PLOS ONE Undocumented: An examination of legal identity and education provision for children in Malaysia Results Study results are presented in two sections. In the first section, we describe categories of children at risk of educational exclusion. The second section describes education provisions for undocumented children in Malaysia. We describe different undocumented and non-citizen by their location in Malaysia based on our final framework (See Fig 1). Children at risk of educational exclusion Stateless and undocumented children in Malaysia. The terms “stateless” and “undocumented” tend to be loosely defined and used interchangeably. For this paper, we use the definition of statelessness from the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons as “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law” [13]. As such, the central concept of statelessness relates to whether a person has nationality or citizenship. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to nationality”[1]. However, citizenship has been described as a privilege, and the attribution of citizenship by birth and rules for naturalisation varies by country. Malaysian citizenship laws are complex and certain children fall through the loopholes, thus are at-risk of statelessness. On the other hand, being “undocumented” encapsulates broader scenarios that may apply to rightful citizens of the host country, non-citizens (foreign nationals), persons of undetermined nationality and those who are not citizens of any country (stateless), regardless of their place of birth (See Fig 2). In this study, we define an undocumented person as “a person who Fig 1. Different categories of undocumented and non-citizens children in Malaysia by location and legal identities. Note: Malaysia is comprised of Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia, separated by the South China Sea. Sabah is one of the states in East Malaysia. Reprinted from http://www.ofo.my/ under a CC by license, with permission from OFO Tech Sdn Bhd, original copyright 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404.g001 PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404 February 2, 2022 5 / 26