Rethinking citizenship from Southeast Asia: Recognition, belonging, and unequal rights
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21831/jc.v23i2.102506Keywords:
Citizenship, Southeast Asia, recognition, belonging, unequal rightsAbstract
Citizenship scholarship in Southeast Asia examines the uneven relationships between legal membership, social recognition, and access to rights. This editorial argues that the region offers a basis for reconsidering how these relationships are produced across borders, institutions, and generations. Drawing on studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, and transnational settings, it examines customary belonging, documentary exclusion, and differentiated pathways towards membership. Recognition becomes consequential through the institutions and intermediaries that translate social attachments into enforceable claims, while similar attachments can generate unequal outcomes. The discussion connects these processes to civic education, showing why participation, cultural recognition, and national identification require examination alongside the conditions under which rights become accessible. It proposes a comparative research agenda attentive to administrative encounters, changing biographies, and the distribution of authority within communities. Southeast Asian experiences contribute to citizenship theory by explaining how belonging acquires, loses, or fails to secure institutional and political significance
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