Impossible children: illegality and excluded belonging among children of migrants in Sabah, East Malaysia

This article makes a case for attending to the specificities of child illegality in migrant contexts. This is not simply because children have been left out of previous accounts, but also because their status as minors makes both their citizenship and their illegality different to that of adults. The analysis is based on research with children born to migrants in the state of Sabah, East Malaysia. I argue that such children are configured as Sabah’s impossible children, and that this configuration influences their experiences of illegality and exclusion in distinctive ways. From a young age, c... Mehr ...