through. I had picked the day after Eid, Hari Raya, when things

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would be calmer around the city and less busy, giving a chance to see people engaging in more leisurely activities, in a less hectic time of day. Many people in KL, particularly the Malay families, would have likely traveled to their hometowns for the weekend—balik kampung . One of the first things I noticed was the number of people who were spending their time outside of the shophouses and buildings that lined the streets. Most of the shops were closed or abandoned, but the ones that were open tended to be restaurants, kopitiams, fruit shops, sundry stores, and warehouses for various goods. Many had workers—young Rohingya men—who were moving about with their work. Occasionally I would see a family, with small children who would be playing on the sidewalk. Two little girls, dressed in bright orange dresses and powder on their cheeks, popular among Rohingya girls and women, were chasing each other along the sidewalk, under the watchful eyes of their mother, who was sitting on the sidewalk behind a large cardboard box on which she prepared betel leaves to be sold. Most of the women and girls wore tanaka on their faces—the bright white and yellow markings on their cheeks and foreheads. Watching the young woman prepare the leaves was hypnotic. She sat with her back arched straight and would hold a bundle of leaves flat on one palm while using a long black brush to clean the leaves with some type of seasoning and adding flavors. She hardly moved, aside from her hands, and turned to make sure her children were not running too far away. She was surrounded by other people as well. Two other women, older, sat on the ground next to her, chatting to one another, and an elderly man sat across from them, with a mat laid out in front of him, on top of which were different, random trinkets and things such as cigarettes, incense, and what looked like individual condom packets, among other things I couldn’t identify. The people standing around here were waiting—for work, to travel. It took me a while to realize that they were day laborers, waiting to be called upon or hired for all sorts of random odd-jobs. Some would be picked up in groups by vans and trucks, and others would be called individually by phone. Some would be picked up by cabs and ‘Grab’ cars (similar to Uber) paid for by whoever is employing them. Some would wait for hours. Most of the people would be chatting with one another while waiting. Little Bangladesh was a lot similar years ago, when I first started my study, with mostly young Bengali men waiting outside for opportunities to work and earn their keep. Here, however, it was not just men who

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were waiting. There were clearly families here—spouses, parents, children, and not just migrant men. Along a street corner of the ghost town, I found an old-looking kopitiam restaurant run by a couple of elderly Chinese women and supervised by a portly middle-aged man wearing navy shorts and a singlet. The restaurant workers included two young women, who were doing the cleaning and serving. As I sat and ordered some kopi, the man walks to my table, with a grin on his face. “Eh, matcha, new around here? Looking for amoi (girls), is it?” I smile at him and shake my head, not really wanting to engage. It became immediately clear the restaurant was not the only business he was overseeing. “Don’t worry, matcha. Here you get good pussy, I guarantee. Lots of Burmese amoi, here… very pretty, very good, won’t talk back. And very cheap. You let me know, I can setup for you.” Before I was able to find a way to diplomatically refuse his offer, he had turned away to gesture at two young girls who were standing next to a staircase between the shop-lots. They both came over to the table and sat alongside me. “Ah, you pick la, matcha, or if you want both also can… these sarrkke (sexualized Tamil slur for girls) from Burma.. Guaranteed quality, and cheap.”

The two girls didn’t seem to understand fully what the Chinese man was saying, but they were aware of the expectations their pimp had of them. Both women tried to physically catch my attention, suggesting the things they would be happy to do. I could not be sure, but one of them looked young enough to be in secondary school. I explained to the man that I was just going to the pasar and was getting some coffee before going back, that I was thankful for his ‘generous’ offer but had to decline… more than a little nervous that he would take offense, which could lead to problems for myself. He laughed and told me, taking on the demeanor of a kind, patronizing uncle, that I shouldn’t be so shy, that I should ‘take whatever pussy I like, whenever I want, to be a proper man.’ “Indian guys are normally more aggressive, like real man. You should learn to be like that… you seem very smart, like someone who reads a lot. But, also, important to be a strong man… then only other Indian guys will respect you, no? You see la, there’s always a lot of this Indian boys who

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come here to have girls, and they don’t care, will fuck them whenever, wherever. Proper men, huh?”

Alarmed and more than a little angered by the unwanted lesson on how to be a proper Indian alpha male, delivered by an older Chinese pimp, I finished my coffee, paid, and left saying I had to return to the pasar. One of the girls followed behind me for a bit, catching me by the elbow, and pressed herself tightly against me, almost begging. She gestured toward the stairs that led to the upper floors of the shophouses, where many of them likely lived. I kept smiling as kindly as I could while extricating myself from her hands, surprisingly strong for someone who about half my size. ∗ ∗ ∗ This was around 11.30 am, in a relatively busy and quite public part of the town near the pasar. It was not something I had been expecting to see or experience during this time of day, especially when there would be so many families and children around. Waiting for work to materialize can be really boring, for many of the Rohingya men and women. The women usually kept themselves occupied by working on stitching and mending clothes or watching over children. The men would mostly stand in groups, chatting and keeping an eye out for trucks and vans that might be looking for extra help. One group was keeping themselves busy by knocking around and old, mostly deflated soccer ball. In spite of the heat and humidity, many of the Rohingya men wore old jeans and dark t-shirts, and did not seem to mind the heat at all. As I walked past some of the groups of people waiting around, they would ask me if I was looking for helpers and workers, saying that they would be able to help with any kind of manual work—repairs, painting, cleaning, and building. Work this weekend was hard to come by. It was a public holiday for raya, which is the time of year when most businesses would be shut and the city becomes quiet and sleepy even during the daytime. It’s not the best time for those desperate for work and rely on their daily pay for their everyday needs. Many knew that it would be quite difficult to find work on a day like this, yet here they were waiting on the sidewalks nonetheless.

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“We’ve got nothing else to do, anyway. We can work, so why not wait and hope someone comes to ask for our help?” said one of the men, who sat on the sidewalk, outside a sundry store, chewing on something that was probably betel. He was gaunt, but looked fairly young. “What kind of work do you normally do?” I ask him. “Anything, we all do different kinds of work, as long as it can pay. I’ve done construction, home repair, garden, cleaning parit (sewer)… many things. Sometimes the contractors come here to pick us up, then they won’t tell us for what until we reach the place, then we find out we have to do whatever they ask. Once we were sent to clean and re-paint a tall condo building, hanging by cable (indicates his waist and gestures that he was using a grapple). It was very scary also, I thought I was going to fall and die for sure. But we did it anyway. If you want my help with anything like that, I can do it for sure.” He introduced himself as Sulaiman, and we chatted about the community a bit. He was relatively new, having come from Arakan within the past year and a half, and his Malay was not very fluent.

∗ ∗ ∗ Jamil is an older man, in his fifties, who happens to be one of the ketua in this community of Rohingya migrants. He is an unassuming, but clearly well-respected person—most of the people in the food court close to the pasar were very deferential to him. I met Jamil while walking around the surrounding area and conversing with workers and people in the community. Jamil took an interest while listening in on a conversation with a vendor at the food stall and introduced himself to me as an elder in the community. Jamil was very polite and quite soft-spoken, though I was certain he was tremendously well-connected within the community and was relatively powerful. He dressed formally in a baju Melayu and songkok, a nod to the local Malay religious attire, along with an expensive-looking gold watch and a large Samsung smartphone. “How come you’re interested in Rohingya? Are you from an NGO?” was the first question he asks. I introduce myself and explain that it was for a study on how Rohingya refugees resettle and find work in Malaysia. I showed him my previous book, which seemed to impress him and make him more enthusiastic about sharing his thoughts. Jamil spoke near-perfect Malay, which made me struggle to keep up at times. “We are starting to get a lot of people from NGOs who like to come here and talk to the people. There’s a lot of international news

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on Rohingya refugees these days, isn’t there?” I nod, and he smiles. “Of course there is… so many of our people are being pushed and killed, what else can we do? It was bad back then, even when I left maybe 16-17 years ago, but the last two years has been worse. The worse I’ve ever seen, so many people leaving Arakan. So many end up all over the place. Have you been there?” “No, still haven’t had the chance. Are many of the people here newly arrived?” “Yes, absolutely. Maybe 60-80% of the Rohingya here came in the last two years, maybe even more. It’s very hard to keep track… I try to help them find work and place to stay too, sometimes I borrow money to help families get settle, as a small loan, but it’s hard to keep up because so many new ones are coming. I know the locals are not very happy too, because some of the migrants, I admit, come here and don’t know how to behave properly. I try to advise and warn them, to be mindful of where they are, to respect the locals cultures so they don’t get angry… I know we’re just guests here, and we’ll be treated well as long as we be good guests. Don’t you agree?” “It seems quite peaceful… I noticed most people and workers get along, and there’s no sign of problem or tensions. This is normal, yes?” “Yes, yes, very normal. Sometimes you have people arguing, small fights and quarrels. But most of the time, there’s really no problem. Most people in the community get it, they’re here because there’s not many places to go, they prioritize finding a place to stay and making a bit of income by working, so why would they want to be part of any trouble? Especially in Malaysia, where there’s plenty of opportunities to work and save money? It is better for us and everyone else if we simply be peaceful, work hard and stay out of people’s way. Actually, sometimes I feel all the attention on the Rohingya, from NGOs and the news, doesn’t really help at all. Brings too much attention on the community, which then suddenly becomes national news. I feel it might be better if we are ignored, and are allowed to live our own way.” “has there been new problems recently, because of all the attention” “Nothing too bad, but I’ll give you examples. We usually didn’t used to get many immigration raids, around here… maybe once in a while. But ever since the public became aware that there were Rohingya kongsi gelap organizations and that this pasar was full of people from Myanmar, we’ve had more immigration and RELA coming around here for spot-checks and raids. That’s why you see more penjaga (lookouts) around here now, they are the ones who keep watch and let everyone know in case there’s any potential raids. When that happens, you’ll see a lot of people, especially those without documents running to hide. But sometimes, we also get a

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lot of people from organizations, like UNHCR… they tend to be agents who come here asking if people have their refugee permits, and if not they will get people to register. But then sometimes these are also ‘fake’ agents, they get people to sign up and provide these IDs that are actually fake. People have to pay to get these permits, and they don’t know any better and are afraid so they get them anyway.” “How do people make do here? It must be hard getting used to life in a new city…language, culture…” “Of course, but then that’s not really a choice. The Rohingya who come here have to realize we’re in someone else’s home, we cannot expect to be too sombong (arrogant) or biadap (rude/entitled). We have to learn to deal with our suffering and pain, without making it a problem for someone else. We’re lucky, those of us coming to KL, because we can work, stay, and maybe even have a decent life… but we need to be very careful, very mindful, of not making problems. I always advise people that they should be strong in their faith as Muslims, be humble and learn to be like the Melayu (Malays), speak their language, learn their culture and respect that. It’s better if we do that, because as Rohingya we are not safe, but the better we learn to adapt to local culture, the better for our future.”

The Plight of the Rohingya Malaysia is seen as a better destination for the refugees, compared to Bangladesh and most of the other refugee destinations. It’s a land of opportunity and relative stability, one where Rohingya communities may not necessarily be received with open arms, but are not pushed away either, for the most part. Having said that, from a humanitarian perspective, many of the issues faced by this displaced population does apply still—the lack of recognition by the state which has yet to ratify the Convention on Refugees, really poor access to health care, formal education, and, just as concerning, the real possibility of losing their identities and culture due to the ways in which such communities are ‘integrated’ into the new society. The situation for the Rohingya refugees in Malaysia is unique and worth delving into. First, it is important to note that the influx of stateless and refugee populations from various parts of Burma into Malaysia is nothing new, even with regard to the Rohingya. As local and international scholars have highlighted, the sudden focus on the ‘crisis’ in Myanmar since 2015 has cast a very misleading light on the history of displacement and forced migration in the region. The Rohingya have been coming to

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Malaysia since the late 1980s, roughly since the time the Citizenship Act of 1982 went into force in Burma. This was largely an ‘invisible’ crisis, with very little attention given by the media and organizations, aside from some early reports by Human Rights Watch and the work done by groups like Tenaganita. Second, it has become very clear during my time in Malaysia working with several communities, and from examining the works done by other scholars, activists, journalists, and community organizers in Malaysia, that the experiences of the Rohingya cannot simply be seen through the humanitarian lens of ‘refugees,’ though that does formally encapsulate their formal status. The Rohingya are very much in the process of becoming a ‘ghost’ population, even in this new country that they proclaim as a ‘safe haven.’

Passing into (Subaltern) Silence Sonia Awale, a writer and journalist who works on migrant issues in Malaysia, recently wrote several groundbreaking pieces on the experiences of Rohingya communities. In some of her pieces, we see a different picture of the ‘refugee’ experience, in which people experience an informal assimilation into the host society, where they are implicitly pushed to give up upon their identities as Rohingya. This is achieved through the compulsion to prevent any lingering associations that they have to the Bengali community, which some members regard as a form of mockery. Awale’s writings and journalism reveal a desire to become ‘Malay‘ or Malaysian, among the Rohingya communities, particularly for those who were born here or have been staying here for a long time. Even at the cost of losing their own language and ways of life, many would opt for the language and cultural practices of the local Malay communities. ‘I’d give up my life it that means my children can become Malaysians,’ says Mumtaz, one of Awale’s informants.2 It’s a sentiment that I’ve come across regularly throughout my interactions with people in the communities. It reached a point where it became rather difficult and confusing to keep using the term Rohingya, as many don’t necessarily even use the term much in reference to themselves. The preference is to self-identify as Malay, as someone who is able to speak perfectly fluent Bahasa Melayu and adopt the cultural practices and 2 Awale, Sonia. “for a generation of Rohingya, Malaysia is their only home” Malaysiakini, January 16, 2016. https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/327130.

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lifestyles of working-class Malays. The ability to become Malay is also a strategic move to deflect unwanted attention, particularly against those who would seek to label them as Bangladeshi.

Informal Schooling, Becoming ‘Malay’ and Assimilation A group of volunteers who went to informal schools for Rohingya children in the Selayang area described the experience as one that left them deeply conflicted and challenged. In spite of being a signatory of the Conventions on the Rights of Children, which requires children born within the borders of a country to be given citizenship if they unable to do so within a year, many Rohingya who were born in Malaysia and grew up here are still identified as Myanmarese on their birth certificates and do not have citizenship. This creates the additional problem for the young, who as non-nationals are not eligible to register at public schools and cannot afford the expensive costs of going to private schools in Malaysia. Most refugees turn to the 128 or so estimated informal schools and learning centers around the country. Many of these are religious schools, organized near local mosques and surau, by community activists and more established Rohingya leaders. These schools are understaffed, under-funded, and stigmatized. Teachers are paid very little and overworked—often having to teach several different subjects to classes of students that are too large. The informal education helps provide a basic learning opportunity for the young, but they are deemed insufficient when it comes to helping children from the communities move on to higher education, as they are often barred from going to college or even secondary school due to lack of national IDs.

Encik Fairuz Encik Fairuz, one of the community elders of the Kampung Rohingya, in KL, is a kindly, diminutive man, in his sixties. He speaks fluent Malay and the occasional word in English. He enjoys smoking and chewing on betel, a habit that’s common among many Rohingya, but often seen as repulsive among local Malaysians. The smell of betel can be strong and hard to ignore. It turns one’s tongue and mouth orange, and it’s common to see people spitting the leaves out in public. Encik Fairuz is aware of the stigma attached to the practice—he only chews betel when

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he is at home or among friends, never in public. He makes sure to be respectable in public, which he deems to be important for his community and reputation. Encik Fairuz’s wife, Puan Jati, is an excellent cook. She has been learning how to prepare local kuih-muih (pastries and snacks) that she then sells to local restaurants and stalls. Her karipap daging (beef curry puffs) are a particular favorite of her husbands, as he recommends that I try one. We were sitting outside the pasar, at a food court nearby where Puan Jati works as a chef. He tells me they are both grandparents now, since their daughter recently had a son with her husband, another migrant from Bangladesh. A good man, Encik Fairuz tells me, willing and responsible, who works very hard. Encik Fairuz had wanted to meet me since the evening that I went to the surau to observe the tutoring session. He wanted to find out more about the book that I was writing and my interests in the Rohingya. He tells me that few people took any real interest in the community, though they sometimes would get social workers and NGO folk come to visit once in a while. “We get these agents who come by sometimes, wanting to see if anyone is newly arrived and in need of documents and refugee IDs… usually from UNHCR. We don’t get a lot of professors coming here to visit us. I don’t think anyone has written books about us (Rohingya). Why would anyone write books about us?” he laughs. “We’re just poor people, not famous, with a hard life… why would anyone want to read about us?” By chance, I happened to be carrying along my E-reader in the bag, and I was able to show the two major recent books on the Rohingya that were published - Francis Wade’s Myanmar Enemy Within and Azeem Ibrahim’s The Rohingyas. Encik Fairuz’s eyes lit up in surprise, as he tried to read the words on the reader, struggling and shaking his head due to difficulties reading in English. He shyly admits he didn’t understand what was written, and asked me what they were about. I explained that the books were about the struggles of the Rohingya in Burma, and the violence and expulsion that these communities had been experiencing over the years. Encik Fairuz looked solemn, thoughtful. He kept scrolling and touching the reader almost desperate to be able to read what was written. “Do you think there’s a Malay or Ruingga version of these books?”

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I replied that I didn’t know for sure, but I would be happy to check and find out, and if I can find copies, I’d be happy to give them to him. Encik Fairuz was particularly drawn to the cover of Wade’s book, which featured a male figure in Muslim attire with his face covered. “What does this word mean?” he asked, indicating “genocide“ on Ibrahim’s book. It took me a hard few moments to compose myself to try and explain the word, suddenly overcome with uncertainty. I tried. Encik Fairuz listened quietly. “They are trying to kill all of us?” he asked, finally. I hesitated and backtracked, trying to rephrase and be more precise. I suggested that it was not necessarily about killing everyone, but about making the Rohingya identity non-existent, by making it seem that there were no such people, only Bengali illegal immigrants. Encik Fairuz frowned, confusion clear on his face. “We’re just people too… if you tell us, we should be Burmese and not Rohingya, then that’s okay. We will do that. There’s no need to kill us…. We’re not illegal immigrants in Burma. We’re all born there, grew up there. But we’re hated. They call us animals, and say that we are a danger to them… These books, do they tell the truth? Are they trying to show what is really happening?” “It’s really difficult to say… but these authors are well respected, and they worked on the ground, trying to write about what they see and observe as actually happening. They are also historians, and they try to look back to see the history of the Rohingya community, to show that the Burmese government, the junta, the Buddhist fundamentalists… that they are wrong in what they do.” I tried. “Good. That’s good. So maybe these books can help show the truth. Good. Are you also writing about this?” I shook my head, and explained that my own work is about the Rohingya, and other migrants, who come to Malaysia in search of sanctuary and a new life. I had yet to go to Rakhine, but have some awareness of what was happening there. “So your book is about the migrants who are in Malaysia? Good… there’s so many people here. Much better, isn’t it?” “What do you mean?” “It’s much better to come to Malaysia, if you’re Rohingya. Here, people don’t mind who you are, as long as you’re peaceful and work hard. Here,

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they leave you alone most of the time, as long as you have the proper documents. Here, you can make money well, and live in better houses, and your children can be happy. This is a good country, much better than Burma. I’m sad to say that, about my own country, but it’s true. Here, they respect you if you’re a Muslim. It’s much better to try and be like the Melayu, they are peaceful, and they are strong as a rakyat (community). They want good things for the country, just like the elections shows. Also, they really care about the suffering of Muslims in other places.”

Steering the conversation to his own life and family, I came to learn that Encik Fairuz and Puan Jati had been living in Malaysia for over a decade, since 2007. They had initially left Burma to go to Pattani in Thailand, where they had relatives, but then came to realize that it was very difficult to find work and were left destitute after having to pay for their transportation. They had been traveling by bus and train, because flights were too expensive. Life in their old village had already become difficult—there were constant threats of violence and they would frequently get warnings about the military moving in, until eventually most people decided it would be better to try and leave. They were already aware of stories about villages being burned down or people being attacked and shot. Encik Fairuz was more fortunate than most—he had relatives and friends who lived in Thailand and Malaysia, who were strongly advising that they find their way to those countries rather than stay or go to Bangladesh. They had been the ones telling him that Malaysia had better opportunities, and that he would be able to work and have a home fairly quickly. Getting to Malaysia was very expensive, but they were able to find their way and could stay once they had successfully applied for refugee cards from the UNHCR in KL. Encik Fairuz was an experienced hand at cleaning and preparing seafood, and was quickly able to find work at the pasar, working for a local Malay seafood business owner who was looking for staff to work the tables at the fresh market. “The work was actually easier and so much better than what I was used to. Not as long hours - just 9-10 hours per day, and then I would have a lot of time to go home, to go to prayers, be with family. Puan Jati and our daughter were also able to find work here, so we became quite comfortable financially, and could rent a small but very nice home nearby (in the kampung). We’ve been living here since then, and I’ve also been seeing how many new people are coming from Burma. The younger families and people, they are always looking for work and place to stay, and I try

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to help them find work at the pasar. But these days it’s been getting a bit unpleasant as well. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s some tension between the gangs that are here. A lot of fight between young guys, over whose territory and who gets to collect protection money. Indian boys, but not like you, educated, smart. They are thugs, who ride around on motorbikes, carrying sticks and spend their time standing around, smoking and not doing anything productive…” “Do they ever threaten you?” “No, they don’t disturb us… mostly it’s between them and the Burma boys. But sometimes, I do worry about safety, for my daughter especially. She is still young, and you know how boys are. Sometimes they get rough and can’t be controlled, and I always tell my daughter to make sure she avoids them. There are a lot of stories about these Indian boys kidnapping young girls from here, or taking them as girlfriends and wives. I personally don’t know any of this happening, but it’s not uncommon to hear. And, I know, it’s definitely not all Indians. I actually know a lot of good Indian people who come to the market to buy groceries, and they are very friendly and peaceful. It’s just these boys…” “Have you ever experienced or seen trouble with Immigration or the police in this area?” “No, me? Never… I always just show my card when Immigration conducts raids. They leave you alone when you’re a verified refugee. But I have seen them chase and round up those without documents. Sometimes, when there’s a raid at the pasar, people would hear about it. Then, all of a sudden, you’ll see half the place become empty very quickly, because all the ones without legal documents will escape! And it would be right before the Immigration and police arrive to check for PATI (illegal immigrants).”

Mariam The increased numbers of people from Burma in the Pudu, Petaling, and Jalan Silang districts were hard to miss, three years after the last time I conducted my first period of fieldwork in the neighborhood informally named Little Bangladesh. There is understandable irony that this ‘Little Bangladesh’ immigrant community has also become a refuge of sorts for the Rohingya and other Burmese Muslim minorities who had been forced out of their homes in the past decade, but especially so in the last three years. The consequences of the ethnic cleansing and resultant refugee crisis could be felt even in this relatively small, poor, but bustling and lively community of migrants in the heart of old KL. The diversity and cosmopolitanism of this community have and continue to

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undergo dramatic shifts, but more importantly there is a powerful sense of communality now that feels even more pronounced. Walking and talking to people along Jalan Silang, the streets lined with numerous businesses and services catering to the Bangladeshi and Burmese communities, it is easy to notice how people were interacting with each other across ethnic and linguistic lines in peaceful, often very jovial ways. This applies to the scores of (mostly) Bengali men, as well as the Burmese men, women, and children who call this district their new home. Many of the businesses along Jalan Silang were catering primarily to the low-wage migrant clientele, especially those from the two countries. Bangladeshi flags and posters were very prominent, along with the use of Bengali language signage which was so much more prominent today than it was just three years ago (Muniandy 2015). Before 2014, the city hall (DBKL) had engaged in active removal and prohibition of signs that were in languages other than the four ‘national’ ones (English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil), mostly as a reaction against the use of what were considered foreign languages such as Bengali. It was more a reaction against the perceived ‘takeover’ of these districts by the working-class migrants from countries like Bangladesh and Burma. It was seen as a direct attack on the community that were beginning to set down social and economic roots through informal practices and networks, despite their formal status as ‘temporary foreign workers.’ In 2013, the Bengali community rallied together in a form of non-violent protest by tapping into their Muslim faith and conducting prayers on the streets of Jalan Silang, causing the roads to be blocked off in a display of migrant solidarity and brotherhood that marks one of the most powerful collective expressions by a subaltern group in Malaysia. To be visiting in 2018, it is fairly clear that the Bengali community has had relative success in establishing itself more firmly in this district. There are more businesses with Bengali names now, alongside banks and financial institutions from Bangladesh, beyond just those of remittance agents like Western Union and Prabhu. There were crowds of people everywhere in many of these stores, the vast majority being Bengali men. What was very different this time around was the vastly larger number of Burmese migrants, who were far more heterogenous in terms of age and gender, compared to the Bengali community. While the Bengali migrants largely come to Malaysia as part of bilateral agreements between Malaysia and Bangladesh (a scheme known as G2G) to serve in very

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specific sectors that only allow migrant men, the Burmese migrants here arrived under far less controlled and regulated conditions, and have done so as families rather than as individuals. Little Bangladesh—in the old heart of Kuala Lumpur—has become a center of communal life for groups of people the rest of the world views as largely separate—’economic migrants’ and refugees. Mariam works at a kiosk selling fruits in one of the many shops along Jalan Silang. When I met her, she had been busy in conversation with five young Bengali men, all of whom were trying to be flirtatious with her, commenting on her looks and taking turns inviting her to go ‘dating’ with them. Mariam didn’t seem to be perturbed or even annoyed by their advances and was joking along with them, telling them to ‘come back later’ or try another day. She seemed to be at ease, almost as if the whole situation was normal and routine. I noticed that the men and Mariam were all speaking in English and Malay—though none of them were Malaysian. The men would speak to each other in Bengali, which Mariam clearly did not understand. I introduced myself to her, and Mariam was curious about the work that I was doing, especially about the Rohingya. She was confused and hesitant, and thought that I was another foreigner looking to pay her for sex, but she agreed to speak about some of the questions that I had regarding her life. “can you tell me about how you came to Malaysia?” “I’m from Burma, from near Sittwe, with my two brothers and two sisters we came here because of the soldiers who pushed us out of our village. I don’t know what happened to my village, because we can’t go back and can’t contact anyone from there. My mother, father and my uncles all went to Bangladesh, but they asked us, the young ones, to try and go to Thailand or Malaysia. We have relatives who came to Malaysia long ago, they live in Kampung Melayu in Cheras, which is where we were trying to get to. They helped us come here by sending some money when we reached Thailand through an agent who got us on a bus to come to Malaysia. In Thailand, they didn’t want us anyway so they were okay just sending us to Malaysia.” “How long did that journey take you? From your village to come to KL?” “I don’t remember exactly, but it was maybe two weeks? 10 days? About that long…” “Were you able to get in touch with your parents and family who went to Bangladesh?”

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Mariam takes out her phone - a worn, used Samsung smartphone - and opened to share her message threads that she kept with her family. “See, we message sometimes, but they have hard time finding connection there, and so the messages don’t always go through. They are having a hard time, but they are happy that we are okay here, and always asks about how the children are doing. See…” she shows me photos of her family in what looked like a village camp. She explained that it was along the border of Bangladesh and Burma, where they were staying in a temporary camp. “Why didn’t they follow you to Malaysia? Since you have relatives here?” “They didn’t come with us, because we left first and they wanted to see if they could stay in the village and hope no trouble would happen there. But then they had no choice and had to go to Bangladesh… they actually wanted to come to Malaysia too.” “so how did you come to work here (in Little Bangladesh)?” “All my brothers and sisters are also here now, we came here two years ago… December 2016. My uncle who lives in Cheras told us that we can find work here easily because there are lots of Rohingya people here who find work and immigration and police won’t disturb us a lot. So we tried to come here and find work and a place to stay. My sisters and I are staying in a room here nearby, and my brothers are sharing a room with other men, also nearby. It was not actually easy to find a place to stay here, because my uncle gave us a bit of money to help us with the first week rent while we were looking for work. Then I managed to find work selling fruits here, for the Bengali man who owns the store… he pays me RM 400 every month to sit and take care of the fruit stall, which helps us pay the rent for the room.” “Do your siblings also work here?” “Yes, but different jobs. My oldest brother does a lot of cleaning and construction work around here” she says, pointing at several sites around us. “My younger brother works in Petaling Street (Chinatown), selling bags to tourists. Actually, we all make okay money now, but my sisters and I make the most, because we all do this work…” Mariam gestures with her hand indicating a handjob, “and also other things like that.” “Does that make more money for your sisters and yourself?” “Yes, of course. We don’t want to do it of course… We know its prohibited in Islam and shameful, but we’re not lucky people, we’re dirty and poor, so we can’t afford to choose. But this type of work lets us live and save money. All these men here, from Bangladesh, they are usually nice to us, and pay us a bit here, a bit there, for us to have fun with them, so after that we can already make a good collection. In a day, I get maybe 10, maybe 20, guys who want something. I charge only RM 5 or Rm 10

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for five minutes, so they are happy. With that money, it’s enough for us to buy daily food and then keep some money for savings.” “do you ever feel in danger?” “No, not here… sometimes the police or immigration would come but they usually leave us alone as long as we’re not causing trouble. I am scared for my family in Bangladesh, though. We all really just want to bring them here so they can be together. One of my sisters is having a baby… already 7 months, and she really wants our mother and auntie to be help be here, but so far we have to rely on ourselves. Luckily me and my sisters have helped with giving birth before so we can take care of her through that, but it should be done by the older people as well. We might go back to Cheras for a while when the baby comes. We don’t know who the father is for sure, because my sister had many customers, but once the baby comes out I’m sure it will look like them!” she laughs and points at the group of Bengali men who were now standing outside the shop on the sidewalk.

Schools Visiting the little school in Penang for Rohingya children was easier than I expected it to be. The school was not hard to find, a large threestory home located in the middle of a housing district somewhere on the island. It was in the late morning, and the children were busy playing and running around during their recess break. The place was a bit chaotic, though the teachers seemed to be in control, patiently gesturing and urging their kids to go into the play yard, cajoling the shy and quiet ones to go join. I was surprised by how young some of the children were—some were barely five or six, in tiny little school uniforms Malaysian school uniforms, to be certain. The boys were in dark blue pants and white shirts, while the girls were all in full white baju kurung and headscarves. The chalkwhite shoes that they all wore brought back memories of my own public school years, wearing the same uniforms as the boys, running around the schoolyard with friends, with teachers who would often yell at us for being late to class. The students here were active, playful, loud, and vibrant. Everything seemed so normal. Penang, according to the principal of the school, had over fifty such schools for refugee children, many of which were informal establishments. This particular one operated with NGO status, recognized and registered under the Malaysian government. It was one of the first on the island that I was able to visit, and one of the largest. It was run by six young teachers,

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local graduates who had decided to work as teachers for a while at the refugee school. The principal was a psychology graduate, whose training she suggested had not really prepared her for the work and tasks that were required to be able to run such a school, though this was mostly evidence of the humility with which she approached her work. It was very clear from the offset that running this school was a serious and challenging undertaking, one that likely takes up a lot of her time, along with that of her fellow teachers. Cik Mira, the headmistress, gave me a tour of the building, with the school, taking me up to the third floor where the upper-level students had their classes. The school only catered from levels 1–3, which corresponded to the 6- to 11-year-old age groups, based on average Malaysian schooling cohorts. This meant that students were divided, roughly, into four different cohorts based on their level of proficiency in Malay, English, Math, and Science. However, as Cik Mira pointed out, with the refugee children, it was not always easy to determine and place students based on their age groups, as there were many older students, for example—even those above the age of 12—who needed far more basic education and would often have to be placed in Level 1 or Level 2 classes. Sometimes, this became a problem between students, clearly, but it was a consequence of the unequal levels of education that students coming from Arakan have. Cik Mira spoke with me about the challenges of teaching in the school, particularly for the younger teachers who often struggle to get through the young children who have no familiarity with the local languages. While eventually they do learn to speak and are able to forge relationships with the adults, it often becomes an issue when volunteer teachers have to leave and are no longer at the school. They don’t have the capacity to replace the teachers quickly enough due to lack of volunteers which means that the full-time teachers may end up having to work extra hours just to keep up with the demands of the classes. This proves to be a burden very often, for the teachers and the headmistress herself, and is also detrimental to the children. Bonding with teachers is an important part of the education, especially for these children who don’t often get a chance to form strong, meaningful relationships with adults. Many come from families and backgrounds that are difficult but also absent, with parents who don’t have the time to commit to spending with children, aside from the bare minimum of feeding them and taking them to school. Very often, according to the headmistress, working closely with

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the teachers is what allows them to form healthy relationships with adults and not feel alienated. One big problem with the Rohingya children has to do with the way young girls are often taken out of school to be married off at very young ages. Sometimes, there have been cases of girls who were barely 11 or 12 who stop coming to school because their families had decided to offer them as brides, and they are then forced to live confined to homes and as child housewives. This happens often enough that it has become noted as a critical problem across the country, not just with the Rohingya but other impoverished and marginalized Muslim communities in the country. Cik Mira said that she had tried on several occasions to reach out to parents of young girls who stopped coming to school but they had been unresponsive, or in some cases even belligerent towards her about not interfering with their personal matters. Cik Mira felt that this was an issue that needed a much wider and concerted effort at consciousness raising among the communities, but this was also way beyond the capacities of schools like hers. She felt strongly that larger, more established institutions need to step in and start intervening with problems such as child marriage in the Rohingya and other refugee communities.

“All that is solid melts into air” For the Rohingya community in Malaysia, it is not just the reality of being forced off their homelands that they have to contend with, it is also the loss of dignity and humiliation of being viewed and treated as if they were nothing more than subhuman creatures in need of others’ pity and handme-downs. On top of this dehumanizing reality, the Rohingya refugees are quickly pushed into the informal labor sector, away from the view of the public, to become low-skill, exploitable, and disposable manual laborers, always subjected to the threat of raids and harassment. The ‘refugee’ experience in Malaysia provides an important case of how contemporary forced migration is not that different from older forms of slavery and indentured labor, where the mass displacement of communities from the poorest and most vulnerable of regions coincides— deliberately or not—with the expanding market for cheap, disenfranchised labor. The lens of a ‘refugee crisis’ often obscures this relationship between displacement and economic growth, because of shifting the discourse into that of humanitarianism.

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A Break to Breathe I need to catch my breath at times, metaphorically, literally. This… work?… It is not easy, obviously, but it often also feels like a special, unique, intimate gift, but one that takes a tremendous amount of self-steeling to be able to do. Resilience… detachment… But that’s not the truth. It’s not about being some ‘brave, rock-star of a researcher and writer’ going to some of the most troubling spaces of inhumanity to ‘study and understand the lives’ of the truly marginalized. I’m not doing the ‘good work’ of ‘bringing to light the suffering and plight of the subaltern’—and I most certainly don’t want to be associated with that narrative. That’s not why I walk around for hours in searing heat and humidity in KL and Penang, trying to make friends and connect with people who are different from me, from ‘us,’ whoever ‘we’ are. That’s not why I’ve been writing their stories as diligently and as frankly as I can. No, I don’t want this to be taken as another attempt to ‘educate’ those of us who are privileged about those who are disadvantaged. Fuck that. I’ve long since given up on the so-called progressive liberal glorification of ‘social justice,’ even from the most well-meaning of people, whose fighting talk about eliminating oppression, discrimination, and exploitation is increasingly sounding more like ever-repeating scripts for self-validation and performance of their own assumed identities. I’ve become increasingly numb toward these well-meaning but ultimately selfserving interests. Justice and inequality have taken on a much more terrifying reality for me; if the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, then it’s a justice that none of us human beings really deserve nor merit. Justice, after all, is fundamentally relative. To a woman, justice is about accounting for patriarchy; to a child of indentured servants and slaves, justice is about reparation and making whole; for the colonized, justice is about the reclaiming sovereignty; for queer communities, justice is about recognizing their rights and existence. But what about justice for the non-human? Against that particular historical and moral accounting, none of us have any real moral and ethical superiority, and as far as I’m concerned, forfeit any particular claim or right to justice we might have. What does justice look like to all the animals and plant life that have seen their habitats decimated, completely unable to represent themselves and stake a claim in any real way? What does justice look like for those creatures who are forced to live in urban

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environments that they never had any say in? How does humanity account for that? Our sense of justice only works so long as we retain the arbitrary belief that we’re the sole and ultimate source of morality. Otherwise, the whole thing crumbles very quickly, an illusion that represents one of the most frightening truths to confront. That, by our own moral reasonings and definitions of justice, none of us really have any right to make claims to anything. I do the work I do, these days, not out of some sense of moral outrage or desire for justice and change. I find myself doing it out of sheer need to gnaw and pick at the very real sense of guilt and shared responsibility that most of us choose to ignore for the sake of going on living our comfy, delusional lives. I’ve no interest in the label of being ‘dogooder’ or a ‘well-intentioned scholar activist,’ especially not in light of the horrible atrocities committed by the very people bestowed by those labels, under the guise of humanitarianism. I’ve every intention of taking every opportunity to irritate our collective consciences, force us to confront the uncomfortable truths of what we have done and continue to do, to lift the veil of ignorance and privilege that all of us—liberal, conservative, black, white, brown, everything else in between, queer, lesbian, gay, trans—depend on to go on justifying our own sense of outrage while conveniently disregarding our complicity. I do this work because I have always been struggling for more than a decade now, dealing with a persistent and profound sense of guilt. Not in some Biblical Christian sense, but in terms of being part of an uncontrollable machine (capitalism, neoliberalism, production, whatever) that we’re all part of whether we like it or not. We can complain and criticize all we want, but the fact is that we’re all enjoying the benefits one way or another, while others—human and non-human—are left to bear the cost. That guilt of knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop the world-eater, that just by merely turning on the tap, or drinking from a plastic cup, of driving a car, or taking a flight, I’m complicit in an act of profound injustice, renders me cold, numb. And I can’t stop that guilt, no matter how hard I try. I don’t know how others do it. So I stopped trying to find ways to get rid of the guilt. I don’t take up self-affirming little practices of being vegan, recycling or whatever other individualized, performative, self-oriented nonsense that really is just more placebo. No, the way I choose is to embrace this guilt and find ways to bring it out in others, in everyone. I want others to feel that

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remorse and guilt, every day, every time they see the face of someone they have disregarded, viewed as less or worthless. I want people to feel the same, near-crippling sense of sorrow and brokenness I feel when I see a stray animal standing by the roadside, trying to cross a highway. I want everyone else to feel the pain and wallow in guilt at the brokenness felt by the lonely young transgendered sex-worker, sitting in her room waiting endlessly for a phone call that never comes. I want us to feel the brokenness of being a parent forced to raise ones’ children in informal labor camps and settlements and in the jungles. I don’t do any of this thinking, ‘oh, maybe this might bring about change for the better, maybe there’s a better world that I can help make.’ No, I stopped believing that. Why? Not because I’m a cynic, but because my understanding of human history doesn’t permit me to, doesn’t give me the legitimacy to think such a better world is possible. Here’s why: because these stories I document and write about, stories of refugees, migrants, ghosts… they are nothing new. They are tropes and narratives that have repeated throughout human history and will never go away. Because our history is one of exploitation and dispossession and profiteering out of the misery and brokenness of Others. I think these stories will always follow us. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to just ignore them and accept the inevitable. No, for as long as I can, I intend to keep picking at the scabs that hideaway our shared responsibility. I will keep documenting these stories as a way to keep us all mindful that we’re all part of the same system of exploitation, that none of us with the privilege of speaking and representing ourselves have any real right to claim injustices… not in the face of the ghosts among us. Perhaps this is why I feel strongly about the notion of ghosts, to understand and embrace these stories as forms of hauntings. Hauntings that remind us lucky enough to be able to go to sleep not having to worry about our next meal, our kid’s education and health, or even when and if we’ll ever be able to see our family and friends again—hauntings that remind us that those privileges we have are built upon the loss, dispossession, and exploitation of our kinfolk, human and non-human. For the homes and places of work and leisure we enjoy, there are ruins and rubbles upon which castaway life struggles to find new roots upon. Life that can only continue as ghosts and specters.

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The only reason we say what we say about you is because we can do so without ever needing to listen to what you have to say. The only reason we have the nerve to speak this way of you is because we can hide behind our walls of privilege and never have to look in your eyes. The only reason we speak this way of you is because we’ve taken away your chance to defend yourself, to speak with your own voice. The only reason we can speak this way of you is because you cannot speak back to us…

References Azis, Avyanthi. 2014. Urban Refugees in a Graduated Sovereignty: The Experiences of the Stateless Rohingya in the Klang Valley. Citizenship Studies 18 (8): 839–854. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2014.964546. Bayat, Asef. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bayat, Asef. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Midlle East, 2nd ed. Stanford University Press. Calamur, Krishnadev. 2017. The Misunderstood Roots of Burma’s Rohingya Crisis. The Atlantic, September 25. https://www.theatlantic.com/internati onal/archive/2017/09/rohingyas-burma/540513/. Caldeira, Teresa P.R. 2001. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo, 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dali, Azharudin Mohamed, and Azlinariah Abdullah. 2012. Air mata kesengsaraan Rohingya: identiti, penindasan dan pelarian. Kuala Lumpur: Inteam Publishing. Ibrahim, Azeem. 2016a. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016b. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide, 1st ed. London: Hurst. Milton, Abul Hasnat, Mijanur Rahman, Sumaira Hussain, Charulata Jindal, Sushmita Choudhury, Shahnaz Akter, Shahana Ferdousi, Tafzila Akter Mouly, John Hall, and Jimmy T. Efird. 2017. Trapped in Statelessness: Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14 (8): 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14080942. Muniandy, Parthiban. 2015. Informality and the Politics of Temporariness: Ethnic Migrant Economies in Little Bangladesh and Little Burma in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. International Sociology 30 (6). Noor, Farish A. 2002. The Other Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfishbooks. Roy, Arundhati. 2014. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.

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Roy, Ananya, and Nezar AlSayyad. 2004. Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lanham, MD; Berkeley, CA: Lexington Books ; Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California at Berkeley. Simone, AbdouMaliq, and Edgar Pieterse. 2017. New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times, 1st ed. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.

CHAPTER 4

Transitory States: Ghosts in the Shadows

Masha Whiskey bottles. Glasses half-filled with Coke and cheap whiskey, laying on the table, ashtrays and cigarettes. I remember coughing several times, trying not to let the fumes and smoke irritate my very drowsy eyes too much. I try to listen as best I can, not because Masha’s words don’t matter to me, but because I’ve been surviving on less than three hours of sleep for the past three days. But I listen anyway, intent on remembering each word, Intent on remembering every bit of this space, of her story, her anger. If this means anything at all to Masha, to be able to tell me a bit of herself, in a small way, then so be it. I remember the cold stare, the distant gaze as she spoke, soften by the sad, but proud, smile whenever she talked about her little girl. The little girl sleeping in her room, having completed her homework for school, after a dinner of French Fries and fishball soup. The little girl who sat by the living window room to watch for her rodent neighbors who lived below the flat apartment. They had been given names, her adopted pets. That was heartbreaking. ∗ ∗ ∗ Masha has been living in Penang Island for a bit more than six years. She had come here from Moscow to work as a financial manager who worked © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_4

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remotely for a multinational investment firm. It had been good pay, and stable. Masha brought her daughter with her, who was only two at the time, after separating from her husband. She had wanted to leave Moscow and find a new life and moving to Malaysia offered an unusual chance to start afresh. She knew girlfriends who had moved to Penang with their husbands, and who seemed to be living much happier lives there. With her job, Masha had thought things would work out well and she would be able to take care of little Rina on her own. Masha was the victim of transnational retrenchment and disruptions, which led to her losing her job and being stranded in Penang, having signed a lease for an apartment, with her daughter halfway through private school with expensive tuition. Masha spiraled into depression and alcoholism, and her boyfriend at the time—a Chinese Malaysian man—drove into her car as she was trying to drive away from his place, leading to severe injuries and a massive hospital bill. She had been terrified for herself and her daughter, but Mattie, her young Ukrainian friend, had stepped into take care of Rina while Masha recuperated. ∗ ∗ ∗ In between the puffs of smoke, and the sips from the whiskey glass, Masha tells me about her love for driving, how she could drive in the worst conditions, even while drunk and drugged up. She tells me about driving in Moscow in the dead of winter, on icy roads, and how she would never even be nervous and was always perfect. Then she tells me about feeling a sideways smash in her small city car in Penang, of spinning uncontrollably just before she slammed into tree. Masha didn’t think she would live, but still managed to get back on to her own feet and pulled herself out of the car, oblivious to the pain and in total shock. She tells me she only remembered needing to call Mattie, to remind her to make sure Rina eats her dinner. Following her accident, Masha spiraled further downward. Her boyfriend had offered to pay for her medical bills and helped her while she tried to find a new job. But that didn’t last, and Masha developed an addiction to drugs through a bartending gig she had taken on for a brief while. Ecstasy pills. It wasn’t enough money to survive, but at least the drugs were free, she explained, so the temptation became too strong. The ‘pill’ as both Masha and Mattie called it.

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“It lets you escape your body, for a few hours. You are not here. You don’t have to feel anything. But you have to be careful, because you might bite your own cheek, and your teeth always chatter. But you escape. You just lie back on your bed and leave.” The addiction, and the need for money to pay for Rina’s tuition and their daily needs, pushed Masha to become a call-girl, to go ‘in service’ as the two women described. It turned out to be good money, but the demands were brutal. Masha worked almost every night between 9 pm and 5 am, driving around the island to provide single-hour services and overnight ones to tourists and locals alike. Rina believes her mother works at night because she is a bartender and bars are only open at night. Mattie stays with Rina when Masha is out to work, at least most of the time. As she puffs away at her cigarette, I watch quietly as Masha speaks. My sleep-deprived mind wanders momentarily to a different moment, a different time, a different room, where a middle-aged, frail-looking Indian woman sits by the edge of a bathroom, on a small wooden stool, and rinses clothes. The woman is a nanny and babysitter for a family in KL, where she had been working for more than ten years, away from her two children in India. I remember all the times she would talk about her children’s schooling experiences, how she always checks on their work, gives them encouragement to be successful. It isn’t lost on me that here Masha is sitting next to me, with all the troubles of her own work, yet she mostly just wants to talk about Rina’s school, about her spelling contests and her hopes to go to the district level competitions. Masha’s addiction is a problem, and she is fully aware of it. She has tried to stop, but a combination of work-related anxiety attacks and her alcoholism, as well as problems with relationships, have made it extremely challenging for her to resist taking the ‘pill.’ Sometimes she would come home from different clients at 5 am in the morning and would still be feeling the effects of having taken the pill. Sometimes, it would be the entire bottle of cheap whiskey that she would down by mixing Coca-Cola. Masha tries hard to keep this side of her away from Rina and depends heavily upon Mattie during these moments to keep the child occupied. She shows me the pill, pulling it out of a metal breath mint container kept inside her purse. It is pale blue, and unmarked. It looked so … harmless. It is a party pill, Misha explains, something to be shared in groups of friends, to music, or to relax. It can appear to transport a person away from their bodies. ‘We take this sometimes, before meeting some clients, because it’s the only way you can get through. I have clients who I can’t

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stand to touch me even, let alone have sex with, so this is the way I do it. When on the pill, you still make sounds like you’re in pleasure, and the guy believes you are there with him. But you’re not. It’s not the best thing in the world, but it helps you get through. But it also takes a while to go away, so you have to wait, and wait, until it’s okay to drive home. By that time, I have to hope that the client is already asleep…’ Masha’s past life in Moscow was worlds apart from her current one. Born to relatively privileged civil servants, she was able to get educated, in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union and secured enough capital to be able to find a stable, well-paying job in banking. She fell in love and married a Russian man who worked at a factory, thinking that she would eventually be able to support a family. They bought a small flat in the city and had Rina. But the relationship ended abruptly after Masha discovered her then husband had been having affairs constantly through their relationship. She didn’t want Rina to be part of that, so decided to leave, thinking that she had enough money to be financially independent with her daughter. Putting Rina through school was a difficult challenge, but Masha refused to bargain with her daughter’s future. She wanted to make sure Rina could go to a good private school, no matter the cost. At first, with her income, this proved relatively easy—even the RM 8000 per term fees was not that big of a problem. But after losing her job, this suddenly became a massive burden. Masha did not want to move Rina out of the school where she had found good friends, and teachers who were very good. And as far as good private schools went on the island, they were not spoilt for choice. Going ‘in-service’ proved relatively lucrative enough that it was still possible for her to pay the rent, food, nanny, and Rina’s tuition. This started changing, however, as Masha’s addiction and alcoholism got worse, and her anxiety and stress with her work as an escort began to take a toll on her mental health. As part of her need to attract clients, Masha subjects herself to painful levels of starvation, heavy smoking and fitness regimes to retain her body shape, claiming that she cannot afford to put on even a single extra kilogram as clients did not want fat girls. She is angry, constantly, about her appearance, and is frustrated at the lines on her face. She feels she is wasting too much money on cosmetics just to try to find some way to reduce the signs of her age, in fear of the ramifications on her income and appeal to clients.

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“I have clients… regulars… who would always tell me how much they like the way I look, that I’m so much thinner than the local girls, the Thai prostitutes… and they would always remind me that I need to make sure I maintain my shape. I know that it’s what makes me appealing to them and why they keep coming back, so what else can I do but make sure that I don’t change. But, I know I’m not young, but I’m still like this, and I’m still able to make money in service, so I think I’m doing a good job.” Late in the evening, one day, as Mattie and I have a conversation sitting in the dining room, I noticed the way Masha stared off into distance standing in the kitchen with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette between her fingers. She sits down on the couch to watch a soccer game, but before long her cigarette had fallen on the floor and she was asleep, feet awkwardly dangling over the couch. Mattie gets up to help Masha to her bedroom, and cleans up the floor where she had left her glass and cigarette. Masha mumbles something, almost angrily, in another language, and Mattie simply says yes, as she leads her away.

Irina Irina’s story was one of being stuck between three very unpleasant prospects—becoming further entrapped in the network of sex-work controlled by organized crime, risk getting exposed to her family and community, or losing her autonomy and independence offered by her work. She feels that freelance escort services was the best way for her to make a living and save up for her future plans—because of her visa status, she had no legal way to work and the odd-jobs that she had been doing were too low-paying to even help her get through basic necessities for the week. This work, while incredibly unpredictable and rife with risks, allowed her to make significantly more amounts of money, at least until the past week, when the problems with the agent began. As has been the case often lately, it is very late and I am fighting drowsiness. At least it was not warm as it usually was during the day. Irina and I sit at on rattan chairs outside one of the quieter bars in the town center, a place run by a group of young Nigerian expatriates. Irina was taking a break from working today—an indefinite one as she continues to take stock of things that have been going on in her life that is causing a fair few bit of problems. “No clients today. No clients yesterday. I don’t think I want any clients for the whole week… but I still need to find a way to make money,” she explains, exasperated. “I checked the phone, and there are less than five messages today (from potential clients)… normally, there’s at least twenty

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or thirty every day, but why only five today?” she asks, mostly to herself I believe. “Look!” she hands me her phone, showing the online ad on which her details and services were posted, “the ad is still posted close to the top of the (advertising) website, so I don’t know what the problem is. I’m scared there’s something else…” “Your agent?” I ask. She nods. “I don’t know how, but I think so. He has connections, to the police, to all the other agents, to the other guys who are bigger in the business (prostitution syndicates), so I’m afraid that he is doing something else to make problems for me. I don’t know… maybe he is posting something or telling clients that I am diseased or crazy…”

∗ ∗ ∗ Irina is from Russia and has been working as a freelance escort, or ‘girl-inservice’ as she describes herself, in KL for less than four months. She had been working odd-jobs in hotel management and as a nanny for a year in Malaysia having come to the country as a dependent on her father’s work visa, but following his demotion and financial struggles, she’d had to find alternative ways of making ends meet and be independent. An older friend, based in KL, introduced her to an ‘agent’ who could design ads online for women who wanted to work as freelance escorts. As Irina explained, “This guy would ask for some information, and some pictures without our faces if we prefer, and he would create the post for us for this website that people go to find service girls in KL. He then makes the profiles appear always on the top five posts every day if you pay him regularly. I would pay RM 300 every week so that he keeps my profile near the top of the website. And I already paid him this week, and the post is there, but all of a sudden the number of calls and messages I get have dropped.” “You think it’s because you refused to meet with him?” “Yes! Of course! Why else? But I don’t want to meet him! I’ve never met him and it’s scary for me. My friend is out of the country for holiday and usually she is the one who talks to him, not me. Why does he want to meet with me alone and so urgently? I think it’s very dangerous… but at the same time, I feel like there’s no choice and I will be in trouble even if I don’t meet him.” Irina’s dilemma has to do with a recent series of messages she had received from the agent who had asked to meet with her in person out of the blue. She had until now only had dealings with him via text messages

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through Whatsapp, and only made payments through online accounts. Irina had some sense, from conversations with her Russian friend, that the man had deeper connections beyond just being a profile page designer— the suspicion was that he also ran an escort agency and was looking to recruit more girls to work under him. Irina was certain that he was also connected to broader prostitution rings in KL and beyond. “He is a local Chinese guy, but he is married to a Russian woman. We always suspect that they are not really married but are working together, and she recruits European girls to work for the agency. My friend told me that they are having troubles and separating, so now he wants to start his own agency and recruit his own girls to work in service.” “You think he’s interested in recruiting you?” “I don’t know… I’m also scared that he might want to do something worse, like kidnap me and force me to work in a brothel or something like that. I worry because he might be working for these Chinese crime gangs, the ones that have connections with the police… if I get trapped in any of that, then no one can come save me. I’ll die for sure.” Irina was a heavy smoker, and she got through her packet of Marlboros at an alarming rate. But she hardly touched the food and glass of whiskey in front of her. She had a fixedly cold gaze and frown on her face, most of the time that we spoke. The rare times I noticed that her laugh and smile was when she spoke of her favorite hobby—drawing portraits for her friends and family. Her family was a major part of her life, and the source of one of her biggest fears. Irina is constantly worried about the prospect of her family, her father in particular, finding out about her work as an escort. “The Russian community is quite close to each other here. It’s small, but a lot of us live and work in the same places and for the same companies. Father and his colleagues always talk to each other, and their wives and girlfriends are all friends, so when someone hears a story or finds out about a Russian girl working in service, they would immediately start calling each other. My mother has a lot of friends here who are constantly in contact with, so she would definitely find out if one of them knows about me. And Father, I know how he would react, he will not want to see me as daughter anymore and will toss me out.” “He would be that harsh?” “Yes! Because for us (Russians), we don’t see this as a type of work, like you do. It is still seen as a sign of stupidity and bad behavior. To them, I am just a slut, not smart enough to work as anything else. Father always looks at girls in service as people who should be put in asylums or prisons, the same as lesbian and gay people…” “What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely surprised by the comparison.

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“To father, we’re all just creatures. Some years ago, when I was younger, I was taking a public speaking class, where the teacher would ask us to write a speech on any topic of our choice. So, because at the time I had friends back in my home who were really suffering from discrimination and bad things as members of LGBT community, I decided to write my speech about that community. Father would drive me to this class every week, and I would practice the speech in the car while on the way. Then, when he heard me practicing this one, he became angry, and asked me why I would write such a thing. He said that I was confused and getting bad influence from ‘animals’… he said that people like this are bad for society and should be locked up or sent to mental hospital. If I ever do decide to start a family with a woman, then I must break my relationship with father because he will never accept it. It will be the same if he finds out about my work. He won’t come to help me, he will throw me out and not think of me as a daughter anymore.” Irina stubs out the last of her cigarettes and looks glumly at the empty packet. “would you mind if I go to 7-11 to buy more cigarettes?” “Of course!” One of the servers who had been bringing us food and drinks was a Pakistani man who moonlights as a bartender here. We knew each other from prior conversations, though he didn’t know much about why I was here chatting with Irina. When he saw her leave, he came up to our table with a knowing smile. “Brother, didn’t realize you had a liking for white European girls! But, I have to ask, you do know she’s probably very expensive, right? You’re a friend, so I feel I should just warn you about that…” I smiled back at him, “Thanks for the advise. She’s not working, we’re just friends catching up.”

∗ ∗ ∗ Irina returned from the store within minutes. She walked hurriedly, frequently glancing around somewhat suspiciously, as if to make sure there weren’t anyone who might recognize her in the vicinity. She did stand out, quite literally, even among the late night KL tourist crowd. Irina was very tall and fairer than most other white Western people there, so I could understand why she might be feeling self-conscious. Eyes followed her everywhere, noticeable even from where I was seated. Her nervous behavior felt at odds with her chosen work as an escort, though this was likely due to her being very circumstances and inexperience.

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“This agent, has he threatened you for saying no to the meeting with him?” “No, but he’s been trying to ask me when I can meet, as soon as possible. I’m worried that he might try to (looks up something on her phone, a translati) blackmail me? Yes, I’m worried he might do that. He might tell his Russian wife about me, and then she might tell other Russians and it will go to my father or mother.” Irina lights a cigarette from the new packet and immediately draws a relieved puff from it. “I’m sorry for the smoking. I cannot… function without it.” “It’s okay. I understand.” “I wish I could spend more of the nights like this… just talking. No worrying about phone messages. No worrying about creepy pervert clients who try to make me do weird, painful things. But I also can’t afford to not make money, if I want to be able to go home and start my programming training. I don’t want to work tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after that, but each night that I don’t work I have to find some other way to make the money. I have to find some other way to make the money. But, I don’t care now. I just like sitting here and talking.”

∗ ∗ ∗ Irina’s story was one of being stuck between three very unpleasant prospects—becoming further entrapped in the network of sex-work controlled by organized crime, risk getting exposed to her family and community, or losing her autonomy and independence offered by her work. She feels that freelance escort services was the best way for her to make a living and save up for her future plans—because of her visa status, she had no legal way to work and the odd-jobs that she had been doing were too low-paying to even help her get through basic necessities for the week. This work, while incredibly unpredictable and rife with risks, allowed her to make significantly more amounts of money, at least until the past week, when the problems with the agent began.

Sharon I met Sharon while writing my notes sitting at a pub in Changkat in the early afternoon of Thursday, a little unexpectedly but also unsurprising as I had chosen the spot to work that is often frequented by expatriates, tourists and local party-goers alike. I was surprised because it was at a time of day when the places had barely opened and there were virtually

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no other customers around—it was a nice time and place for me to sit and catch up on work. Having said that, this was also a place where escorts and those offering sex-work would be able to find their clientele easily. Sharon is a Russian native of Moscow, who had traveled to KL for the first time for a period of two months. She works as an ‘outcall’ and ‘in-call’ escort, providing services for foreign and local customers alike. She was in her fifties and said that she had traveled and worked in many different countries, but mostly in Europe. This included Italy, Croatia, Germany, Spain, UK, Portugal, and Czech Republic, though this was her first time in Asia. When Sharon walked up to me, she had asked if I would be interested in companionship—I convinced her to join me for lunch and conversation, after sharing a bit of my writing. I had taken to carrying along a copy of Politics of Temporary these days, as sharing the book seems to have a positive effect on getting potential informants to agree to being interviewed, or just having a conversation without the expectation of solicitation. My compensation for Sharon’s time came in the form of cocktails and a lunch, which she was very happy for as it was ‘very slow time of day with no clients,’ as she describes. Sharon’s English was not the best—her native tongue was Russian, which I did not speak at all. We managed to stumble along with the conversation, which was mostly focused on her stories of other countries, the people she meets, and her 10-year-old son back in Moscow. Sharon was married once, and separated shortly following the birth of her son, an event that had a major influence on her subsequent life trajectory into transnational sex-work and escort services. “I was a nurse back in Moscow, before my son was born. We were married for three years, then the baby came, but it was not something my husband wanted. He didn’t want to help with taking care of the baby and was more interested in sex and a free life (of no family responsibility). He said it’s better for him to leave, so we separated and I kept Peter (the child). We stay with my father in Moscow, because I cannot afford to take care of Peter and a home on my own, not with a job as a nurse. It’s too little, and very hard work, so I always felt tired and unable to give enough for Peter. My father helps, but he is old and doesn’t have a lot of money, and in Russia it is becoming harder for people to earn money, unless you invest or buy property, which of course we can’t.” “How did you decide to travel abroad for work?” “A friend of mine from nursing, had gone and worked in different countries before me, and she told me when she came back to Moscow

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that there is a very good money that we can make in this line of work. She is younger than me, maybe 42-42, and more beautiful, so I told her she is lucky and I’m not. I thought that I can’t do the work like her, but she said that I should try and will be surprised. I didn’t want to but then it was pressure… to pay for bills, pay for food, pay for Peter, so no choice, I borrowed money from people and went to Italy. Venezia. Do you know?” “Yes, Venice… I’ve not been there.” “Very pretty, I had never been. You should go visit. But there, I started working and made good money, and then used a bit of that money to go to Munich, and there it was also good. Lots of good money because of clients there. Then I went to Portugal, Croatia and Czech Republic. All was good, I could send money back to my father and for Peter, and also pay back money I borrowed. I am lucky because it was family and friends who borrowed the money, so no one charged interest and I can pay back easily.” “What brought you to Asia and KL?” “The same friend who suggested it, she also came here and wanted to travel together. We found out that Russian girls can make much more money here in Malaysia, because it’s considered rich country with a lot of rich tourists and locals who like Russian girls. Even old Russian girls,” she laughs pointing at herself. “It’s true. I have met more people here in one month than in Germany and Italy. Different people. Chinese, Australian, American, Malay… and also a lot of Indians, like you. Some are good, some are not good also. But I only see the good side because it’s a quick arrangement, so I don’t worry. For me, it’s not a problem.” “Are you looking to go home after Malaysia?” “Yes, back to Moscow. I want to see my son and father because it’s been very long since last time. I don’t like being away from Peter for so long. He doesn’t know what I do, of course, but he always asks why I travel. I always tell him it’s to do business so we can live well in Russia, and sometimes he says he want to follow me. All the time I leave actually, and I feel very sad. He is 10 now, and getting older, so he’s not too sad anymore and is getting more … used to me going away.” Sharon lights a cigarette, before realizing she forgot to ask me. I told her it was okay, and she began taking deep puffs and blowing into the hot and humid air of the afternoon. She tended to look away a lot, constantly surveying the other pubs and clubs around us to see who were there. She momentarily noticed the word document I had open on my laptop, and asked if I had been writing stories about people like herself. “No, it’s actually stories of men who work in restaurants and stores, from India. I’ve never written about or met a Russian migrant like yourself before.”

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“Oh, really? Why not? You don’t write about Russian girls? Only guys?” “No, just because I’ve yet to meet and talk to anyone from Russia. Of course, I would like to write, if there are people who share their stories.” “Why do you write these stories? Who will read?” “I don’t know actually… but I think they are important stories to write. Not many write stories about migrants, about people who travel and work in different countries. So I want to do that.”

Sarika On a hot and extremely humid Friday afternoon, when the calls for prayer fill the air, Jalan Alor and Changkat become slightly less crowded and busy than usual. Not many people walk outside during this hour, and prefer to use the covered sidewalks and use public transportation to get around. There is the occasional backpacker, or slightly braver (or desperate) local that walks around here. The women who occupy the sidewalks, inviting people to come in for massages with pamphlets and cards, look bored and more than a little annoyed at the having to be there in the heat. At this hour, they are also more aggressive with trying to invite customers. The short stretch connecting Changkat and Jalan Alor is lined almost exclusively with massage parlors, except for the occasional budget hotel or convenience store. Each parlor would have about 7–10 women (and sometimes a couple of men) who sit or stand outside extending invitations. I chose this particular time of day to visit the area knowing it would be quieter, and it would offer the chance for me to see what the everyday lives of the workers were like outside of the really busy times. The workers were all migrants, women from different countries—Vietnam, Hong Kong, Philippines, Burma, and Thailand are all represented. There were also a small number of women from India and Singapore. I knew from past experience that the workers become more aggressive during the slow period, but I was still not prepared for the barrage of pushing, shoving, and pulling that took place as at least four or five women would crowd anyone who happens to walk past, outbidding each other, forcibly pulling people to try and get them to enter the parlors, while pushing the others away. This seems to be a normal practice—they would be restrained with those who looked like tourists (read: White and European) but would be pushy with everyone else. The older women would often curse vulgarities at their younger subordinates for not trying

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hard enough, and would not be afraid to place themselves in front of pedestrians to block off their paths. More than once, I would hear the person whose advances I rejected mutter an expletive in either Chinese or Vietnamese at me—I decided it was an amusing game to keep count of the number of times I got referred to as ‘cheap/brown/monkey’ or variations of such. My record for a day was 16. The women of course were not directly trying to be rude to me—they were largely unaware that I could understand those phrases in the languages they spoke. Walking into one of these parlors can be an experience. Not unpleasant by any means, but certainly unusual. On an uncrowded day like this, when most of the places were empty aside from a one or two customers, there would be mostly workers sitting and chatting with one another, having their meals or sipping on cold drinks. Many of these parlors use heavy aromas meant to relax their clientele—a mix of incense and candles, as well as other aromatherapy instruments. They would be decorated with primarily Thai or Balinese imagery and aesthetics, to evoke the more familiar exotica of the Orient that are meant to attract tourists. Upon entering, the customer is given a ‘menu’ (which sometimes actually includes light snacks and refreshment) from which they can choose the types of massage services they would like. They would be then be informally asked by the worker if they want to know about the other services offered. The regular ‘menu’ items range from shoulder and back rubs to foot massages, each varying in prices. The services were intentionally very cheap—nothing on the menu costs more than RM 40–50 (USD 10–14). The other services, which include handjobs, oral, to full intercourse, would cost much more—from RM 100–300, though these are often subject to intense negotiation and haggling as they are not ‘on the menu.’ Customers seeking the other services are then taken to the covered cubicles at the back of the parlor, for better privacy and away from the front. ∗ ∗ ∗ Living and working in these parlors on a daily basis seems fairly mundane and uneventful for the most part. According to Sarika, a Rohingya woman who worked at ‘Alorelax’ parlor, most of the time the workers were only giving regular massage services, for local Malaysians, or other migrant workers who were in the area such as the Bangladeshi, Nepali, and Indian men.

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“Like today, we don’t have many customers at all because most of them have gone to pray because it’s Friday. So we have to look for more customers otherwise the boss will be angry we didn’t hit our daily target. We take turns,” she says, indicating the other women sitting outside, “a few wait inside and give massages, while the others work outside to call customers. This helps us stay out of the heat for too long, because sometimes we have the girls who faint and fall down because they get too hot. It’s not easy standing out there all day. But inside here, we have air-cond, so it’s a nice way to relax in here. I like staying in the air cond room, but sometimes I also have to go outside and call the customers to come in. That’s the part I really don’t like. Because you have to be pushy, and be sexy and try to attract them, because usually customer will be too shy and won’t want to come in. They know we’re not only massage place, so even though they want to try, they are shy and feel shame. We have to tell them it’s okay, we are very private, we take care of them, no one can see. Then, if you’re good enough to impress them, they will come inside with you. Some of the prettier girls are really good at pulling customers in, they can just go stand outside, smile, and the customers would be interested. You see her,” pointing at a young Thai woman standing outside, “she gets the most customers, so we always make her go outside. She has very little shame, and will show off her body and other things all the time, so customers always come. Me, I don’t look like that and I don’t like to wear sexy clothes, so I usually get very few and I only do the regular service massage,” Sarika explained. “so different workers do the different services?” “Not all of us handle the other services, because we also have some specialties. Like the Indonesian massage person, she does special therapy for back pain and bone pain, and that’s a different charge. I do the simple shoulder massage, foot massage and back massage, because I told the boss I am Muslim so I can’t do the other service. I don’t care if I don’t make a lot of money… just happy I can work and help support my family.” “When did you come to Malaysia?” “Last year… we left and went to Thailand, but very hard to find work and survive there so we try to come to KL because we know some people who came here before. I found this place to work because my cousin also works in another parlor, in the same street. The customers sometimes like asking for different girls, they want to try not only Thai, but they want to try Vietnam girls, Hong Kong girls, and some want to try Rohingya girls also. So all of us can find work here. And it’s easy to come and go, I just need to be here for fixed time, then I pay a cut for the service I give to the boss then I can go. They don’t want to have fixed workers because some of us don’t have permits and passports, so it’s better this way.”

∗ ∗ ∗

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Lavender Lavender is a tall by Southeast Asian standards—she was at least 5’11’, and walked with a slight hunch, almost to make herself less conspicuous. She was also very thin, and older than Rose, clearly. We met at a café, I had offered to buy lunch for Lavender in exchange for an hour-long interview, thanks to Rose. Lavender rarely smiled, aside from a greeting, and would often stop to snap selfies of herself during our conversation. “I was in Singapore twice, the first time for four weeks, where I was able to work as incalls only. There were a lot of customers, and the pay was really good, so I wanted to go back as soon as I could - but the second time I tried to go back, the immigration person in Singapore looked at my passport and called me into the room, where they went through my passport and told me that the previous time I had been to Singapore I had overstayed my visa by a few days. They have a one month only limit. They told me to go back to Philippines, so I had no choice. It was very frustrating because I had to borrow money for the flight in the first place, then I borrowed again to pay for the return flight… those tickets were all not refundable, so I have to end up paying so much without having a chance to work! Can you imagine how bad that is?” “Were you being charged interest on the money that was borrowed?” “Of course! It was 20% per month of the total, so if I borrowed 1000, then each month the interest would be another 200 pesos. So by short time you have to pay three or four times the amount… how can that be? But what can I do, it’s the only way I can travel to these countries to find work.” “Can you tell me more about what happened in the airport?” “At the counter, immigration asked a lot of questions, which of course I prepared myself to answer since I know they sometimes do this when they don’t like you. And I cannot show I’m nervous, even though I am scared, I have to show them that I’m firm. So when they ask, I answer strongly to any question. This time, they looked at my passport and asked me what I did the last time I came to Singapore. So I told them I was travelling, as tourist. They didn’t want to believe me, and asked if I had worked there as a ladyboy prostitute. I was scared, but didn’t show and I answered with anger instead, telling them they cannot ask me things like that. They asked me if I was really a male, as my passport says, or if I’m actually a female. They told me that I needed to go into the interrogation room because they need to check my records. So I had to wait in that room for four hours, while they did their checks. Then they came back to the room and told me that they needed to check to verify if I was actually male and told

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me to strip naked. They poked me and touched me (pointing to her chest, hips, back and crotch) and made me bend over to inspect my anus, telling me that they were checking for drugs. After that, they told me that my visa was denied because my previous stay was longer than allowed and that they suspected I was working in Singapore illegally. They told me that I had to buy a ticket and return to Philippines because they won’t allow me into the country. I was so angry and scared, but also nothing else I can do. If I cause trouble they will put me in prison, and then I won’t know how to leave. So what else can I do, I just had to call and beg to borrow more money from the person who had paid for my original ticket, and then buy my ticket back to Philippines. And that’s a really long, tiring journey from the airport to my brother’s house where I stay… almost five hours, and I have to take a bus, tricycle, train and taxi just to go home from the Manila airport.” “which other countries have you travelled to?” “Vietnam, Thailand… I worked in those countries as well. It was okay but there’s very little money, since in both places there are already so many ladyboys. I think Malaysia is also okay, but ever since Donald Trump started having those laws that made Craigslist and some other sites stop providing online personals pages, it has become much harder to advertise. When there used to be Craigslist services, I would get at least 3 or 4 guys come to the hotel I stay every day, in Singapore and Thailand and Malaysia, but now, without Craigslist, I only have Locanto, so I only get maybe 1 or 2, and not even every day. Sometimes, I will go 2 or 3 days before someone calls, and I spend most of the time just sitting and waiting in my room. So because of Trump, I lose so much of money and customers.” Lavender laughs at she says this. “I’m sorry, that is a very big hit to your work, isn’t it?” “Yes, of course… I have to pay the hotel daily, that’s about RM 200 each night, and sometimes more on the weekend. So if I only get customers two or three times in one week, and make less than RM 1500, then almost all the money has to be for the room. And I can’t use cheap hotels because then no customers will want to come. I sometimes have to skip meals or cook my own food just to make sure I can pay the hotel. I always book online so I avoid the booking fees…you know, there are some who can afford the really expensive suites, especially like the penthouse, which is RM1000 per night, and they can earn so much because they are real women, and not ladyboys.” “So, the change with Craigslist has really been a big problem for you? Are there no alternatives?” “I can go out and look for customers, like some other prostitutes, at clubs, bars… but I am very shy and also I’m scared of doing that. But

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maybe I’ll have to try, otherwise it’s becoming too hard to earn income. I also have to think about how to pay back the money I borrowed to travel so if I can’t find more customers it will be a big problem for me.”

Rose Rose was not what I was expecting. I’ve yet to have a participant who is a transgendered person working as a ‘ladyboy‘ prostitute, as she describes herself. Rose is from the Philippines, but has traveled to different countries, even as far as Qatar. She’s not been to KL often, but has worked in Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and a host of other places. Currently, she has chosen Malaysia as her stop, working exclusively via online appointments because of a fear of being in public—she never wants to have to do her work in public areas, and operates mainly via chat apps and online ads. While online-only escort and companion services are popular in Malaysia, it is rare for people such as Rose to be exclusively working through these mediums. We met and talked at a café near KLCC, in the morning, the space relatively quiet and private. I had met Rose a few years back, when I had originally been reaching out and recruiting informants—she had not been free for a formal interview then, but recently discovered Politics of the Temporary, and was really interested in sharing her story. She asked me if I had ever written about ‘ladyboys,’ and asked if it would be something I thought might be worth knowing about and including as stories of migrants. I immediately agreed. Rose works alone. She has other friends who do the same work, but she isn’t here with people she is close to and feels very isolated. “No, I don’t know anyone here. I’m here on my own. Who can I have in Malaysia? It’s scary but I’ve learned to be strong and I do what I need to take care of myself. I’ve had to learn how to do that from previous experiences.” “I’ve been to other countries like Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and even Qatar.” “Qatar? That’s far… were you there for work?” “Yes, same work as here… prostitute. But it was bad there in Qatar, I felt very unsafe. They are really terrible there and don’t treat someone who is a ladyboy like a person. But we’re all people and human, no? It was really bad when I had to go through the immigration. They checked my passport where it says that I’m male, but then kept asking me if I was really a male or female. I had to strip naked to show them I was actually

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male… and even after that, they made me report and check in regularly, until I couldn’t stand it and left the country. I always felt at risk and in danger, and scared.” Rose grew forlorn and sadder as she spoke. There was clear pain in her voice. “I don’t trust people, especially clients, because they can come and you don’t know what to expect. They can do anything to you, so I have to try everything I can to be careful and not get hurt. When I was working in Singapore, there was a guy who came to my hotel room, and I thought I had checked everything to make sure it was safe. He wanted to shower with me, so I asked that he leave his clothes in the bathroom itself instead of the room floor, but he refused to do so, and just left his clothes outside the bathroom. I knew it would be trouble, because the moment we came out of the shower, he went through his clothes and immediately started shouting that I had stolen his money. I was so scared, that he would run outside and call the police or complain to the hotel that I was a prostitute. So I offered to have sex with him for free, which he did and then left, and I blocked his number after that. It was a scam to get free sex, and I knew what he was doing but I still felt too scared to do anything else. Since then I’ve been even more careful to check whoever I meet, but it’s hard to be completely sure. And people are people… I want to trust them, and most turn out good people, but some are not good. And there’s no way to be sure.” Rose began wiping tears from her eyes, and toying with her fingers. It was clearly uncomfortable for her to share, and even though I kept insisting that she doesn’t need to tell me anything at all if it’s upsetting, she insisted that she doesn’t mind. I tried to ask a different question to change the topic and asked about her family in the Philippines. “I have a big family… six sisters and two brothers, plus 14 nephews and nieces. My mother died when I was 19, so it’s been tough since then because we all have to work and find ways to make money. We all didn’t finish education, and my oldest sister came close to finishing college but we couldn’t afford so she had to stop. I would love to go to college, but you can’t work while studying. I started in Philippines working on cam websites… but it took so much time and I had to work all night, it was very difficult to do anything else. Then someone told me I could travel to other countries and do this work, which back then seemed impossible cos it was too expensive. Then I learned you could take a loan from agents to travel, which is when I started doing this job. I still owe a lot of money for that loan though, and it’s taking a long time to finish paying. I’m hoping to start saving but it’s also difficult. Back home, I ‘m also trying to help my family by sending money, especially to support my nieces and nephews

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through school. None of my brothers and sisters make a lot of money, because we didn’t finish school, so I have to help out. I don’t want my nieces and nephews to experience hardship like we did, so I help them like this.” Rose repeatedly said to me that she too had dreams and hopes, no matter the work that she was doing at the moment. “My dream… is to buy a house! And a car! And start a business…” “in Philippines?” “Yes, because I really just want to go back to my family and my boyfriend. I would love to just do all that and stop being a prostitute. I don’t like this work, it’s dangerous and unsafe. After all, it’s sex without feelings. And that’s just nothing… it’s empty. I might as well be like this (spreads out her arms and tilt her head to the side indicating the pose of a corpse. My dream is also to save enough money so I can get the operations I really need so I can stop this constant transforming from male to female… its really expensive, but I want to get the operations to get the silicone to my breasts, change my hips and my sex… it’s costly, just the last one itself is more than 800,000 pesos… so in USD…” she takes out her phone and opens the calculator app to show me how much it would convert to. About 16,000 USD. “The other operations are just as expensive and I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to get them done. That’s also my dream… In the Philippines, if I wanted to work, the companies would want me to cut my hair, and act and dress like a man, and I really don’t want to do that. It’s not who I am. So that makes it very hard as well if I wanted to work there. I did work in a market, selling stationary and books, as well as a gas station, pumping gas. But, that’s no real money as you know…” Rose then starts to talk more about her relationship with her boyfriend in Philippines. “We’re close, but it’s been quite difficult. We’ve been together for four years now, but we fight a lot. The distance makes things so difficult. I really do love him and want to be back there with him, because he is actually a very good and kind person, always asks and checks to make sure I’m okay. But we fight a lot as well, and when we’re apart like this, we don’t see each other enough, and there’s always this feeling of secrets.” “What do you mean? As in your work?” “He doesn’t know what I do when I travel… that I’m a prostitute. So I also feel guilty, because I’m cheating on him and having sex with other men. But I don’t know why, I sometimes question him as well, and accuse him of sleeping with other girls, and we start fighting and arguing about things like that. I don’t mean to, but it just is such a bad feeling. The other problem is that he also wants a family, to have children… and

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I can’t give him that, so I don’t know what will happen. I know he loves me, but that’s maybe not enough…” Rose wipes more tears from her eyes.

∗ ∗ ∗ This was one of the most personal and emotionally wrenching interviews I’ve been involved in thus far. I found it difficult and challenging, but obviously the experience was far more upsetting for Rose herself. She was experiencing a level of uncertainty throughout the conversation, constantly checking to see if she could really trust me. She felt worried about her position as a ‘ladyboy‘ in places and countries where that is something taboo. In spite of this, she had chosen to share her story, in the most generous way possible, and even offered to introduce some other people she knew with similar stories. Rose’s story brought to light new dimensions of precarity and vulnerability among the temporary who become part of this pseudo-mobile cosmopolitanism of risk and informality—being outside of a fixed gender binary, or more precisely, as a person who is actively trying to resist conforming in ways that threaten their very sense of who they are. Rose’s experiences in Qatar and her challenges growing up in Philippines brought many of these realities to the surface. There was clearly a sense of insecurity that she embodied, a sense that she was always at risk of being surveilled and policed, which explains her decision to only offer her services online through a very selective process of vetting. Even this doesn’t make her feel completely safe, and she expressed to me how she wished there would be a way to make it less dangerous for people like her who are not only trying to make a living through a criminalized form of labor, but also as someone whose non-conforming gender identity poses risks to her safety. “While I was in Qatar, I was working at a massage parlor, where there were many other ladyboys as well. The boss of the massage parlor told us all that while the parlor was not illegal, we also have to provide services that are not legal, including blowjobs and sex. We understood… and there were many customers. The men in Qatar, especially the Muslim ones, they were very horny and think of girls as diamonds that they like to play with anytime they want. They always demand things… but sometimes there were also Qatar police who come undercover to check on the massage places, and usually they will try and see if we also do sex services. If they find out, then two or three days later they come and arrest you. That’s what happened to me in the second week in Qatar. I was caught and put

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in a room with 60 other ladyboys and men, but not women. See what I mean about women are like diamonds? They only caught us ladyboys and the men because they don’t allow men touching and playing with other men. After a whole night in prison, then my boss came bringing us tickets to send us back to Philippines, because we were deported and cannot work anymore in Qatar.” “Just to go to Qatar I had to fly to Thailand first because that’s the only place I can apply for the work visa. I had to stay in the Thai airport for four days while waiting for the work visa from Qatar, which they send through email. I didn’t have any money so there was no way for me to find a hotel or room to stay, so I slept in the airport while waiting. Then, they sent the work visa approval through email and I was able to go to Qatar.” “In Philippines, I live with my two brothers, who only have unstable part time work, because they are also uneducated. It is so hard to find good work without education in Philippines, for all of us, so we end up having to travel and go abroad to find work. But for me, no matter how hard it is and no matter how long it takes, I think it’s still important to try and finish my education, and pursue my dreams. I think Philippines is very bad because of the corruption and poor government, which doesn’t help the poor people at all, but still I believe we can get educated and reach our dreams, but it just takes a longer time, that’s all. I really believe that. That’s why I want to go back and try to finish my education, no matter what. I don’t care if it takes very long. Right now, I have to help my nephews and nieces with their schooling, and I have to help take care of my father who needs medicine and care, so I can’t really afford to go back to school. But at some point, I know it will be possible and I just need to be patient.” “you mentioned that the local governments and politicians there are really corrupt and don’t help the poor… what do you think happens to the poor?” “Yes, that’s a really big problem in Philippines. It’s the really small, local town and precincts where you see a lot of the corruption. Even though they are in power, they don’t do anything to actually help the poor, but they only enrich themselves and they enrich their own families and relatives. There’s no worry or care for the ones who really need help. We all know that we can’t depend on these local governments at all. There’s so much of money through corruption and also drugs, though now with Duterte, there’s been so much killing of anyone caught using or pushing drugs, that’s changing.” “Is that why people leave the country?”

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“Of course… unless you have professional education degree or qualification, like an engineer or doctor, you are not going to be able to be successful or rich. There’s no money in other things. Most people who are there work at call centers and markets and construction, but that’s all very poorly paid. Anyway, I can’t work in those companies either because they require me to act, dress and be a man, which I don’t want to do. Also, teachers in Philippines, they get a lot of respect but they make so little money that it is almost impossible to survive. So that’s why many of us leave the country and go work in other places, as maids, as prostitutes, as nurses…. One of my sisters, by the way, works as a maid in Saudi. She has two children in Philippines, and sends home money to take care of them.” “I think I first realized that I was a ladyboy when I was in grade school in Philippines. I didn’t spend a lot of time with boys and most of my friends were girls, and I also discovered that I liked girl things, like Barbies. I enjoyed spending a lot of time with girls, and then later on I also realized I was attracted to the guys, not the girls. That’s when I learned that I was gay. It was becoming difficult for me to hide, especially in high school, where you have to be careful and not show anything. In high school in Philippines there is no freedom - you cannot dress or show yourself like a female if you’re male. That means you cannot have long hair, and you cannot wear skirts. If they identify you as male dressed up like female, you will not be allowed into the school. So I had no choice in high school, I had to keep short hair and dress like a guy all the time.” “After high school it was better. That’s when I started dating a guy, who became my boyfriend for three years. I also started change myself more, by starting with hormones, growing my hair longer, new clothes that were for women. My mother passed away around this time as well, so I had to find work to do to help support my family. This is when I started working on sex-cams in Philippines, which is illegal but the only option for ladyboys like me. Before that, I was working different jobs - grocery, meat produce, pump-station, and stationary, before I started doing the sex-cams on websites. We had a lot of financial problems after my mother passed away, and I had to work just to be able to make a bit of money to support myself, with food and daily needs.” “How did you start with the cam work?” “I had a lot of help from my sister, who helped me buy a new computer, a webcam, plus clothes and makeup that I need to be able to appeal to people online through the cam. If you don’t look good, then nobody will want to see you online. Then I started doing this work, which lets me earn twice a month but also not that much. I used to get about USD 1 for each minute of ‘private chat’ that customers would want, but half of this will be taken by the website company itself. So this means whenever a customer

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spends time in private with me, I only make half. So, for example, ten minutes of private I can make about USD 5. But sometimes, I can have entire days when no one wants to go on private with me. Just being on the public free chat, we make no money at all.” “How much would you make roughly, per month with the cam work?” “Not a lot… it was maybe 10,000-15,000 pesos every two weeks, and that’s very little… Only enough to cover things like food and some bills. Not enough for anything else. And I was working so much, it felt terrible. I would wake up, get ready to the cam work then do it for so many hours, then only have time to sleep and wake up and work again. Just to make so little money… it was impossible, so I knew I can’t keep working with that. I needed a better job. Some of my friends asked why did I keep working as a cam-girl, and they suggested that I should just travel, and become an escort, because the money is much better, and I can meet real people so it can be more fun.” “How does it compare, doing the cam work versus the escort and travelling you’re doing these days?” “I think cam-work is better, even though it pays much less. Escort work, I earn more, and I get to meet real people and travel, which is nice. But it’s also risky and can be very expensive. It’s not stable, and I don’t feel safe. You have to be very smart to be able to do this type of work, and careful. You have to monitor and check the person you’re meeting. I remember the first time when I worked as an escort, which was in Singapore, I was scared. Scared to meet the first person, because I keep worrying about it being a set-up, that it would be a cop waiting to come in and catch me. All these things were going on in my mind, so I have to be able to handle it.” “Do you think you might go back to the cam work?” “I actually want to go back to Philippines to restart doing the cam work again, but this time with a lot more capital. If you want to do this business, you need to have big capital. For the sex-cams, you need a good laptop, a good video camera, you need good internet connection, and then you need to buy a lot of makeup, nice clothes and lingerie, plus a lot of other things so you can be more appealing to the customers online, so they would be more interested in meeting you in private. This time, I am saving up money to have all those things so I can expect to make more money when I return and start the cam work again.”

CHAPTER 5

Cosmopolitan Contaminations

Food and Contamination in Malaysia Rojak is a dish I’ve admired and respected, but never truly loved. It’s a bizarre dish, typically Malaysian, many would say. A hodgepodge of ingredients and flavors that shouldn’t go together in theory, but somehow manage to work. Many people absolutely love it and would often go out of their way to find the supposed ‘best in town’ rojak sellers—usually a street hawker or food court vendor away from the wealthy commercial districts. The rojak is also sometimes seen as a metaphor for Malaysian society. More accurately, a metaphor for Malaysian and Southeast Asian cosmopolitanism—the unique model of diversity and cultural hybridity that make the country’s peoples quite distinct. A spicy fruit salad. With fish cakes. And sweet chili sauce. The name itself—rojak—means an unusual/eclectic/unexpected/random mixture of things. Its differences can even be ethnic in nature—there is a difference between Chinese Rojak and mamak ( Indian) rojak, for example. As is the case with many Southeast Asian and Malaysia hybrid cuisines, its flavor is not mild—distinct yet near impossible to try and describe. It’s clichéd to say that Malaysians love talking about food. We love talking while having food, about food and even through food. Very few things bring up a gushing of pride and patriotic passion about Malaysia than the talk of how fantastically unique, different, and hybrid our food © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_5

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can be, on par with anything that the known world has produced. Food and the very act of eating is crucial to connections, relationships, and kinship, as brilliantly illuminated by Jean Duruz and G. C. Khoo in Eating Together: Food, Space and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore. In that book, they too identify rojak, along with kaya toast and kopi, as important metaphors and symbols of multiculturalism that is distinct—a ‘rojak imaginary’ (Duruz and Khoo 2014). Whereas Duruz and Khoo focus on the centrality of food and foodspaces as sites for reproduction of cultural and ethnic identities—such as the Indian mamak stall, which is another iconic symbol of Malaysian urban public sphere—my own perspectives are informed by the centrality of food as stubborn living artifacts of histories of hybridity, contamination and cosmopolitanism. Food doesn’t just symbolize the achievements and unique successes of the national community, it is also a carrier of historical mixtures that don’t fit in or are otherwise erased from the national ‘acceptable’ narratives. We use many words to describe Malaysian cuisine. ‘Hybrid.’ ‘Fusion.’ ‘Eclectic.’ Words that imply progression, something better that emerges out of mixing and intermingling. We rarely use words connected to the same notions of mixing and mingling but carry a more sinister or negative implication. Words such as ‘contaminated,’ ‘mutant,’ or ‘freakish.’ Most important of all, we never describe our food as ‘alien.’ Because no matter how odd, bizarre, and inexplicable our cuisines and their identities can be, we are strongly determined to hold a claim over them—they are ‘our’ food, a symbol of our culture and heritage. But, to play without much seriousness on Gayatri Spivak’s question, what would happen if our ‘Malaysian’ food could speak back to us? What would they tell us about our histories, our ways, our beliefs, and our genealogies? (Morris 2010). This is a question that was spurred by two moments during the past year while I was engaged in ethnographic fieldwork with different migrant communities in KL and Penang. The first moment is the proposal of a ban on ‘foreign cooks’ announced shortly after the election of the new Pakatan Harapan coalition government. The Human Resource Minister, popularly known as ‘Kula,’ announced in June 2018 that restaurant owners would have to get rid of their migrant workers who were working as cooks and chefs, and would be required to only hire ‘Malaysians’ as cooks. Relatedly, hawkers (street and public food court vendors) must be ‘Malaysian.’ This sparked a backlash from business owners who relied

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heavily upon a foreign workforce for the labor at such establishments, though the counter-argument was the typical ‘we have to reduce the dependency on foreign workers’ (Eatery Owners Shocked over Local Cooks Only Policy—Nation | The Star Online, n.d.). The ban on foreign cooks, and the broader motivation to reduce the presence of the ‘migrant worker’ in the visible sectors of the urban economy is often rationalized by perceptions of hygiene and contamination—a very powerful and pervasive myth of the dirty and dangerous foreigner. Social and cultural norms and practices often dictate what is ‘appropriate’ and inappropriate—morality and manners—and this extends to the perceptions of ‘who handles the food we eat.’ With the idea of the ‘foreign hands’ that handle and prepare our food, the implications are that of contamination—further exacerbated by the presence of poorly-framed and questionably organized research that suggest foreign workers in food service as being carriers of pathogens potentially posing risks to the local clientele (Sahimin et al. 2016). The second moment which inspired much of the writing and ruminations informing this book is a conversation with a young migrant couple—a Rohingya man and an Indonesian woman—who both worked at a food court in KL, him as a sotong kangkung (cuttlefish and watercress) vendor, and her as satay Kajang vendor. Conversations with this particular couple, whose stories are part of this book (Adam and Siti), often revolved around the food and their work at the food court, along with their personal stories of coming to Malaysia and finding each other and building their aspirations and dreams together. The type of coming together and cosmopolitanism at play here was uniquely symbolized by the food that they worked to prepare—satay and sotong kangkung — again, cuisines that are deemed ‘authentically’ local yet also deeply mixed and hybrid—simultaneously recognizable and alien at the same time, a coming together of flavors and ingredients one would not expect. Food creates the shared cosmopolitan spaces for engagement and bonding in unexpected places—from the kongsi (labor camp) and refugee settlements, to the ethnic enclaves and red-light districts. Over the years of conducting ethnographic work with the subaltern migrants of Malaysia, I came to realize just how much we depended on food as a means to share our stories, aspirations, and intimacies beyond that of the ‘research interview’—food helps us reflect and communicate, eases the tension of differences that always sets us on guard. Sharing little plastic bags filled with teh tarik and kuih lapis with workers at a kongsi in Klang Valley

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late in the evening led to conversations that became unforgettable, just as sharing plates of nasi goreng and cheap vodka with Russian expatriate families in Penang led to painful conversations about abuse and loneliness.

Lanterns in the Courtyard The little lights hanging across the trees cast a delightful, otherworldly glow over the courtyard, and the outdoor bar where I was sitting. It was a pleasantly warm and breezy evening, occasionally punctured by the sound of construction nearby. I was sitting at the counter, writing my notes, watching Rahman and his colleague, Farouk, work. It was just the two of them working this evening, bartending. It was a Monday, and few people were out at a bar at this time. It was a perfect time to watch the two young men from Bangladesh at work and have conversations when they were taking breaks. The bar where they worked was unlike most around Penang—it was very calm, relaxed, and far more intimate, in spite being outside. There was a large-ish island counter that went around the bar space, but surrounding that were a collection of highchairs and bamboo sofas where people could just sink themselves into and be undisturbed. I’ve been coming here more often than expected, partly to have conversations with the migrant men who worked there, but also partly because it was a great place for me to sit, relax, and work on writing. Sitting at the counter, I watched as Rahman interacted with an elderly German tourist, who was trying to explain to Rahman, rather obnoxiously, that he wanted his beer poured into a chilled glass. Rahman was trying to reply that the chilled glasses were meant for different types of beer, but eventually just caved in and poured the beer into one of the glasses in question. The glass was larger—the beer didn’t come all the way to the brim, and the asshole German off-handedly instructs Rahman to top it off from the tap. Rahman doesn’t bother to argue and fills up the beer the rest of the way, smiles, and hands the glass to the man, with a polite ‘here you go, sir.’ Without so much as a thank you the man turns and heads off with the beer to the table where he was sitting with several friends. Rahman turns to look at me, shrugs and smiles. “Do you often get treated like that?” I asked. “Ah, no, brother… just that man is a bit rude, but customers who come here, many are close friends and I know them well, so it’s always nice.”

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Almost to prove his point, a middle-aged Malay lady, wearing a white sun hat and carrying a load of shopping bags, walks up and greets Rahman cheerfully. She puts her bags down at a table, reaches over the bar and gives him a hug. He refers to her as Sally—her name, I found out later, was Salimah—and asks if she would like the usual today. Usual for Sally was a mojito and a bowl of nuts. We exchange glances and briefly say hi, shook hands and introduced ourselves. “Isn’t Rahman a sweetheart?” she asks. I “So far, been excellent,” I reply. Sally then sits down at her table and pulls out her phone from her handbag, and proceeds to call someone. “Ms. Sally usually comes here after her meditation and yoga class in the mall, and she would sit for an hour and talk to her daughter, who is in Australia. They’re a very nice family, sometimes her husband would join if he’s not working.” Rahman explains. His English was relatively fluent, though he would rarely say more than a few words in a given sentence, occasionally mixing with Malay. Both Rahman and Farouk were in their mid-twenties and had been working at the bar for two years, each. They were both very energetic and efficient in their work, combining quick service and waiting, with their skills at mixing drinks. They were both also physically strong and fit, and handsome—they were clearly being seen as part of the attraction of the bar, especially among tourist women who made up much of the clientele. “Farouk’s the really popular one - he looks like a much younger Salman Khan, no? The Boss always puts him on table waiting duty, and makes him walk around the edges of the courtyard bar to make sure he gets the attention of customers,” Rahman explains. Rahman brings me a small serving of chicken spring rolls, with a side of sweet Thai chili sauce, and asks me to try it and let him know what I think. It’s devilishly delicious, of course, but I try to be helpful and suggested including soy sauce with the chili. It was a stupid suggestion, but then again I knew nothing about how to improve the dish and was desperate to not come off as ignorant. “How’s the book coming along, brother? Any good stories, of the Russian girls?” he asked. I had talked about the book on migrants in KL to him the last time, and all the different groups I had been studying, but Rahman had taken particular interest to the fact that I was also interviewing women who worked as escorts and sex-workers. Funny how that’s always the part of the research most people become extremely curious about—a little indiscretion, a taboo, a forbidden knowledge, that often led to conspiratorial conversations and twinkling eyes. One thing I’ve come to realize over the last three weeks of my research is that most migrant

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informants I meet are extremely curious about other migrants, especially those who are different from themselves in terms of gender and nationality. Sometimes, it comes off as exaggerated stories based on stereotypes— people like to show off they know something about the different groups. But other times, like with Rahman for instance, it manifests in genuine curiosity about others, especially migrants. The last conversation I had with Rahman turned into him mostly grilling me about how all the ‘beautiful Russian women here are able to find work as escorts so easily? And are they able to do so on what type of visas? How are they able to do this work so easily in a Muslim country?’ He then asks me the same question almost everyone else asks me—”do you also get to sleep with them, brother?” I raise my left hand, and point at my wedding band, to Rahman, who, hilariously, waves his hand dismissively and says, “brother, you really think that actually matters to people who come here to Penang?”

∗ ∗ ∗ Rahman works almost every day at this bar, from the time it opens at 11.30 am till it closes much later at night. He doesn’t work continuously—he and the other workers have multiple shifts during the day, which allows them to head home or elsewhere to take a break during the day. Both him and Farouk seem to be very close and they’ve always been on the same shifts whenever I come by. Farouk is younger and the taller of the two—less of a conversationalist due to his weaker command of English. Around 8 pm in the evening, the three of us—Rahman, Farouk, and myself—walk along the alleys of the Komtar area (Georgetown’s old historic center), slowly making our way to the popular backpacker’s district known as ‘Love Lane.’ Love Lane is a hub for bars, clubs, and pubs that are mostly frequented by tourists and backpackers. This time of year, during the World Cup season, Love Lane stays vibrant and lively until 5 am in the morning, after the last of the lie matches end. This is where Farouk and Rahman work their second and third jobs, as bartenders and waiters. This pushed their daily hours past 15 hours—the two men were surviving on hour-long breaks and four hours of sleep per day, which was difficult to fathom considering how labor intensive their shifts could be.

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We get used to it, after a while, you keep working these jobs you won’t feel the tiredness. Of course, on our day off each week, we usually just sleep the whole day to catch up on rest, and then we’re ready again.” explained Rahman. “Plus, brother, the money working these jobs together is really good, for us. These late shifts, sometimes we get a lot of tips as well, which is really useful to have. Why wouldn’t we work as much as we can, if it means having a bit more money, and don’t have the need to be poor all the time?

I couldn’t argue with that logic. After all, there was no visible tiredness or exhaustion between the two men—in fact, having been up since the morning to spend the day and night with the two of them, it was me who was struggling to keep my mind and body fresh, and not succumb to sleeping by the roadside. They both maintained a steady posture, and an energetic presence, and would frequently laugh and smile at my visible tiredness. “Sitting and writing stories must be much more tiring then we realize!” Rahman teased. The first of the bars that we went to was a small, hole-in-the-wall style one, with a largely foreign clientele. Judging by the languages that people spoke, the patrons were mostly European tourists and expatriates from Germany, UK, Russia, and Australia, along with a few local Malaysians. The bar, according to Rahman, was owned and managed by an American expatriate who moved to Penang several years ago. The two of the them had found the chance to work there by ‘luck,’ because the owner had been frequenting the other bar they worked at during the day and was impressed by their efficiency and skills at waiting and bartending. “He (the owner of the bar) comes by now and then - he doesn’t spend too much time around Love Lane in the evening because he has family on the island so he goes home, but occasionally he would check to make sure everything is okay. Sometimes, there would be undercover police who would come to check on our alcohol licenses and make sure that we’re not working illegally. When that happens we usually have to call him to talk to them and he would deal with it.”

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Bartending past 1 am at Love Lane gets quite interesting. The crowds begin to come in once the soccer matches start, usually by 10 pm. Some of the bars adapted by setting up outdoor tables and projectors, on the street itself which was closed to traffic. Others, such as this one, choose not to show the games to cater to clientele that preferred to have a quieter space to sit and have drinks. None of the establishments were smoke-free, which meant going into a bar or club here meant being drowned in a mix of cigarette and weed smoke—positively eye-tearing. Rahman and Farouk were not bothered at all, as they went about their work coolly and without a hint of being affected by all the smoke. I was struggling to keep my eyes from watering and feeling dizzy, as I tried to pay attention to the men at work. They spoke freely and charmingly to the customers, always maintaining a friendly smile while taking orders and preparing cocktails, beers and shots. Farouk at some point was occupied by a young American tourist from Boston, a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt with matching shorts who spoke incessantly about the resumption of Cold War politics under Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. He was drunk, and would repeatedly try to hang on to Farouk’s elbow while the latter was trying to work. Eventually, his female friend pulled him away from the bar. Farouk looked at me and smiled sheepishly, continuing to clean glasses quickly. By 2 am, the crowds begin to move away from some of the bars that were closing to the clubs that would be open till much later in the morning. Rahman and Farouk closed the place they were working at and we walked to the third place where they moonlighted as bartenders. It was close by, less than four minutes of walking, but this club was much larger and crowded. It was packed ad loud. “This place, you have to be a bit careful, brother. There are a lot of Africans here, they can be rough. Also, there’ll be people selling drugs and pills, so just in case, you should keep a careful look.” Rahman advised— not really clarifying what he meant by a careful look. I was too tired to ask for clarification. They were not joking. As we entered the club, we were greeted by eardrum splitting music and a wall of people and smoke, along with headache inducing strobe-lights. Immediately, I was regretting my decision to come along with the two men, but to their credit, Rahman and Farouk were thoughtful enough to help me get to a corner of the place where I could actually stand by the edge of the bar and watch them.

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This club was run by a group of young Nigerians, children of wealthy business people who had rented the spaces for their kids to run the establishments. It was apparently a very common practice among the wealthy elites in Penang, a way to keep ‘spoiled children occupied,’ according to another friend of mine on the island. The young man with thick dreadlocks that greeted Rahman and Farouk from behind the bar looked to be barely out of his twenties—he was the junior ‘owner’ of the club. They worked at breakneck speed, trying to keep up with the orders and requests by the patrons. It was a very cosmopolitan space—there were quite a lot of Nigerians and Ghanaians, but I also noticed quite a few Middle-Eastern, Indian, and Eastern European people—mostly young adults. The place boomed without a break—it was difficult to pay attention to anything in particular. Rahman and Farouk kept working without any sign of tiredness and exhaustion. We were there till close to 5 am, by when the crowds had mostly dwindled and the men began to clean up the bar. It took them more than half an hour to do minor cleaning up— apparently the major clean-up work gets done during the day by a few Burmese women hired as migrant workers.

Local Cooks Only This new ‘Local-Cooks Only’ policy that is already being enforced in several places comes as an alarming development. Just as I have been mulling the idea for a book about migrant stories shared over local Malaysian food, inspired by the work and labor of migrant communities in service of the local food scene, the news about this new rule aimed at getting rid of ‘foreign workers‘ from food places arrives like a bombshell. I share many of the concerns expressed by vendors and owners of small stalls and businesses in that the sudden and rapid removal of workers on the basis of their non-national status will have a severely detrimental impact on the food service sector. I also share in the belief that this new change is being rushed, almost thoughtlessly and without regard for on the ground realities and experiences—from a practical and sensible perspective we must provide more time for adjustment, not just for the locals but for the people that will be displaced (again!). Just as the government is introducing this new rule of ‘Local Cooks Only’ (LCO), The Star Newspaper comes out with the troubling investigative piece on human trafficking related to the Bangladeshi community. In their coverage, they describe a situation where poor communities from

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rural Bangladesh are being forced to sell their land and go into debt to afford the journey to Malaysia, only to discover that they will become no more than exploited, often undocumented, labor. It was also revealed that the majority of food service workers, particularly migrant workers, are at higher risk of carrying pathogens and potential health issues. From the perspective of management and human resource, this is indeed a nightmare, but not in the way that it is often framed in the media and popular discourse. Firstly, we cannot jump to conclusions and make wrong-headed policies about migrants and their communities based on political incentives and motivations. The Local Cooks Only policy smells strongly of populist appeasement rather than something based on actual sound and informed research and data. What the reasoning behind the setting of a January 1, 2019 deadline is completely unclear, aside from being a convenient and arbitrary time frame. The message seems less in tune with economic and social realities and more in line with wanting to make a show of ‘change.’ Like many other policies that follow this type of thinking in our country, it is more likely to end up not achieving much, getting delayed, and quickly followed by a bout of excuses and accusations being thrown around by politicians. Instead, the LoCo Only (Local Cooks) policy needs to be immediately reviewed and put on hold under several considerations. First and foremost, my concern lies with the way that this policy positions people from different communities. In this climate of ‘newness’ that we’re in right now, I’ve been following closely the strains and agendas around immigration, refugees and migrant labor, and it is a grave concern of mine that we are running the risk of reinforcing some very toxic and false beliefs about the situation. Among the very popular but very wrong myths that Malaysians share about migration is the one about the ‘burden’ of having migrants in our society. The notion that somehow the presence of migrants is a blight and a problem for the rest of us—when both economic and social research data highlight the exact opposite. Migrant labor has been the bedrock for our own material and economic comforts, our wealth and our conveniences. Their labor—in food service and elsewhere—has helped subsidized our social and material needs, not the other way around. This is true in many countries of the world, including the United States, and it is very true in Malaysia. The myth of migrants as economic burdens is truly pernicious and antithetical to our society.

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Secondly, the politicization of migration very often carries implications of racism and xenophobia. The very idea of ‘Local Cooks Only’ is seemingly framed around citizenship, but the reality is that we’re a society that relies heavily upon the disenfranchised and the marginalized for our labor demands and productivity levels. Informal economies thrive well here and are key to our development. This policy will not reduce or eradicate our dependency on migrant or informal labor—all it will achieve is further making some communities even more vulnerable and powerless than they already are. The LoCo policy is an example of swinging for the lowest hanging fruit and going after an easy, vulnerable target for political victory points. Foreign workers make convenient ‘enemies’ for the nation not because they’re actually a threat, but because they have no way of resisting and representing themselves in a truly democratic and meaningful way. In other words, it’s political bullying. All it ultimately achieves is further racializing these groups as inferior, undeserving, and therefore unworthy of basic rights and protections. Thirdly, by making a sweeping divide between ‘Local’ and foreign workers, this policy reinforces another common narrative that I find to be very troubling. This is the tendency to lump incredibly diverse and cosmopolitan communities of migrants into broad categories—“PATI,” Refugees, Illegals, etc. My own work takes me to so many different parts of KL and beyond to engage and learn from the many communities of people who have come to call Malaysia their new home. These are communities and individuals with their own distinctive identities, motivations, histories, ambitions, and beliefs. They are also deeply, and wonderfully, cosmopolitan, regardless of the ugly stereotypes we try to impose upon them—I’ve come across young Indonesian and Rohingya couples planning their futures together, Bengali and Malay communities helping to provide food and education for Rohingya children while their parents work at markets and warehouses… the mixing and everyday intermingling between these communities produce empowering and heartening stories, far different from the horrible, nonsensical ‘boogeyman’ stories we tend to believe about them. Yes, many are struggling and impoverished, in addition from coming from difficult backgrounds where they may not possess the ways, manners, and ‘civility’ of us ‘good’ Malaysians, but let’s not forget that not too long ago, our ancestors were not that different. It’s nothing inherent to being a migrant, it’s just a consequence of uneven development and global inequality.

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Finally, the LoCo policy is driven ultimately by a very simple but incredibly toxic line of thinking—an aesthetics of racialized public spaces. We simply don’t like ‘seeing’ those we deem as undesirable. In a very literal sense, this policy aims to do what Americans have made an art form out of—making foreign and racialized labor invisible. The rhetoric of ‘authenticity’ is a prime example of this aesthetics at work. Since 2016, the state of Penang had banned foreign workers from cooking char kuay teow, assam laksa, and hokkien mee, under the galling, aggravating, and appallingly racist excuse of preserving ‘authenticity.’ This is an absurdly bizarre attempt to make an association between ‘the hands that cook a meal’ and the ‘authenticity of a meal,’ i.e., only Malaysians can cook real Malaysian dishes. Such logics are ridiculously prehistoric and have absolutely no place in a cosmopolitan society such as ours. Thankfully, it’s the kind of policy that ultimately goes nowhere and just reveals those who cooked it up as ignorant, bone-headed dinosaurs out of touch with modern urban life. LoCo Only is built upon our perceptions and ideals about what a public space should look like—restaurants, food courts, kopitiams, and so on. This is how ‘spaces’ themselves become racialized. But we must beware this form of thinking. This is very much the logic of colonialism and slavery—the logic and rationale that provided the British with the moral and biological justification for creating an entire class of indentured and slave laborers from India, that they conveniently hid away in plantations and without much room for self-empowerment. It’s the same logic which allowed White slave-owners to keep African women as sex-slaves who they can then toss aside when unwanted—contemporary examples of this is rife in the way we view and treat girls and women from Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia. We first push them to the shadows, render them powerless, label them as subhuman and then take everything we possibly can from them. I have been feeling relatively reassured that the government has decided to tone down its questionable attempt to go after the employment of foreign workers in our food sector—shifting away from what was presented seemingly as a ‘requirement’ to merely a ‘proposal’ (funny how politics can be so fickle). But hey, this is new Malaysia after all—the rakyat reacted to a ‘proposed’ policy and those newly in power at least seemed responsive, which is a whole of a lot better than the ‘do-as-we-damnedwell-please’ approach of before. One can argue that for such a half-baked

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and blatantly ill-advised ‘proposal,’ it was always going to end up this way, but still, you never know. I’m also heartened by the swift and strongly worded response by Chef Wan, who probably has more authority than the rest of us to speak about the culture and history of Malaysian food, along with the labor that goes into it. The framing of the policy as outright racist is absolutely spot on, and his description of food as a labor of love further highlights the bigotry and hate latent in these half-baked attempts to redefine who and what counts as ‘authentic.’ Chef Wan is absolutely right, our food and cuisines are products of love, practice, and learning—NOT products of our skin color or our racial characteristics. I would also add that our food is a crucial component of our histories. Food here defies categorization and classification—there’s really no legitimate way for anyone or group to lay claim over our food as their own, as authentically ‘this’ or ‘that.’ The only defining trait of our food and cuisines is that of hybridity, and for all you racist bigots out there— bastardization. What makes food here so wonderfully distinct and brilliant is the fact that most, if not all, are products of cultures, tastes, and practices coming into contact. They are mutants and freaks in the best ways possible—how else could something as freakishly delightful as assam laksa even come to be? It’s a mish-mash of things that should not even make sense going together, but it does! Similarly, mee goreng? Indian fried noodles? It’s a delicious travesty. Our foods carry our real histories, and those histories are about forbidden, blasphemous, often ‘dirty’ intermingling, contact, and contamination. How else do we find ourselves blessed with such a diverse, rich, and mind-bogglingly wide mix of flavors and tastes that is comparable if not better than anywhere else in the world? It is because, as Chef Wan highlighted, of love. It is because people from different cultures and backgrounds and communities decided they wanted to do something taboo and be with one another, live together, procreate, and make new things. Our food is undeniable proof that ‘dirty, inferior Indians’ did indeed fall in love with the Malays, the ‘money-minded and insular’ Chinese did indeed decide it was worth having cute, ‘mixed-raced’ children with the other races, and the supposedly pure Bumiputera did indeed feel that Thais and Indonesians were good to have families with. Like it or not,

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that is the truth of our food—people from different, seemingly incompatible, backgrounds falling in love and sharing their own foods to produce something magnificently new. This idea that there is such a thing as ‘our’ food that can and should only be prepared by ‘our’ people is pure racist and xenophobic nonsense. It doesn’t help that this is being informed in part by the narratives of the ‘dirty’ foreigners, and discourses of ‘contamination‘ that are not questionable at best. These narratives are not rooted in anything more than the observations of wannabe ‘armchair sociologists’ who use nothing more than things they happen to hear or see on occasion when they are outside. Compounding this is a deeply problematic and flawed attempt of ‘scientific’ research conducted on the ‘hygiene status of foreign food handlers’ that somehow acts as an objective analysis of public health concerns. This research, recently publicized by The Star,1 claims that the majority of ‘foreign’ food handlers have unhygienic practices that create high probabilities for transmitting diseases to, I’m assuming, the ‘locals.’ Let’s set aside for a moment that no respectable scientific study deserving of actual credibility would ever use ‘foreign’ as a category or unit of scientific analysis (it’s a socio-political category, not a biological one!). The study conducted by a group of researchers decided that it should limit its sample size purely to ‘migrant food handlers’—which should immediately raise alarm bells about credibility, at the very least. The criteria for determining the unit of analysis and the sample pool are based on political categories (citizenship and foreigners)—what this study is actually doing is reinforcing a political distinction by giving it pseudo-biological legitimacy. Why just migrants? What happens when the study is not restricted to just ‘foreign food handlers’? Are we so certain that the health and hygiene risks are not more widely spread and not just something carried by ‘foreigners’? Using foreign vs local as a basis for public health research has to be up there with some of the most illadvised and potentially harmful ways of doing research. Studies like this create the potential for very harmful social outcomes—using biology as a means to justify social and political exclusion and persecution. This is what happened during the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in the United States, and the hygiene-based persecution of poor Indians in Calcutta by 1 The Star. 2018. Bad Hygiene Offers Food for Thought. https://www.thestar. com.my/news/nation/2018/06/23/bad-hygiene-offers-food-for-thought-govt-urged-tocheck-practices-that-lead-to-health-hazards.

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the British, and, perhaps the worst example, the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. The study’s findings shouldn’t be entirely discredited—the problem is methodological (and the politics informing it), rather than the findings. If it is indeed true that food handlers are at higher risk of pathogens and contaminants, then this is a serious public health concern that needs to be addressed holistically—by making sure everyone is safe and not at risk at their workplaces, regardless of whether they are foreign, local, green, or violet. This is the very definition of public health. Pathogens and contaminants don’t exactly check passports and visas before deciding who they want to infect, do they? We should also be careful about the ways in which ‘racial predispositions’ to certain pathogens and microbes are being represented. Most research—including the Malaysian one, to be fair—is careful to indicate ‘country of origins’ or home environments rather than making the terrible mistake of linking race to biology. However, without careful reflection and a deeper understanding of these factors, it is incredibly easy for studies like this to be twisted by public rhetoric and discourse to justify the racial inferiority, or even ‘threat,’ of different communities on the basis of their socio-political identities. Already, we can find examples of how this study is being used to further justify getting rid of some imagined monolithic group of ‘foreign workers‘ from Malaysian food stalls. The study, in spite of the questionable methodological decisions, does emphasize and recommend the need to ‘improve personal hygiene and sanitation standards by the relevant health authorities among migrant food handlers,’ which I completely agree with as the right approach. If hygiene in the food service industry is indeed a major problem, then we need a much broader study for the sector as a whole to see what is really going on, not by bizarrely using political categories as a criteria for selection. As a researcher of migrant labor and displaced communities, my immediate impulse is that this should be used as a reason for further investigation and research into the health risks and concerns of poor migrant populations in Malaysia, particularly among the most vulnerable communities, such as the Rohingya—who are very much part of our wonderfully freakish food scene. In my own work with different communities, I am privileged enough to see much of the forms of mutations and mixing of cuisines emerging—through the most unexpected of encounters and romances between people who we view as nothing more than ‘dirty foreigners.’

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Sotong Kangkung Dreams Large food courts are really popular hangout and leisure spaces in Malaysia. These are usually filled with local fares and cuisines, mostly Chinese but often also with a mix of Indian, Malay, Indonesian, and other hybrid fairs. Hawkers stalls would line the edges, with the center court filled with tables and chairs, with a large screen television or projector in the center. Football (soccer) season is a boon to these vendors at the food court—customers would throng to watch live matches late in the evening and into the early hours of the morning, snacking on food, drinking, and enjoying the games with family and friends. For the workers at the stalls, this usually meant a lot of additional hard work, staying well past midnight to prepare, serve, and clean. I met the young couple of migrant workers at the food court in Cheras almost by accident, after spending an evening watching a live televised World Cup game with some friends. One thing that had been pointed out by one of my friends was the ubiquity of migrants who worked at the food court—traditionally a space that is supposed to be very ‘Malaysian,’ with local Malaysian vendors, usually Chinese, Malay, or Indian. My friend asked me to pay attention to the workers who were preparing food and taking orders at the various food and drink stands— especially those that were for specifically Chinese or Malay cuisines. It took me a while to notice but many of the ‘traditional Chinese Malay’ food—Char Kuey Teow, Claypot Rice, satay Kajang, otak-otak, prawn mee, and many others—were being prepared by workers from Myanmar (mostly Rohingya) and Indonesia. There were even a small number of Pakistani men working to take orders from tables and serving drinks. My friend, who was a local Malaysian of Chinese descent, commented that the food court had been losing its clientele due to the increased presence of foreigners working there, with some who would say that the food was no longer being cooked by the ‘right hands.’ Indonesian migrant workers at these types of open-air food courts were not a new phenomenon—in fact, as far as I could recall we’ve always had a large number of men and women from our southern neighbor who would work as staff and servers at the kiosks and stalls, even when I was very young and frequented the food courts with family and friends. Seeing so many Myanmarese, and especially Rohingya, migrants in this space did catch me by surprise, as I had presumed, they would not be many of them working at a food court that was predominantly catering to a Chinese

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and Indian non-halal clientele. I presumed wrong, clearly. Among these workers, a young Rohingya man, who was sharply dressed and wellspoken (Malay), worked alone at a sotong kangkung stall, preparing and serving a popular local Malay cuttlefish and Chinese watercress dish. Having spent more than three hours, and three orders of cuttlefish later, I introduced myself to him, and he very happily introduced himself as Md. Adam. ∗ ∗ ∗ Md. Adam and his young partner, Siti, both worked at the food court, at separate stalls. While Adam worked alone at the sotong kangkung stall, Siti and another Indonesian woman operated a satay Kajang stall. Md. Adam had very enthusiastically agreed to meet with me the next afternoon for a conversation with the both of them, after I had mentioned to him the book I was working on and my work with the Rohingya and other migrant groups in Malaysia. Adam had volunteered himself and Siti for the interview—without actually asking her first, which was both a bit discomforting but also clearly something he did not see as problematic. Thankfully, when I met Siti the next day, she was just as cheerful and excited about the interview, and as way of introduction showed me a newspaper clipping with a picture of herself and other Indonesian women protesting domestic worker abuse in front of the Indonesian consulate in KL. She had the clipping but did not indicate the newspaper itself, which was a pity. It was a wonderful moment, as it immediately became clear that the two of them were an incredibly energetic and positive couple and were more than happy to share their stories. Which is a wonder considering how hectic and busy their daily routines were working at the food court. Both Adam and Siti were there each day from 11 am till 4 or 5 am in the morning. Their workdays start with arriving in the late morning to prepare the stalls for the day. This involves being there before their employers—the couple who owned the stalls— arrived with fresh supplies in the mornings, usually from the market. They would bring fresh uncooked satay meat, cuttlefish, and sayur (vegetables), among other things. Siti and Adam, along with another Indonesian worker who helped Siti with the satay stall, would help prepare the stalls for the lunch period and then the longer, busier evenings. Being World Cup season, the work hours were particularly long for the both of them, and the other people who worked at the food court.

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Because of the live televised games on the big screen and multiple smaller tv screens around the food court, the food court receives a regular stream of customers most of the time between 7 pm and 4 am, due to the quirks of the time zone difference (Russia and Malaysia) as well as the ways in which the live matches are scheduled—three games each day with almost back-to-back live broadcasts. For the workers like Adam and Siti, this means being ready to take orders, prepare dishes, serve and clean for more than 8 or nine hours straight. The crowds usually start streaming in after 7 pm, and depending on the popularity of teams that were playing, the late night/early morning matches can often draw really large crowds. “Every time England, Germany or Brazil play, that’s the busiest. When England had their first game (on Monday at 2am) the whole food court was packed and noisy. But we had already been ready for it! We knew there was the England game, so most of us working here had planned to open the stalls a bit later than usual, and made sure we all rested a bit more in the afternoon (after the lunch period which was usually not very busy). Oh, when England plays this whole place goes crazy. Malaysian’s really love that country, but they also love Brazil and Germany. But, luckily so far those are earlier games so by 2 am things become less crowded. It’s when these teams play the late slot (2 am) that we have to be ready to work really hard for longer. Sometimes groups will come to watch 2 games in a row, and they would be ordering food and drinks continuously - especially younger people like students from college. They can eat and eat and eat.” Adam laughs as he describes, “sometimes I have to tutup kedai (close shop) early because the sotong (cuttlefish) runs out.” Siti pouts playfully when Adam says this. “It’s okay for you, abang (term of endearment for husband), we usually have big supply for the satay, so never runs out. So we have to work until everyone leaves.” Satay Kajang is a variant of the incredibly popular and famous dish of slices of meat grilled and served on a stick, with peanut sauce as dipping. Kajang refers to a town about an hour outside of KL, famous for being the ‘home’ of satay, as well as a major supplier of the specifically prepared satay meat to vendors all over the West Coast and beyond. It’ s one of the most ordered and sought-after dishes in places such as the local food courts, and one of a handful of food items that are halal even in Chinese-centric restaurants and food courts such as this one. It’s ‘bad business’ for satay vendors to not always maintain a strong supply of satay. I could understand Siti’s argument. Sotong kangkung, while also quite popular, is far more of an acquired taste even among Malaysians, and more expensive due to the seafood involved.

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“Well, don’t say that, sayang… abang always comes to help you every time I close the stall, don’t I?” Adam replies, smiling at her.

For the sake of professionalism and academic respectability, I refrain from giving them a tight hug and telling them how awesomely adorable they were as a couple. I restrained myself to just offering to treat them for lunch, which Adam took as a signal that I should absolutely have a dish of fried chilli kerang (cockels), and proceeded to order a large dish of it. Adam is not new to Malaysia, that much became clear very early on. He spoke Malay fluently, and with an accent that was markedly urban Malaysian. He had been in Malaysia for over eight years, having moved her for work and family reasons (his sister’s family were living in Cheras since the late 1990s). Adam had always been working for the same employer, initially as a helper at the stall while his bapak (‘father’—but in this case used to refer to a boss) handled the food and orders at the same food court. Two years ago, Adam’s employer decided to open a new stall at another food court not too far away, and had asked Adam to be in charge of this one, having grown to trust the young man ‘sebagai anak sendiri’ (as his own son), according to Adam. “I feel very loyal to them (the older couple who employed both Adam and Siti). They’ve been very good to both of us, even though we’re both foreigners. I’ve always made sure to be honest and loyal to them, because it’s that trust that is important, yes? Otherwise, there’s of course no reason for a local family to trust a foreigner. This is something we understand… it’s not easy to trust I foreigners, especially since we always hear of stories about foreigners who steal, bring drugs into the country, commit crimes… so, of course locals get angry and scared of us foreigners. To me, the trust is very important, so it’s why we have to always do things right to our employers. Then, good things will happen, definitely.” Siti listens to Adam, thoughtfully, then adds, “I agree with abang, but I also need to say that it has to be timbal balik (reciprocal). Our employer now is very good to us, but sometimes there are also very bad employers who do very bad things to their foreign workers. I experienced this myself when I first came to Malaysia, just 16. I was working as pembantu rumah (maid) in KL for a Chinese family. The ma’am was memang jahat (truly evil), she would scold me, insult me and hit me very often. Calling me all types of bad names, and spread lies saying I was jalang (loose) and have many boyfriends. The truth was I could never leave the house and rarely saw anyone outside except for the other maids who worked next door. So I decided to run away after a year

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because I couldn’t take it anymore. I did the smart thing and went straight to Indonesian consulate, where they took my report in case the family tried to send a police complaint or report to immigration about me.” “Did anything happen after that?” “No, thankfully, I never heard from that family ever. By the time, I met abang while looking for work (around the food court), and we started dating after that.” Adam offers, “when I first met Siti, it was like a Bollywood movie,” he laughs loudly, as his wife slaps him playfully on his elbow. “I even sang a romantic Malay song to her, while making sotong for her.” “abang, don’t buat cerita (don’t make up stories)” she scolds him. “Oh it’s okay, we’ve having our story written, it should be romantic, no? jangan marahlah, sayang (don’t be mad)” “why, isn’t our story already romantic?” “I think you’re story is very romantic!” I interjected. They both laughed.

The cockels arrived, a whole large dish of it that looked more like it was meant to serve six people rather than three. Adam urged me to try it— I did like cockles cooked in chillies. It was another one of those things that evoked a strangely specific memory for me, of my childhood in the northern state of Perak, in a small former mining town called Taiping. I used to live with an uncle and aunt, him a retired prison warden who was famous for being an executioner at the old Pudu National Prison in KL. My uncle used to love kerang (cockels) and would buy them in large quantities, to be shared with the family (but mostly for himself). The smell of fried cockles reminded me of late afternoons in that old house in Taiping. The cockles were deliciously hot and flavorful. Adam and Siti are as well—it was clearly a meal they both loved. We also drank from three (very) large glasses of fresh watermelon juice, which, typical of Malaysian tastes, was mixed with a hearty and generous helping of cane sugar. Siti was two years younger than Adam, at 22. She left Jakarta when she was 16, and after leaving her first employer having been a domestic helper, she eventually began working for Adam’s employers, after he had introduced her to them. Initially, they had asked Siti to work as a helper at home, but upon discovering that Siti was an impressive cook and knew how to season and grill satay to perfection, decided to start another stall in the food court selling satay, and hired another Indonesian migrant workers to assist her. Business took off really well, according to Siti, which

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meant she was always very busy and running around a lot more than Adam. “Both me and (my co-workers) have to run around taking the satay to tables almost non-stop. Abang mostly gets to stand and wait because he gets fewer orders, most of the time he is looking at all the sexy Chinese girls who come here, wearing really tight shorts and mini-skirts.” Siti complains, to a look of disbelief from her husband. “Oh, I can see you all the time, abang,” Siti laughs at his discomfort. “tengok-tengok saja, asal jangan cuba apa-apa, ya?” she instruct him. “you can look, as long as you don’t try anything. “I have you, sayang, why would I try anything else?” Adam replies.

Md. Adam and Siti, despite their relatively young age, strike me as possessing a sense of perspective and wisdom of a much older couple. This fits, I suppose, with the experiences that they’ve both been through, separately and together. In spite of troubled histories and experiences in the past, they both carry themselves with such lightness and evident affection for one another. A playfulness that was impossible to feel drawn into, and a love for life (and food, in Adam’s case) that was hard not to be enamored with. The rare moments when Adam’s mood darkens included the part of his story when life in Burma came up. There was sadness and more than a little sense of bitterness in his tone and voice. He told me his own story, growing up in a small town in Arakan (Rakhine), to a relatively comfortable family. “My family wasn’t rich or anything. No one over there is rich, but we were doing decently well, and had a good home. We occasionally received some money from my sister, who moved to KL a long time ago and has been working here with her family. This was before things got really bad there. I already left before things became really terrible. My sister had suggested that I come to KL, since there would be better chance for me to find work here, make money, and help take care of family. There was always news of (tensions between) the soldiers (military junta) and some of the villages, but it never came to where we were. I know it happens, though, but I didn’t think it would become like this.” “We sometimes see all the photos and videos of the people who have to leave and they go to Bangladesh. Some of them walking across the land, falling on the side, covered in mud, children and old people. Every time I see it… of course sakit hati (heart hurts). I may not know them but they are my people also. Rohingya. Everyone now calls us refugee… pelarian. I

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think I’m lucky, my family is safe, but I also have friends and relatives who I don’t know much about, even if they are okay and safe. My parents are in Bangladesh now, they had enough money to go to the city, and not stay in the camps. Insya Allah, I can call them and talk to them at any time. But it’s very hard for me to think about all the unfortunate ones. I don’t understand how, why, they are so cruel, even to children. This is the other reason our bapak and ibu here (in reference to employers) are so good, they are always keeping us informed of the news, they’re always telling us how cruel the Myanmar government is being to the Muslims there, and assuring us that we always have a home here as long as we need.” Siti, who had been silent the whole time the conversation turned to the Rohingya, decided to change the topic of the conversation, perhaps unhappy at her husband’s discomfort. “This is another reason why we need to think of the future, right, abang? Actually, we’ve both been talking about how we want to plan for next few years, so we can start our own family. The truth is we’re not officially married yet, because we can’t be married in Malaysia, since I ran away from my employer and abang only has a (UNHCR) card. But we want to find a way to go back to Indonesia, where we can get married and abang can come legally as my husband. This is not easy, and it will take us a few years to save up enough money to do that.” “How long do you think it will take before you can travel to Indonesia?” I ask. “I hope, less than four years, we should have enough. Because it’s not just the flight ticket. We need to have enough money to go back and survive for at least a few months, in case we don’t have an income. I also have family back home that I try to help (financially) so that’s another reason we have to wait. Once we are ready to go back, I am hoping we’re able to buy our own house, and have enough money to start our own business, maybe selling satay and sotong. To buy a house there, we need to save at least RM 20,000, which is slow but possible. I want us to have small house, but with at least three bedrooms, a kitchen and living room, so we can have family visit. If we can’t start our own business, then we can use some of our savings to survive while we look for work there. Otherwise, I might have to come back to Malaysia and work as a maid again, to send money back. Abang can take care of the home and children, feed them sotong all the time.” ∗ ∗ ∗

It was wonderful how quickly Adam and I became friends, with him being an enthusiastic and willing conversation partner who loves to talk about

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his life with Siti. They make for an incredibly affectionate and cheerful couple, friendly and argumentative with each other in playful ways. Adam, partly thanks to his looks—the young man certainly draws heavy attention from women who come to the food court—carries himself with a lot of confidence and an ever ready smile. He is also almost always smartly dressed, in well-pressed button shirts and jeans. His slim, diminutive physique and lightly bearded face earned him the nickname ‘Shah Rukh,’ after the Bollywood star. The two times that I spent the evenings at the food court, I noticed how regularly Adam would be visited by young local and foreign women, usually Burmese, Malay, or Indonesian, many of whom simply seemed to enjoy talking to him and hanging out near his stall. Adam seemed to be an expert at deflecting attention and pretending not to notice, and would occasionally mock the women for being too flirtatious. Siti would sometimes send him glares and pointed looks whenever she took a break from her own work. It was quite amusing to watch their interactions. “Abang really has a bad habit… he cannot stop attracting all these girls to the sotong. I keep telling him it’s not the sotong kangkung that they want.” Siti complains. “What can I do, sayang ? I’m handsome like this, of course the girls want to come and spend time with me.” “Oh, look at you, perasan (full of yourself). Think they really want to come because you look handsome? They know you’re doing well and think they can charm you to marry them, more like it.” Siti explains, with a smirk. “Ish! You’re so mean!” he gently pinches her elbow.

∗ ∗ ∗ Adam leaned Bahasa Melayu on the job, from the day that he arrived in Malaysia. He was already a good student in school, he explained, ‘a quick learner,’ so for him, learning a language like Malay was not difficult at all. He would keep a personal dictionary and would write down common phrases to be memorized, and eventually made sure to take time to read the local Malay-language newspapers. ‘Malay is easy to learn, unlike Arabic or Chinese. I pretty much studied on my own, by creating the personal dictionary of words and phrases. I would then slowly read Berita Harian or Utusan, when it was available, just to learn words. Also,

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once I got my phone (pulls out his smartphone) I could always find meanings of words very quickly.’ Adam showed me some of the applications that he uses regularly on his phone, including Whatsapp and a ride-hailing service popular in KL. Without me asking or prompting, he proceeded to share some personal photos of his family, particularly his parents and close relatives who were in Bangladesh. The pictures had been taken fairly recently, in what looked like a fairly urbanized background, which suggested that Adam’s family were not living in camps or settlements. He did not clarify exactly where some of the photos were taken. My understanding is that his parents had made their way to Dhaka, by using most of their remaining savings to avoid having to live in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. His father and grandfather, the latter who Adam said was 68 years old, had both managed to find work in Dhaka, at a restaurant, so they had an income and didn’t need to rely on him or his sister. They didn’t make much and had women and children in the family who depended on them, so it was not the bet situation, according to Adam. “I wish there was more I could do to help, but it’s hard to send money to them in Bangladesh because of the situation… no one in my family have a bank account there, so sometimes I just have to wire them using Western Union or another service. But they keep refusing, saying that I should keep and save and use the money to start a family here, with Siti. My parents have not yet met Siti in person, only on the phone. By right, it’s not good for us to be married or living together without meeting our parents, and going to their homes to get their blessings, but we don’t have a lot of options in this case. My family understands, so it’s not a problem. But of course, my mother sometimes tells me how sad she is to not be able to see us as a couple and family. So we make sure to send a lot of photos, as often as we can.”

Adam then proceeds to share some of the photos that he had sent to his parents, mostly of him and Siti when they go on short trips into the city. There were photos of them standing outside in popular tourist areas such as KLCC, KL Tower, and Pasar Seni (Central Market). Adam and Siti clearly had a passion for taking selfies—they took at least a dozen or more photos of themselves for each particular shot, till presumably they had the ‘perfect’ one. Adam’s photo collection on his phone was extensive to say the least. Documenting their trips, which isn’t something they do very often, was a joint activity that they both enjoyed, clearly.

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Some of the shots, those that were deemed the ‘best’ posed, would have all sorts of image filters and frames that Adam said the two of them would spend hours designing while they had time to themselves. They would then make digital albums and collections with these images, to be shared with family and friends. “If Siti had a chance to go to college or school, she would be a great photographer and can run a studio - she’s so artistic and good at making these things.” Adam said, looking at his partner, who had to busy herself with setting up the satay stall. “Siti is really clever at playing with the phone’s tools for photos, she knows how to adjust the colors, the size, everything… it takes a lot of practice and she would always spend hours at night, while I’m sleeping, fixing and playing with the photos on the phone. I think if we could afford it, then maybe someday Siti can open a photo studio, maybe in Indonesia, or maybe in Bangladesh. Not in Malaysia, of course.”

As we chatted, Adam and I snacked on some lobak—small, bite sized chunks of fried and steamed seafood and poultry served with dumpling sauces and chilli paste. Adam and Siti were both Muslims, but he had a rather liberal approach to religious norms—“we work at a Chinese food court, and cook and serve a lot of Chinese and Indian people, it’s okay to be part of the group sometimes, isn’t it? After all, this is how we make friends and get to know people. I have a lot of Indian and Chinese friends, customers who would come and eat, and I think it’s easier to make friends when you can share their food and not be too fussy. But of course, no babi (pork).” Adam was referring to the fact that while he steadfastly avoids eating pork or bacon, he is a lot more loose with what is considered halal or non-halal food. “Back home, when I was much younger, it wasn’t something anyone really paid attention to - we just ate what was made at home, or sold by other people in the community… and everyone was mostly the same, so no one ever thought about it too much. At least, I don’t remember or know about that side of things, because I was young and didn’t learn. When I came here, and started working, it wasn’t something I thought about too much as well, until people I knew started talking about such things as halal and haram food… but by then, I was already used to the food here. Siti is much better at that, she is more careful.” Adam laughs to himself, “Of course, she scolds me a lot that I’m not more careful, when I accidentally

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eat pork or other Chinese food. Once I had bak kut the ( Chinese pork dish usually served in broths) in front of Siti, without knowing what it was thinking it was fishball soup, and Siti started panicking and shouting at me. But.. You know… it was very good!”

∗ ∗ ∗ Unlike Adam, Siti was able to speak Bahasa Melayu well enough thanks to her native tongue being Bahasa Indonesia. She mostly spoke in Indonesian, but was adept at switching to Malay-specific words when trying to explain things to me or customers. Siti said that she only finished half of her secondary education—even though she was a good student, she had to stop school in order to find work and income to help her family and her six younger siblings. As one of the older children in the family, she explained that it was ‘not appropriate for me to be still in school and not finding work to help my younger brothers and sisters.’ “I tried to find work near home, and then in Jakarta, but it was very hard to commute and very little pay, so it was not good. Then I learned about becoming a pembantu (maid) in a different country, like Malaysia, and about how it’s possible to make a lot of money to send back home. It was very difficult at first, because we had to borrow and ask for help to pay for the travel and fees for me to come here, but I managed to come to Malaysia, anyway. But, then, as you know, I had a very bad employer, and after one year… actually, it was thirteen months, I had to run away. I couldn’t go back to Indonesia even though I wanted to and was so scared at the time, but I was able to meet people near the embassy, other Indonesian women who were older and had been here much longer, and they helped give me advice on how to find other work, and where I could go to find places to stay. Thankfully, I had been smart enough to as much money as I could in that one year, so I had enough to rent a small room in an apartment with some other Indonesian women for a while. I did some part time cleaning and maid work, before abang helped me find work with the family here.”

Nisha and Ameer I originally met Ameer during an early fieldwork period when he was in the Little Bangladesh area in Jalan Silang. He was one of the first informants I ever interviewed officially while conducting my dissertation work. He was 27 when I first met him, having moved to KL a year before that.

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I didn’t get to ask him too many questions back then, but we had a few meetings casually to talk about different things, particularly politics and soccer. He was single when I met him, though he had several girlfriends who he would spend time with during his time off in late evenings. I remember that he was always a jovial and cheerful person, and always had nice things to say about life in the city. Ameer is married now, he says, to a younger woman who originally came from Indonesia to work as a domestic helper. He tells me they’ve been unofficially married for four years, mostly because they’ve not been allowed to do so thanks to the rules of the country. They’ve been trying for children. Ameer tells me that while they don’t live together, he goes to her place regularly to have meals in the evening and morning. She lives in a service apartment near Tong Shin, which is quite close to where he works, so it makes it easy for him to visit her. They’ve been planning to rent a flat together soon, maybe one with more rooms, now that he makes better money, but it’s difficult to do so because they couldn’t agree yet on where they want to live, and most places were quite expensive at the moment. He wanted them to be somewhere a bit nicer than where either of them were living currently—he was still sharing an apartment with four other men that was too cramped and not appropriate for a woman, he mentions. “Maybe we can try to move to PJ. I’ve been there before a few times to work in a branch office there. It’s better than here in Pudu, brother. But problem is she thinks it’s too far for her because she works in the Alor area, and near Changkat. I think she feels it’s safer and better to be close to all that areas because it’s where she finds more work to do and doesn’t think she can do the same in PJ. You know, brother, what type of work she does? It’s the escort type… but she makes good money now, so I’ve been asking that maybe she can just move to live near PJ, and she can still continue working there. We’ll see, I’m hoping she’ll decide that’s a good idea.” “Where else have you been looking?” “Mostly around here,” he points to the surrounding area of Changkat, Bukit Bintang and Alor, “but, you know this is a not very good area. It’s very dirty, noisy, and then there are all these people doing haram things… I know we work here and get to live our lives here, but if you want to have a family, have children, then this is not the place. You understand, brother? I think she does too, since she’s also been wanting to have children soon. Actually, brother, that’s something we’ve been very seriously

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thinking about. I’m already past 30, and she’s also not very young, so we’re in the good age to have kids. I’d be very proud to have a son or daughter. I feel I’m ready to raise a child, you know.” “In Malaysia? Won’t that be difficult?” “Yes, but for a childhood that’s not too bad, we can get all the things we need - clinic, food, all that. Then, later, when it is time for school age, I want to take them back to Bangladesh. I’ve been saving money for years and think I can actually do this now. And also, she can stop her work and find something different. She always tells me she would much rather be raising a child then doing what she is doing, as long as I can provide for them. That’s good, huh, brother?” “What does your wife say? Is there a place she wants to move to? That she prefers?” “Don’t know, brother, she always says she wants to stay close to here, but in a nicer apartment, or sometimes she says she wants to go to the Bangsar area. She wants to be close to places where she can find work easily, you know. I don’t mind, but it’s so hard and expensive around here. PJ would really be better… of course, I’m also thinking she should not be working so much, or at all, even better… not that it’s a problem but you know how it is. It’s hard for a man when the wife is working as a prostitute. I understand… and not complaining, because she was already working long before we met, so I understand. But still, I’m hoping that soon she can stop doing that kind of work once we become more stable, you know?”

Ameer’s plans involve saving up enough of his income to be able to return home to Bangladesh within the next 6–8 years, he explains. This includes saving up for his wife and potentially a child, which he wants to have as soon as possible with her and thinks they are more than ready to do so. For migrants like himself, having children in Malaysia would be a major challenge, since the laws do not permit non-resident migrants from doing so in the country. But there are ways around this, which Ameer is fully aware of. It’s easy to get clinic and hospital services when you really need it—pregnant women are able to give birth here, regardless of whether they are migrants or not and though they do not have the health coverage and benefits provided to local citizens, Ameer seems to believe that they would have enough to be able to take care of the child, even on his single income. Ameer and I made an arrangement to meet for lunch, to be joined by his partner, Nisha. I offered to buy the lunch as a way to compensate them for the time to meet and speak with me. It was good to see Ameer,

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especially as it seemed he had been doing well and been able to move on and upward with his life. Getting married came as a surprise, particularly getting married in Malaysia. Nisha, Ameer’s partner, is slightly younger than him, and originally hails from Indonesia. They’ve been married ‘unofficially’ for four years, according to Ameer. “It’s because we can’t actually get married in this country, since we’re both migrants. The law doesn’t allow it and no one can sign the official registration for us, so we just held a ceremony among some friends of ours. We can’t get the forms that we need to take to the imam for doing the nikkah, so officially we’re not married yet.” “What kind of forms did you need to take?” “It’s a few, brother. We need to get a letter from the embassies verifying our status, then we need to take that along immigration clearance, and some type of certificate for marriage licensing, to the imam. But even that is impossible, actually, because it is only for local Muslims in Malaysia who are marrying foreign Muslims… it doesn’t apply to us. We can marry local citizens, but marrying another foreigner is another story.” “So what does it mean to be married unofficially? Are you planning to register in Indonesia or Bangladesh?” “Eventually yes,” says Ameer. “We were thinking of going back to both our countries to get marriage certifications so we can officially say we’re married. But it’s not a problem for now… we’re still foreign workers, with visas.” Nisha rarely speaks during the conversation, but she smiles frequently, and asks questions about the study and the research I was doing. She has been in Malaysia since 2010, working formally as a domestic helper for a Chinese family that operated a food court along Jalan Alor. She switches between working at the food court and an escort service, in that area. Occasionally, Nisha also moonlights at a massage parlor along Jalan Alor. She does so at the behest of the employer, who likely profits from her work. “How did you meet each other?” “Oh that’s an old story, brother. We met here and there, around here (pointing towards the Bukit Bintang area), and started dating-dating. I come to see her after work, usually around 6 or 8, then we go makan (eat) at the restaurant… I always treat her to food, asked her to be my girlfriend and then we became close.” Nisha laughs at his description of the story. “Actually, I was working at the massage parlor for my boss, many years ago. I would stand outside by the shop and invite people to come for massage, until one day abang (indicates Ameer) came to get a massage.

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Since then, he would keep coming to me for massage, and then we started to spend more time together.” Nisha mostly spoke in Malay with occasional English words. “So Ameer tells me you are both looking to move to another home? Somewhere in KL?” “Yes, I would like a nicer place to stay, hopefully together. Right now, I still live in a hostel with other women, it’s very tight and always very hard to manage. It would be nice to have a nicer, cleaner place to stay.” “Where would you like to move to?” I ask. “Maybe not too far, somewhere close by so I can still go to work around here, but abang wants to move to PJ, which is far from here. I don’t know la… we still haven’t decided. Do you know what are good places to live around KL?” Nisha asks me. “Abang says you travel a lot. Ameer laughs, “Oh yes, brother, but you’ve not been back in Malaysia for how long? Three years? Very long time…” “Yes, it’s been a while. I wouldn’t really know what are the nice places to live around here, but what kind of home would you like to have?” “Nothing fancy la… just a place where we can just share two of us, as long as we have some privacy would be nice. But rent here is so expensive and very hard to get, always have to go through this middle-man or agent, who are always trying to cheat or scam foreigners like us,” Ameer explained, “Especially all these Chinese landlords, they own all these apartments and flats and rent out to foreigners, but then they also overcharge and set above the rate for bills and everything. They call it their commission, and they are quite bad about it. It’s very hard in KL to find good place to stay. So that’s why we’re not rushing, even though we really want to.” “It would be very nice to have a private home, with a private kitchen, bathroom. Right now, I share with four women, all from Indonesia.. We are friends, but we all also want to be with our boyfriends and in our own places sometimes. How to have family when you’re stuck in this kind of places, right?” Nisha asks. “Ah, so are you planning for starting a family? Here in Malaysia?” Ameer laughs, puts an arm on my shoulder, “of course, brother. Why not? We know it’s hard but it’s not a problem. We can also take the baby to Bangladesh or Indonesia, as long as we have the money, so everything will be taken care of. We can get the citizenship for the child over there, so we don’t have to worry about Malaysia. And once we go back, we can also officially get married. It’s very complicated, but for now we wait first.” “Yes, right now we’re both working, trying to make more money and save for future. It’s hard but we’re slowly trying, and maybe in a few

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years we will be ready. I’m also not very young, and need to have children soon.” Nisha says.

∗ ∗ ∗ Nisha works multiple shifts and jobs for her employers, a Chinese couple who run several small businesses including a food court and massage parlor in Jalan Alor, near Bukit Bintang. This particular district is famous for its bustling day markets and food stalls, as well as the numerous foot and body massage parlors and spas that line the streets. The sidewalks are usually occupied by women, mostly migrants, sitting on stools or steps inviting passers-by to come in for various types of massage services. It is an open secret that these spas and parlors also offer sexual services and operate as fronts for brothels which would be illegal otherwise. The women who work at these parlors are diverse in terms of nationalities— it’s not surprising to find Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Philippina women working next to one another, often sitting in groups and chatting with one another. Nisha, as it turns out, used to work in the home of her Chinese employers, as a domestic helper, but upon discovering that she had some training as a masseuse back in Indonesia, they had quickly decided to put her to work at the parlor, even though this constitutes a violation of her employment status under immigration law. Nisha explains that for the most part no one has ever questioned, as it is quite a common practice and one that is just accepted as normal.

Faizul and Shree It’s been almost four years since I first met Faizul, working as an assistant at a wire-transfer agency in Pulau Pinang. I recall the chance meeting as one of the more humorous encounters with a soon-to-be informant— Faizul had been standing outside, close to his workplace, chatting up a group of young European women sitting a plastic table and enjoying cendol, a local dessert. Faizul was clearly an entertainer, and the women— English, if I recall correctly—were excitedly asking him questions and laughing at everything he was saying. Faizul was trying his best to convince them about some of the ‘cool’ clubs and bars they should try on the island, and if they ever needed a guide, he was one of the best around, in his ‘free time’ in the evenings. I remember walking toward the

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table and introducing myself to him, saying that I was also looking for a guide to take me to clubs, which made him and the women laugh. Faizul, when we first met, was sharp-witted, cheerful, energetic, and more than a little full of himself. He had an interesting history, of having come to Malaysia intending to be a college student, but then found himself forced into indentured labor at a local factory on the island’s ‘free economic zone,’ living in one of the isolated compounds where many other migrant workers were kept. He managed to run away from the compound, to find work in the city center of Georgetown, while living in a shared room with other migrants. His familiarity with English, along with a very charismatic personality, managed to get him a job at one of the many wire-transfer agencies around the city. What was equally fascinating about Faizul’s story was that he told me he moonlighted as an escort—’boyfriend service,’ as he described it—for wealthy, mostly local women who visit Penang. Faizul’s explanation as to how he managed to do this was incredulous—he explained that women fell hard for his Bollywood actor looks and his funny and charming personality, and that local women in particular were obsessed with having a boyfriend who looks like a Bollywood star. I was never able to verify if he was actually being serious or just pulling my leg—but his level of detail in terms of the stories he told me about the women he had been with were very impressive. ∗ ∗ ∗ I reconnected with Faizul during my trip to Georgetown in 2018. He still worked at the same wire-transfer agency, but has now been promoted to a junior manager position, upon having his work permit legalized and renewed. The agency really liked his work and had been desperate to keep him, as he was a hit with the clients and customers. I was happy to see that he was still there when I had visited the agency one day. Faizul suggested that we meet for dinner at a café on Gurney Drive, in the courtyard of one of the large shopping malls there. He also promised, without me actually even asking, that he would bring one of his current ‘girlfriends’ to our meeting, which made me worry about how to conduct the interviews. But I agreed, anyway, knowing full well that Faizul usually does and says things as he sets his mind to. He was really excited to share his story and to introduce his girlfriend to me, especially after he found out about Politics of the Temporary, and the chapter about him. Faizul insisted that

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I should write a follow-up, a ‘part 2,’ about what has happened to him since then. The place we decided to meet up, thanks to Faizul’s suggestion, is a cosy, elegant looking café/bar that served local fair and alcohol—nestled in one of the many posh, high-end open-air courtyard malls on Gurney Drive. It is one of the places where Faizul would come for his ‘dates,’ and where he would also often meet potential ‘girlfriends.’ I was left wondering if he had decided to take me along on a work excursion. The café was nice, though. I had arrived earlier than our appointment time to make sure we had enough room to have a relatively private conversation. I need not have worried—the place was very clearly a meeting spot for those with discerning tastes and a curiosity for meeting strangers. The light snacks they served—curried chips and wasabe nuts—were delicious, along with siew mai (dumplings) and regional and international beers on tap. Faizul knew how to pick a place to meet. While waiting for Faizul, I was able to strike up a conversation with the servers and bartenders at the place, who were from predominantly young men from Bangladesh. They were part of the frontline of food service staff who were bearing the brunt of the ‘local cooks only’ policy, though may not be directly affected due to them working at a place that was not serving ‘authentic’ local food and was more western oriented. One of them, upon hearing about the work I was doing, was happy to share some stories, but asked that I used ‘American’ names for the staff—he wanted to be nicknamed ‘Anthony,’ in honor of Anthony Bourdain, who apparently visited this place once. How could I possibly resist? We briefly talked about local politics in Penang, and quickly shifted to the ‘Local Cooks’ policy, which Anthony, and his colleague, Mossa, both responded to by reminding me of Penang’s even older attempt to require restaurants and stalls that sold certain ‘ethnic’ food to only use local cooks. Over three years ago, Lim Guan Eng (Penang’s chief minister) established a requirement that assam laksa, char kuay teow, and hokkien mee can only be prepared and cooked by locals, a bizarre attempt to address perceptions that these culturally specific cuisines were no longer being prepared by the ‘right’ people. Anthony was of the mind that it was a cruel and jahat (bad) policy, but one that he was not too worried about, because he felt most Malaysian people that he knew were against it. We didn’t get to speak much, but I fully intend to return to the café/bar and have further conversations with the men there.

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Faizul arrived sometime after our meeting time, due to traffic from his workplace. True to his word, he was accompanied by a woman, a Tamil Indian who introduced herself as Shree, from Singapore. The two of them were dressed like they were ready to go to a nightclub—him in a sheer, button shirt and black jeans, and her in a mini-dress and painfully highheels. They made quite the striking pair, and very clearly did not mind the attention and gazes they were getting from others in the place. I was absolutely tickled but kept from grinning too much. Faizul was very excited as he introduced Shree—they had met two days ago at this very place and were dating while she was on holiday in Penang for a week. They were both going to a place called ‘Minnal’ (Lightning in Tamil), a nightclub somewhere else in Georgetown, but wanted to have dinner first. Shree said that she had been excited to meet the ‘writer’ who writes about migrants, so had agreed to come along with Faizul. We ordered food—fusion dishes that I think was a combination of Japanese, Malay and some strange mix of German, French, and Italian— which worked fantastically. Shree did much of the ordering, as she claimed to have been here a couple of times and had tried many of the items on the menu. They both ordered pints of beer, and insisted that I try one of the pilsners on tap. “So, when Faizul told me we’re meeting you, I just had to look you up. Politics of the Temporary? That’s very interesting-sounding. You’re also a professor?” Shree asked, to which I nodded and confirmed. Most of the conversation was casual and focused on the food and restaurants around us. They were both very interested in talking about clubs, bars, and places they’ve been to on the island, particularly Shree who comes to Penang often during holidays, flying in from Singapore to stay at her ‘second’ apartment on the island, in Tanjung Bungah. She was currently here with a few Chinese friends from work, who were all staying at her place but had decided to go have dinner at the hawkers’ court at the end of Gurney. Faizul interjected that it was a ‘private night for the two of them,’ with a smile. I asked Faizul how the past few years had been for him, especially with work. I knew he had been having trouble with his work permit four years ago, having run away from the factory worker’s dorm. “No more problems with the permit, brother. Look, the agency really liked me, and tried very hard to fix my permit so I could keep working for them. Eventually, I just went back to Bangladesh for a short while, and they reapplied for my permit and I came back as a legal worker. I was very

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happy to be back in Penang, as a free man!” he laughed, loudly. “I learned my lesson lah, brother… the last time I was tricked by the agents who told me I would be registering as a college student, but then cheated me and I ended up having to work at the factory, without the right documents. But, this time, I knew the agency people, they were very close and liked me, and actually helped me come back as a ‘legal’ worker. I was so happy when I could do that (come back legally).” “But all your old girlfriends must have missed you when you left, I bet,” Shree added, to which Faizul looked at her and grinned. I figured out at that point that Shree knew about Faizul’s ‘other’ job. Faizul and Shree had trouble keeping their hands off each other, which was a bit awkward and uncomfortable for me, but I pretended not to notice “So, you got promoted?” “I did! Oh, that was wonderful! I wasn’t even expecting it, but the manager there wanted me to do manage a bit more work because he was thinking of retiring soon, and wanted to train someone to take over eventually. It’s really very great that he thought I would be the right person, especially because I had been there the longest anyway. I got a bit of a raise from the promotion as well. But, brother, that’s the boring story… don’t you want to know about my other work? That’s more interesting, I promise.” Shree interjected, “Oh, yes, you should ask about his other work – he loves telling stories about all the women he’s been with.” Faizul puts his arm around her shoulder, draws close, and proclaims, “but all of you are special to me!” with a beaming smile.

References Duruz, Jean, and Gaik Cheng Khoo. 2014. Eating Together: Food, Space, and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Eatery Owners Shocked over Local Cooks Only Policy—Nation | The Star Online. n.d. Accessed June 22, 2018. https://www.thestar.com.my/news/ nation/2018/06/23/eatery-owners-shocked-over-local-cooks-only-policy/. Morris, Rosalind (ed.). 2010. Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia University Press. Sahimin, Norhidayu, Yvonne A.L. Lim, Farnaza Ariffin, Jerzy M. Behnke, John W. Lewis, and Siti Nursheena Mohd Zain. 2016. Migrant Workers in Malaysia: Current Implications of Sociodemographic and Environmental Characteristics in the Transmission of Intestinal Parasitic Infections. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 10 (11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005110.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

Making Spaces July, 2018 Walking along Jalan Burma, in Penang, I see an elderly man—he looked in his sixties—teeter oddly while riding his motorcycle, close to the edge of the road. Eventually, just as he nears a junction, the bike hits the side of the road and the man tumbles to one side, thankfully away from the traffic and toward the curb. He lays down motionless for a few moments, before slowly lifting his arms. An elderly Indian man, who had been sitting on a stool near a street-side mamak stall, is the first to notice and react, getting up and rushing to help the man. Within seconds, he is joined by a middleaged Malay woman, two younger Chinese men, a several members of the staff at the mamak stall, who may have been migrant workers from India. I was not the closest to the scene, and my own impulse to run to help went away within moments upon seeing how everyone had reacted. Instead, I slowed back down, and looked at what was transpiring, a sudden huge lump in my throat. I was struck, overwhelmed even, by this simple little moment of humanity, so much so that I had to wipe away a few tears as I walked away. I realized I was suddenly filled with a weirdly patriotic pride. I’ve been writing and complaining recently about how ‘New Malaysia’ seems to carry so many whiffs of the Old one, in a very negative way. This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0_6

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time, I am happy to say that New Malaysia also carries a fantastic element of the Old one as well. January, 2005 The Indian Ocean tsunami was one of the worst disasters the region has ever experienced in modern times. I still remember the horror of watching the official body-count racking up almost unstoppably, eventually hitting that awful number of 220,000 dead. The tsunami hit more than 10 countries, and wiped out entire villages and towns along the coasts of India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Once the relief efforts began to come in, and after the scale of the devastation became clearer, concerns rapidly moved to the needs of displaced communities, and what needs to be done to help. The rest of the world sent help—for a brief while, then attention slipped away and people forgot quickly, thinking everything was done. That is often the way with these things, after all. But the damage was lasting and recovery an impossible dream for many. But amidst the despair and devastation, I did take note of some of the powerful moments of generosity by those who have the least—the poor villagers and communities who, despite their modest accommodations, were willing and kind enough to make space for those who were in need of shelter and roof over their heads. I saw firsthand some of the greatest, but unacknowledged, examples of humanity and generosity among those who could least afford it. June 2018 Visiting the informal school for Rohingya children during the month of Ramadhan was, I confess, one of the most emotionally testing experiences for me. Not in a bad way—I was struggling to keep my feelings in check at how proud and amazed I felt with the working class, peripheral urban Malay community that was helping to make space for the Rohingya who had recently arrived. It was hard to speak with people, including children and teachers, when the entire time I had a massive lump in my throat, and a quivering voice. Being ‘Indian Malaysian’ of Hindu heritage, I’m aware that most Malaysians would find it bizarre that I would say this, but what I saw during those moments of Muslim solidarity was the quiet, solemn, and amazing generosity of the Malay community—the capacity to make space for others in need despite their own modest means, to do so

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without any expectation of reciprocity, was to my eyes unparalleled. This is not the ‘Malay’ of UMNO, or the Islam of JAIS, or any of those ideologically driven fanatical, corrupt power brokers—this was the ‘Malay’ of the working, class, the embodiment of ‘ibadah’ in its most compassionate form. ∗ ∗ ∗ We have a quite remarkable capacity to make space for others. At first glance, this is not something we even notice, let alone talk about. It’s not necessarily about being good ‘hosts’ or something similar. Most societies around the world take some sort of pride on being ‘good hosts,’ as long it’s merely a brief visit and the visitor is expected to leave in the appropriate time. Being good hosts and having the capacity and willingness to make space for others are two different things, the latter being far more profound and often underestimated due to its affinity with a mostly subaltern way of life. What does it mean to make space for others? The three anecdotes above point to forms of making space that are unique to Malaysian and Southeast Asian societies. These examples bring to mind forms of everyday cosmopolitanism that Asef Bayat writes about; the ways in which the poor, who cannot afford the privileges of being ideologically driven, seek to engage and make room for those who are different among them to ensure their peaceful and ordered lives, even those who might make be seen as inherently different, inferior, or undesirable. The more time I spend with various working class and subaltern poor communities in Malaysia, the more I am able to recognize the salience of this cosmopolitanism on their lives. It is an unspoken presence and norm, to accept those in need, and understanding that while they may be different and perhaps unsuited to ‘our’ way of life, we would still accept them and allow at least the space to live their lives. Some would argue this makes us vulnerable, less secure and prone to moral and social corruption. Perhaps in some ways, yes—this leads to tensions and potential disorders when communities are pitted against each other, and exploitation along labor and gender lines is never far away. But this cosmopolitanism—this space-making—is, for me, unquestionably one of our best values, a defining trait of our complex society.

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“Brother, we’re not that different than anyone else here… none of us want charity or generosity or special treatment. We come here to work, and we show we can work hard. I’m here, everyday, morning till night, earning my pay. Why treat me like I’m not just a person who works hard to make money?”

I hear this a lot. As do most anyone who takes the time to have a conversation with a migrant worker in Malaysia. It’s nothing extraordinary or unusual, and it probably makes sense to most of us at the most rational level. It’s about how we treat people within our society—do we want a society that creates differences and hierarchies between people based on their perceived ‘value to the nation’ or do we want to be a society that grants all members with the same set of rights and protections? What does it mean to be a citizen, and what does it mean to contribute to the economy and well-being of the social life of communities? Where do the ‘Others’ in our society—those formally excluded from basic rights and protections within our country yet still work and live here like the rest of us—fall within this spectrum? In discussions about immigration policies, laws, and governance, regardless of the audience (popular, governmental/non-governmental, or academic) I still find a frustrating tendency to conflate two very distinctive questions. This conflation leads to the very messy and harmful consequences on the lives of real people who move in search of new lives and can even be identified as a major factor as to why we adopt terrible policies and ignorant discourses around migration. The first of the conflated questions is the one about borders and security which can manifest in the form of such questions as: ‘who do we allow in or keep out?’ ‘How do we regulate the entry and exit of people?’ ‘How many people do we allow in a given period of time?’ ‘How do we secure our borders to prevent unwanted flows of people?’ The second question, which really should not even be discussed in tandem with the first but often gets embedded and entangled with the ‘security and regulation’ issue, has to do with the rights and protections afforded to non-citizens within the borders of the ‘host’ society. This takes the form of debates that revolve around one very simple question, ‘How do we treat people who are not citizens or legal residents of our nation?’ This question breaks down into different dimensions of socioeconomic life, commonly based on specific categories of people—migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, or undocumented groups. Those engaged with this question of what should be done with the foreign Other in our midst

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are concerned with issues of assimilation, integration, and incorporation, or the avoidance of such things. My reason for saying these two broad questions about migration— border management and social incorporation—should never be conflated and deserve very different spaces for discussion and debate is because, fundamentally, they pertain to very different spheres of civic and democratic governance. One is about the management of international diplomatic relationships and boundaries, while the other is about variegated participation and inclusion in social, economic, cultural, political, and civic life. The problems of conflating these two questions have very problematic ramifications, the worst falling upon the most vulnerable and precarious groups of migrants—the stateless and the undocumented. One problem is that the question of how to incorporate migrant Others into our society will almost always be undermined by the question of national security, with the results being inevitably that of dehumanization of non-citizens. This is an outcome pushed forth by immigration policies regardless of the type of migration. ‘Migration Management,’ which is largely the de-politicized way of governing displaced transnational labor, is a major factor for the establishment and enforcement of the restrictions of mobilities and rights of foreign workers in many destination countries, both in the Global North and the South (Malaysia is no different). In the case of refugee and asylum seekers, the process is characterized by a contradiction by which the increasingly ‘rights-based’ discourse for protecting and providing for asylees is confronted with the expansion of an externalized form of securitization—nations seeking to reduce and restrict the entry of displaced populations into their territories. On the one hand, formal processes and procedures to vet refugees and asylum seekers may lead to better protections and provisions, but the increased restrictions and securitization also prompt increasingly desperate flows and movements that generate ‘illegality’ and the unwanted. In any case, the experiences of many migrants are ultimately being conditioned not by the sets of democratic and civil rights that should be due to anyone within a given host society, but by these largely undemocratic and opaque external institutions and regimes of migration control. Such institutions, agencies, and associated enforcement arms perform the roles of a ‘police’ state—one which acts to restrict the political, egalitarian rights of ordinary people from exerting as citizens (insert citations). The logics of policing, as it applies to migrants, incarcerated persons, or any other ordinary citizen, operates on the twin processes of identification

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and putting people in their proper place, i.e., generating and normalizing restrictions and limitations on their capacities as political beings. A migrant asylum-seeker, refugee, undocumented or stateless, or just plain temporary, are each subject to variegated classificatory mechanisms that places formal limits upon their rights, mobility, and their temporalities (cite). A ‘good’ migrant is one who is perceived as showing gratitude toward the host community and is docile and subservient, here under the ‘proper’ channels and stays in their place. A ‘bad’ migrant is one who aspires, finds ways to navigate a restrictive system, and seeks out alternative ways to establish themselves. The type of person who is seen as the biggest threat is the migrant who aims to be outright political, that is, a person who is willing to challenge the legitimacy of restrictions and limitations of rights by taking a more radically egalitarian view of equality and dignity. While many of the migrants whose stories contained in this book are not overtly political actors—and in fact, many deliberately avoid any semblance of overt political acts—they are likely to be classified under the trope of the ‘bad’ migrant. They are constantly navigating complex institutional regimes and condition by finding ways around restrictions, rather than fighting the legitimacy of those restrictions, and they often engage in these practices that reflect subtly defiant aspirations and notions of selfhood that go against the prescriptions of their status as temporary, stateless, or undocumented.

Displaced Lives, Displaced Histories The ghosts in these stories live real, human lives. They are unrecognized, often invisible. They appear and vanish just as quickly. My decision to adopt the terminology of ghosts and ghost lives in this book is driven by feelings, expressions, meanings, and experiences drawn from the migrant persons and communities I’ve been working with over the past ten years in Malaysia. What makes the lives of temporary, precarious, and vulnerable migrants so unique in this particular Southeast Asian country that has rapidly and quietly become such an important hub for human mobility? What does it mean to become a ghost here? Perhaps the most obvious and distressful manifestation of ghost lives is the plight of the people the world has come to know as the ‘Rohingya‘— the refugees that nobody wants. In Bangladesh, where most Muslim minorities from Arakan have fled to live in camps in Cox Bazaar, they have

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become the stateless Rohingya. In Malaysia, home to the third largest population of Muslim minorities from Burma, the ‘Rohingya’ are fast becoming a ghost population, a ghost culture, one that is dying out to be replaced by new adopted identities of the mainstream societies. With the Rohingya in Malaysia, the most basic definition of ghosts—that of apparitions of the dead—is frighteningly fitting. Self-imposed denial of identities, borne out of the need to assimilate and adapt to the host society, together with the ever-present fear of persecution, detention and violence, drives the erasure of history, culture, and memory of the Rohingya. Trauma from violence and displacement affects both the old and young, so much so that bright, playful children go silent and passive suddenly when recollections of a former home resurface. “It’s better to not remember, better to let go of who we were. We were nothing after all. Just farmers and fishermen. What is there worth remembering? Better to fit in, to learn the new ways. We can be proud when we become Malay.”

In Malaysia, Rohingya communities, along with other stateless minorities from the region, don’t live as refugees, even though many may be in possession of the precious ‘UNHCR cards’ which offer protection against immigration enforcement. These communities are driven by necessity to shed their past and assume brand new identities, languages, and cultures. The ‘Rohingya’ communities that I met and engaged with were desperate to not be identified as such. They send their children to informal schools and madrasahs, so they can learn how to be ‘Malay‘—the community they identify with the most as an ideal to aspire to as successful and proud. For the newly arrived refugees, informal sanctuary settlements such as those in Selayang and Penang represent crucial hubs for them to ease into this transition. My sense, having interacted with leaders and members of the Rohingya communities around KL and Penang, the activists and social workers working closely with them, and local Malaysians, is that most see the best outcome to be complete assimilation—to not just become Malaysian, but to become culturally as Malay as possible. Or, at the very least, assimilating into the ideals of the good ‘Malay Muslim.’ It is best that they are no longer Rohingya—‘there’s nothing good associated with that race, anyway,’ as one faculty member of a local University described. It is better

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that they let their old identity, history, and culture die away, in other words. These stories of people who are variously categorized as guest workers, temporary migrants, illegal/undocumented, refugees, asylum seekers, or as stateless, can seem disparate and disconnected from one another on the surface, but they are primarily stories of displacement. Not simply in the geopolitical sense of being displaced from one’s homeland, but also in the sense of having their identities and histories displaced within the spaces and communities that are ‘hosting’ them—in this case, Malaysia. Discourses about the migrant ‘Other’ among us do not reflect any particular ‘fact’ or natural condition attributed to a group or community, but rather reflect a political desire to construct a story of Us and Them. Such discourses, which are becoming incredibly common these days and can be characterized as xenophobic, racist or even fascistic at times, are rooted in a populist redefinition of the history of ‘belonging’ and outsiders. When Donald Trump, for instance, attributes migrants as essentially ‘bad hombres,’ and characterizes asylum seekers from Central America as being part of a ‘migrant caravan’ hiding terrorists and criminals, he is not simply creating a discourse about outsiders coming in but is also in effect constructing a narrative about those already living within the borders of the United States. It fosters a suspicious attitude and prejudicial believes toward anyone who ‘looks’ different, who might ‘not be from around here.’ This displaces people internally as well as externally, by treating their histories and biographies as if they were not of the same land and community as everyone else. My use of the notion of displaced histories as part of a broader conceptualization of displacement is deliberate move to counter what has become a distracting obsession with classifying, vetting, and creating hierarchies of ‘deserving’ versus ‘undeserving,’ good versus bad, migrants, and subsequently the narrow understanding of displacement as something that occurs across the geopolitical borders of nations. Displaced histories—such as the marginalization or outright erasure of indigenous histories—work to construct the borders of a nation, both internally and externally. It is what allows claims of sovereignty and, in the case of Malaysia, ‘ownership’ of a land to be justified (through the principle of Ketuanan Melayu). The displacement of indigenous and migrant histories allows for the centering of one narrative of the ‘nation’ to become the dominant one.

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It is hard, however, to long maintain a notion of a dominant historical narrative in the context of a socio-political region as complex and hybrid as Southeast Asia—where it can safely be argued that every history is a displaced history. When told from the various standpoints of indigenous communities in the region, colonialism and subsequent nationalisms witnessed in the region may all be histories of perpetual genocide. When told from the standpoints of indentured migrant workers who came to the region throughout the colonial period and long after, ‘national development’ may well be the history of continued exploitation of the poorer countries. The question worth asking here is how would we understand the history of this ‘land’ if we were to recover and re-center many of these displaced histories?

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Index

B Bangladesh, 10, 11, 13, 14, 37, 39, 40, 42, 47, 57, 60, 62–64, 66, 69, 70, 77, 78, 83, 86, 88–93, 128, 134, 145, 148–150, 152–154, 157, 158, 166 Burma, 10, 13, 45, 62, 63, 69–71, 74, 79, 83, 86–92, 112, 145, 161, 167

C the children of the soil , 6 circuits, 9, 11, 12 climate refugees, 10, 11 contamination, 69, 126, 127, 137, 138 cosmopolitanism, 15, 16, 28, 64, 65, 67, 72–74, 89, 120, 125–127, 163 cultural hybridity, 125

D DBKL, 21, 22, 90 debt bondage, 12 disposable, 7, 14, 24, 26, 95 E escort, 17, 104–110, 117, 123, 151, 153, 156 everyday cosmopolitanism. See cosmopolitanism exclusion, 6, 26, 138 F family, 12, 17, 28, 29, 32–34, 38, 40, 43, 44, 59, 60, 62, 72, 74, 78, 88, 91–93, 98, 103–105, 107–111, 114, 118, 119, 122, 129, 131, 140, 143–146, 148–151, 153, 154 food service, 133, 134, 139, 157 forced migrants, 11, 13 forced migration, 11, 12, 24, 83, 95

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 P. Muniandy, Ghost Lives of the Pendatang, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6200-0

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INDEX

foreign cooks, 126, 127 foreign workers, 13, 25, 62, 90, 127, 133, 135, 136, 139, 143, 153, 165 G genocide, 70, 87, 169 ghost labor, 24, 27 ghost ships, 14 globalization, 9, 35 graduated sovereignty, 26 H hamba. See slaves Harapan, 126 homelands, 12, 95 humanitarian, 83, 84 hyper-construction, 26 hyper-mobility, 9 I indenture, 8, 35 indentured servitude, 12 informality, 54, 72, 73, 120 invisible migrants, 14 J Jalan Alor, 64–66, 112, 153, 155 K kampung , 27, 28, 34, 78, 88 kepala, 27, 75 ketua, 75, 81 kongsi, 24–30, 34–40, 42, 47, 52–56, 58–64, 67, 73, 75, 82, 127 L ladyboy, 115, 117, 120, 122

M maids, 13, 122, 143 makeshift, 24, 26, 27, 31, 38, 39, 58, 62, 72, 73 Malay, 6, 27, 28, 34, 40, 41, 51, 52, 54, 58, 71, 72, 74, 76–78, 81, 84–86, 88, 90, 91, 94, 111, 129, 135, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 150, 154, 158, 161, 162, 167 Malayness. See Malay 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), 39, 46

N nusantara, 5

O Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA), 50

P Pakatan Harapan. See Harapan parlors, 112, 113, 155 pasar, 27, 33, 61, 73–77, 79–82, 86, 88, 89 pasar borong , 27, 73, 76 PATI, 15, 63, 89, 135 pendatang, 13, 14 precarious labor, 12 precarity, 11, 120 Puasa, 60 Pudu, 40, 66, 89, 144, 151

R Ramadhan, 60, 162 refugee settlements, 127 reproductive work, 12 Rohingya, 6, 10, 11, 13, 17, 24, 27, 29, 59, 60, 64, 69–87, 89,

INDEX

91–93, 95, 113, 114, 127, 135, 139–141, 145, 146, 162, 166, 167 rojak, 40, 125, 126

S sex-work, 29, 105, 109, 110 Slavery, 8 slaves, 9, 35, 96 slums, 15, 33–35, 43, 58 sotong kangkung , 127, 141, 147 subaltern cosmopolitanism, 26, 28 subaltern mobility, 10 subcontracting, 23, 36 sub-subcontracting, 23, 24 syndicates, 13, 27, 52, 73, 75, 106

177

T Tamil Nadu, 29 Temporariness, 15 temporary labor migrants, 14, 15 Thailand, 14, 69–71, 88, 91, 112, 114, 116, 117, 121, 162 trafficking, 14, 27, 39, 48, 133 Tun Razak Exchange (TRX), 22, 23, 39 U UNHCR, 69–71, 83, 86, 88, 146, 167 W waste, 12, 27, 42, 59