2. Contextualising citizenship and statelessness in Cambodia Many situations of statelessness have deep roots in countries’ histories and socio-political developments. The modern understanding of statelessness is closely tied to the legal construct of nationality or citizenship. Cambodia inherited the nation-state idea from French colonial rule and has since struggled to adapt it to the realities of a culturally and ethnically diverse country. Scholars have argued that colonialism produced the main contours of the modern Cambodian nation and Khmer nationalism.7 The idea of jiet in Khmer (nation) was popularised and given new meanings. In particular, it was increasingly used to signify both race and nation – ethnicity and the culture of the majority became the primary underpinnings of an emerging national identity.8 After independence, this conception was carried into a post-colonial nation-building project, including by reformulating regimes for defining and administering citizenship.9 Prince Sihanouk conceived a typology of Cambodia’s cultural and ethnic diversity, identifying as part of the nation the indigenous tribes in the mountainous areas as Khmer Loeu (Highland Khmer), the Cham as Khmer Islam, and the Khmer minority residing in the Mekong Delta (now part of Vietnam) as Khmer Krom (Lowland Khmer). This typology distinguished between groups that were considered to be part of the ‘Khmer’ nation and long-standing immigrant groups that were excluded from it, including ethnic Vietnamese but also Chinese resident populations. Ehrentraut observes that ‘these categories continue to be widely used today and shape Cambodian thinking about nation and citizenship’.10 These rationales manifested in the ways post-independence Cambodia regulated the acquisition of citizenship. One year after independence, the government amended the former colonial laws that 7 See Edwards, Penny (2007) Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 8 See also Thun Theara and Keo Duong (2024) ‘Ethnocentrism of Victimhood: Tracing the Discourses of Khmer Ethnicity in Precolonial and Colonial Cambodia’, Asian Studies Review. 9 See Ehrentraut, Stefan (2013) ‘Challenging Khmer Citizenship: Minorities, the State, and the International Community in Cambodia’, doctoral thesis, University of Potsdam. 10 Ehrentraut, Stefan (2011) ‘Perpetually Temporary: Citizenship and Ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(5): 779-798. 3