Becoming Malay: The Politics of the Cham Migration to Malaysia

Abstract

AbstractThis paper is about the Cham migration to Malaysia. The Cham people are descendants of Champa, which existed along the central coast of Vietnam between the second and nineteenth centuries. The Muslim Cham came to Malaysia as refugees from mainland Southeast Asia after the establishment of the communist regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s. This paper is one of the outcomes of a nine‐month study among the Cham that initially looked for stories of a hypothetical community called the ‘Zomia of the sea’. However, the research findings instead indicated that the Cham were especially selected by the Malaysian authorities and brought into that country for some political purpose. The paper discusses the political reasons behind the acceptance of the Cham people by the Malaysian nation as Melayu‐Champa and examines the process of the Cham refugees' integration into the Malay community. It concludes that the Cham refugees were able to rearticulate who they were by reinterpreting their lost polity of Champa as forming part of an ancient Malay civilization. This was made possible by their being included in the state discourse of the greater Malay world and Malay superiority.