Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2015/04 school and upper school. All children under five were regarded as Kindergarten and were washed, fed and napped at the school. Lessons in Vietnamese, English and Mathematics were given to all children in middle and upper school, each child engaging in at least three lessons a day. As a Christian school, each day also included a time of thanksgiving, prayer and teaching from the Bible. The brevity of this paper means a critique of religious motives when working among vulnerable communities will not be given. However, all parents gave consent to their children receiving Christian education before enrolling them. To recognise certain acts as acts of citizenship requires the demonstration that these acts produce subjects as citizens.41 During my fieldwork I observed children performing scripts they had written, so to speak. These performances were intersubjective, local, global and dialogical in nature - all the characteristics of acts of citizenship. For instance, through the practise of prayer, children in the Preah Thnov community were able to create a scene and enter it as actors. They acted out their belonging to a Christian community by identifying with others’ experiences of the world and responding with ‘activist-like’ behaviour, voicing their political desires through the use of prayer. From the visits of international English-teaching volunteers to the school, children were able to learn of world affairs and see beyond their own geography. Ideas around good governance were exposed to the children as volunteers and visitors openly discussed situations of life at home of war or political discord in their own country. During these discussions which children listened and participated in, the interstitial space of the classroom was claimed as political, which gave rise to further acts. As outsiders in Cambodia, children who live on the margins largely lack interconnectivity. However, in this context they were given opportunities to interact with others and reciprocated an affinity with them as Christians. Through daily prayer the children prayed for themselves, each other’s needs, their country and families. Building a daily dialogue with a God who they believed listened to them seemed to give children freedom and confidence to speak. On one occasion at the end of school time, a 12 year-old boy led the other children in praying for the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments, that they would not be politically corrupt that they would pursue justice and their people would be protected. Another girl who had heard from an international visitor about the war in Ukraine prayed for the war to end with Russia and peace to exist between the two nations. Children’s convictions were legitimised by hearers who through the use of the Hebrew word ‘amen’, meaning ‘so be it’, created an intersubjective union, and arguably allowed a moment where children could subvert their uncertain status and belong to an alternative citizenry where their speech was meaningful. The examples above are important additions to the discourse on statelessness as they show that statelessness does not always render acts as meaningless. Whilst voicing their political desires, children were developing a consciousness that could later translate into political action to challenge their own marginality and status. An observation that supports this possibility was the way children displayed confidence to speak about their beliefs outside of the school. For example, when the team of teachers visited Preah Thnov to speak to parents about their child’s progression in school, one parent was evidently anxious and restless about personal circumstances. In a dramatic reversal of traditional hierarchical power structures, the child wanted to pray for her mother who agreed. The child prayed for her mother to have peace, wisdom, help and protection. This account shows that prayer was being used as a tool to challenge disharmony and declare a desire for a change in circumstances. In Cambodia, a state often described as authoritarian42 with the absence of strong democratic channels, these acts of citizenship could develop an alternative consciousness of citizenship among 41 Isin (n 9). RJ Hanlon, ‘Constitutional Democracies or Authoritarian Regimes: Dysfunctional Law and Human Rights in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Thailand’, presented at the Canadian Political Science Association 80 th Annual Conference, University of British 42 5