PLOS ONE Undocumented: An examination of legal identity and education provision for children in Malaysia education to this community, as providers would need to cater to their semi-nomadic lifestyle and lack of familiarity with the national language. Nevertheless, several local NGOs attend to the community’s basic educational needs by operating mobile teaching units that service the settlements [21]. One local NGO even converted a floating Bajau house into a learning centre. This interviewee stated that obtaining a safe space for a school is a major challenge faced by NGOs in helping the community. “Most of these houses on the water don’t have an official status. So that is one of our difficulties as well, and also the difficulties faced by others . . . providing a space for their schooling, when there is no space available and no place to study.” EP02 This participant explained that his learning centre uses a participatory approach for capacity building via peer-instructors, creating a group of trained adolescents to instruct younger children on basic lessons. Due to resource constraints, learning centres are unable to accommodate all children, permitting only the eldest child to attend with the hope that they would instruct their younger siblings. Nevertheless, the NGO activists emphasise that this community’s educational needs remain largely unmet. Undocumented indigenous people in the interior. Even though poorly documented indigenous children have access to government schools through the Zero Reject Policy, dropout rates for the indigenous are higher than the national average. The MOE has designed a contextualised curriculum for these communities. In addition, a special model school (K9) offers residential facilities for indigenous children to minimise dropouts [3]. Interviewees informed that even with these provisions, geographical and cultural barriers, and lower school readiness might hinder access to quality education for indigenous children. Discussion The lack of legal identity and non-recognition by the State is the root cause of vulnerability, experienced uniformly by undocumented populations in Malaysia. Without identity documents, an undocumented person is not eligible to enjoy a broad range of human rights including freedom of movement and access to health, education and social services provided by the State, commonly seen as citizenship entitlements [83,84]. Yet, in line with the intersectionality theory [26], it is important to recognise the diversity within the non-citizen populations—they are not homogenous. Certain groups experience more privileged status, while others are more disadvantaged. For example, the Cham refugees escaping the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Bosnian refugees were granted permanent resident status in Malaysia and allowed to integrate locally [55,85–87]. Inconsistencies in treatment may relate to the political context, the community’s cultural and religious ties with Malaysia or their socio-economic status in their home country [88]. In this paper, we highlight the disparities experienced by Rohingya refugees. Despite being the largest refugee group in Malaysia, the Rohingya have experienced a protracted refugee situation [89,90], being denied residency, work, and education rights, while being continually marginalised in the Malaysian context. Similarly, Filipino migrants in Sabah have a complex migration history initially recognised as refugees but are now receiving little protection [91,92]. Their status is contrasted with that of Indonesian migrant workers that are supported by employers and the Indonesian Consulate in Sabah [93]. For undocumented children with Malaysian parentage, the lack of legal identity can be partially attributed to gender-discriminatory citizenship laws. Malaysia is one of three countries besides the Bahamas and Barbados, that deny men equal rights in conferring citizenship to PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404 February 2, 2022 18 / 26