‘Diversification’ and ‘Privatisation’: Securing Insecurities in the Receiving Country of Malaysia

Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, the numbers of documented and undocumented transnational migrant men and women have grown exponentially in the labour receiving country of Malaysia. This article demonstrates that the Malaysian state pursues a dualpronged strategy of ‘diversifying’ migrant nationalities and 'privatising’ security to frame and manage public anxieties wrought by economic dependence on, and the fear and resentment of, low wage migrant women and men workers. The dual-pronged strategy foregrounds even as it collapses racial, gender and class differences between migrants of different nationalities. State pursuit of this strategy threatens to naturalise the dehumanisation not only of ‘outsiders’, but also those insiders who volunteer in the aggressive protection of their nation against migrants.