28 Allerton desires for the nationality of their choice. Statelessness, as an international issue of concern, tends to be approached primarily in terms of law and policy. As such, it might be assumed that the primary obstacle the stateless wish to overcome (in whatever way possible) is their statelessness. However, in order to write an ethnographic account of statelessness, we need to consider the ways in which, in real people’s lives, ‘statelessness’ might merge with wider issues of (il)legality and belonging. Moreover, as I shall argue, we need to take seriously people’s sense of exclusion from the nationality to which they feel they belong. 2 Children of Migrants in Sabah In Malaysia, there are four main groups of people who are described as either stateless or at risk of statelessness: Rohingya refugees from Burma, Malaysians of Indian descent, members of the traditionally nomadic, boat-dwelling Bajau Laut/ Sama Dilaut community, and the children of refugees and migrants in Sabah, north Borneo. A glance at many advocacy publications on statelessness shows that children of migrants in Sabah are frequently mentioned as an example of a stateless population.3 However, determining the precise legal status of many of these children is in fact extremely complicated, as I myself am only just beginning to discover. The state known today as Sabah has long been connected to the wider Southeast Asian and South China Sea region through trade and migration routes.4 However, the migrations that are most relevant to the legal status of the children I know began in the early 1970s and continued through the 1980s, when Muslim refugees from the civil war in the Southern Philippines arrived in Sabah.5 At the same time, the numbers of Indonesian workers moving to Sabah to work in the timber industry and on oil palm plantations began to steadily increase. Since then, as Sabah’s economy has become increasingly reliant on migrant labour, and as family members have come to the state to join earlier migrants, the numbers of ‘foreigners’ in the state have rapidly grown. In the last census (2010), non-Malaysian citizens accounted for 27.81% of 3 Plan and UNHCR, Under the Radar and Under Protected: The Urgent Need to Address Stateless Children’s Rights (2012) 10. 4 See Bilson Kurus, ‘Migrant Labor: The Sabah Experience’ (1998) 7 Asian and Pacific Migration 200, 281-295; Koji Miyazaki (ed), Making of multi-cultural Sabah (Tokyo, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2002). 5 Azizah Kassim, ‘Filipino Refugees in Sabah: State Responses, Public Stereotypes and the Dilemma over their Future’ (2009) 47 Southeast Asian Studies 58. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 26-34