Homegrown Statelessness in Malaysia persons in Malaysia. A potential list of persons to interview was developed by mining current case law of lawyers who work on cases involving stateless persons, doing an internet search of NGOs that service and advocate for and on behalf of stateless persons, and discussing with Lawyers for Liberty and a fellow researcher (PhD candidate conducting sociological research on stateless persons) who would be ideal participants. I came into contact with interview participants by making cold call introductions via e-mail or WhatsApp (a social media app). Introductions to me and my research project were also made by Lawyers for Liberty by e-mail or WhatsApp. Some of the interviewees, after speaking with them, then directed me to contact other persons that they thought would be able to provide useful information for the study (resulting in a snowball effect) including identification of stateless persons. A few stateless persons contacted Lawyers for Liberty on their own volition after they discovered the study was being undertaken, wanting their voices to be heard. Interviews were conducted in several locations in Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Selangor, Klang, Penang, Miri and Kota Kinabalu, covering both West (peninsular) and East Malaysia (Borneo island). As some interviewees did not speak English, a research assistant with Lawyers for Liberty accompanied me to provide legal and linguistic translation. In a few instances, I was able to communicate with persons using Hokkien (Chinese). Many of the interviewees who are not stateless persons have extensive experience working with stateless persons. 41 Others conducted research on the issue of statelessness or provided advocacy and lobbying support. 42 The study has anonymised the names of the interviewees to protect the identities of the stateless persons that are referred to in the stories and information shared with this research project. Lawyers and NGOs were also anonymised as their identification could lead to the identification of a particular stateless person or case. Many stateless persons interviewed have pending cases and this research does not wish to interfere with their chances of success. Consequently, an anonymised identification code was assigned to each interviewee (a number and an alphabetical code: L for lawyers; NGO for NGOs; PL for paralegal; A for academic; S for stateless person; PhD for PhD candidate) and will be used to cite the interviewees in this work. In all, 18 stateless persons discussed their personal cases with me, the paralegals discussed 2 cases, the lawyers 20 cases, the NGOs 16 cases and the academics 4 cases totalling 60 cases of statelessness documented in this paper. This study acknowledges that more stateless persons and NGO representatives could have been interviewed. However, the study’s initial findings still provide an important picture of how statelessness is conceived in 41 42 One paralegal explained he had helped approximately 50 persons within a nine-year period to obtain citizenship and that in his estimation, only 20 percent successfully obtained citizenship: Appendix Table 3, Interview with 1PL. Another NGO representative said she had personally helped over 100 children and only two people had obtained citizenship successfully: Appendix Table 3, Interview with 10NGO. One lawyer discussed taking 10 cases through the courts within a ten-year period with mixed success rates: Appendix Table 3, Interview with 5L. The PhD student interviewed conducted over 100 interviews of stateless persons, mainly in the state of Sabah: Appendix Table 3, Interview with 1PHD. One NGO interviewee explained that they did not meet with stateless persons personally but work with organisations that do and also engaged in lobbying and advocating for stateless persons with the government: Appendix Table 3, Interview with 6NGO. 103