PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Undocumented: An examination of legal identity and education provision for children in Malaysia Tharani Loganathan ID1*, Zhie X. Chan ID1, Fikri Hassan1, Zhen Ling Ong ID2, Hazreen Abdul Majid3,4 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence-based Practice, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2 Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom, 3 Centre for Population Health, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 4 Faculty of Public Health, Department of Nutrition, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia * drtharani@um.edu.my Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Loganathan T, Chan ZX, Hassan F, Ong ZL, Majid HA (2022) Undocumented: An examination of legal identity and education provision for children in Malaysia. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0263404. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0263404 Editor: Rogis Baker, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, MALAYSIA Received: November 13, 2021 Accepted: January 18, 2022 Published: February 2, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404 Copyright: © 2022 Loganathan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: To protect the respondent’s anonymity, ethical constraints prevent the data set from being made public. Data may contain personally identifiable or sensitive Education is a fundamental human right. Yet there remain gaps in our understanding of undocumented children in Malaysia and their vulnerabilities in education access. This study aims to describe and contextualise undocumented children in Malaysia and their access to education. We conducted a desk review and in-depth interviews with 33 key stakeholders from June 2020 to March 2021. Framework analysis was conducted. Salient themes were geographical location and legal identity in terms of citizenship and migration status. We found that the lack of legal identity and non-recognition by the State was the root cause of vulnerability, experienced uniformly by undocumented populations in Malaysia. Only undocumented children with Malaysian parents or guardians can enter public schools under the Malaysian government’s ‘Zero Reject Policy’. Most undocumented and non-citizen children must rely on informal education provided by alternative or community learning centres that typically lack standardised curricula, resources, and accreditation for education progression beyond primary levels. Nevertheless, as non-citizen groups are diverse, certain groups experience more privilege, while others are more disadvantaged in terms of the quality of informal education and the highest level of education accessible. In Peninsular Malaysia, a very small proportion of refugees and asylum-seekers may additionally access tertiary education on scholarships. In Sabah, children of Indonesian migrant workers have access to learning centres with academic accreditation supported by employers in plantations and the Indonesian Consulate, whereas Filipino migrants who were initially recognised as refugees are now receiving little government or embassy support. Stateless Rohingya refugees in Peninsular Malaysia and Bajau Laut children at Sabah are arguably the most marginalised and have the poorest educational opportunities at basic literacy and numeracy levels, despite the latter receiving minimal governmental education support. Implementing a rightsbased approach towards education would mean allowing all children equal opportunity to access and thrive in high-quality schools. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263404 February 2, 2022 1 / 26