78 Cheong I identified 3 main factors contributing to respondents’ instrumental attitude towards citizenship: the material constraints imposed on their life chances—particularly in the areas of education, employment, and property ownership; the lack of freedom of expression or governmental accountability; and the impossibility of fitting in to the state-defined idea of Bruneian nationality as tied to the Muslim Malay identity. Though the government-imposed restrictions which affected all aspects of people’s lives, the state’s emphasis on the selective withholding of material privileges allowed respondents to see themselves in a sense as free from obligation to the state. Instead of regarding being part of the Bruneian national community as performing one’s civic duties in a mutually accountable individual-state relationship, respondents instead viewed citizenship as a mechanism by which the government restricted a unidirectional flow of material entitlements to the individual. 4 Canadian Citizenship: Symbolic and Inclusive6 Confronted by these wide-ranging disadvantages stemming from Brunei’s restrictive citizenship policies, many stateless Chinese turned to out-migration as a strategy for improving their life trajectories. When asked about their reasons for obtaining Canadian citizenship, however, respondents did not focus on the material benefits that were now open to them. Rather, I observed a marked shift in the ways in which respondents talked about Canadian citizenship and their roles as citizens in the Canadian context. As our conversations progressed to their experiences in Canada, respondents’ associations with citizenship moved away from material entitlements and towards more symbolic ideas of democratic freedom, civic participation, and the chance to finally belong to a nation. For example, one respondent stated, ‘[s]o I think the biggest difference [between Brunei and Canada] is that here you can say you are a Canadian. And we are pretty proud once we have a country to call our own, because we were never wanted [in Brunei].’ To account for this change, we must look to the broader institutional contexts in which these respondents’ attitudes developed. Exposed to state-led discourses describing Canadian citizenship as entailing both rights and responsibilities, stateless Chinese-Bruneian immigrants reiterated ideals of civic participation and democratic freedom, and only considered matters of material benefits secondarily. In addition to celebrating their newfound sense of empowerment through the ability to vote and express their 6 Brubaker, 2006 (n 5). tilburg law review 19 (2014) 74-80