Gender, “Aliens”, and the National Imaginary in Contemporary Malaysia

Abstract

Over the last few decades, Malaysia has welcomed foreign workers into those sectors of the economy that have suffered chronic low-skilled and semi-skilled labour shortages. Coming from Malaysia's poorer neighbours (particularly Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines), these migrants occupy an ambivalent place in Malaysia's national development. This paper argues that not only is contemporary Malaysia refashioning its national identity in response to outsiders, who are deemed the new undesirable aliens, as argued by others recently, but this reconstituted national imaginary is profoundly ethno-nationalist, class-based, sexualized, and gendered.