¹ Crisp, Jeff, Obi, Naoko, and Umlas, Liz, But When Will Our Turn Come? A Review of the Implementation of UNHCR’s Urban Refugee Policy in Malaysia (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Policy Development and Evaluation Service, 2012), p. 1 Google Scholar.

² Nyers, Peter, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 6 Google Scholar. See also, Malkki, Liisa, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 8 Google Scholar.

³ Nyers, Rethinking Refugees, p. 45.

⁴ See, for example, Aradau, Claudia, Huysmans, Jef, and Squire, Vicky, ‘Acts of European citizenship: a political sociology of mobility’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 48:4 (2010), pp. 945–965 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darling, Jonathan and Squire, Vicky, ‘The “minor” politics of rightful presence: Justice and relationality in city of sanctuary’, International Political Sociology, 7 (2013), pp. 59–74 Google Scholar; Isin, Engin and Nielsen, Greg (eds), Acts of Citizenship (London and New York: Zed Books, 2008)Google Scholar; Johnson, Heather, ‘The other side of the fence: Reconceptualizing the “camp” and migration zones at the borders of Spain’, International Political Sociology, 7 (2013), pp. 75–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malkki, Purity and Exile; McNevin, Anne, ‘Ambivalence and citizenship: Theorising the political claims of irregular migrants’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41:2 (2013), pp. 182–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mezzadra, Sandro, ‘The right to escape’, Ephemera, 4:3 (2004), pp. 267–275 Google Scholar; Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Brett, ‘Né qui, né altrove – migration, detention, desertion: a dialogue’, Borderlands Ejournal, 2:1 (2003)Google Scholar; Moulin, Carolina and Nyers, Peter, ‘“We live in a country of UNHCR” – refugee protests and global political society’, International Political Sociology, 1:4 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nyers, Peter, ‘Abject cosmopolitanism: the politics of protection in the anti-deportation movement’, Third World Quarterly, 24:6 (2003), pp. 1069–1093 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nyers, Rethinking Refugees; Papadopolous, D., Stephenson, N., and Tsianos, V., Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the Twenty First Century (London: Pluto Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Puumula, Eeva, ‘Political life beyond accommodation and return: Rethinking relations between the political, the international and the body’, Review of International Studies, 39:4 (2013), pp. 949–968 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rygiel, Kim, ‘Bordering solidarities: Migrant activism and the politics of movement and camps at Calais’, Citizenship Studies, 15:1 (2011), pp. 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Squire, Vicky (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity (New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar; Scheel, Stephan, ‘Autonomy of migration despite its securitisation? Facing the terms and conditions of biometric bordering’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41:3 (2013), pp. 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheel, Stephan and Ratfisch, Philipp, ‘Refugee protection meets migration management: UNHCR as a global police of populations’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40:6 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stierl, Maurice, ‘“No one is illegal!” Resistance and the politics of discomfort’, Globalisations, 9:3 (2012), pp. 425–438 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tazzioli, Martina, Spaces of Governmentality: Autonomous Migration and the Arab Uprisings (London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2015)Google Scholar; Tazzioli, Martina and Walters, William, ‘The sight of migration: Governmentality, visibility, and Europe’s contested borders’, Global Society (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

⁵ See, for example, McNevin ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’; Puumula, ‘Political life’; Rygiel, ‘Bordering solidarities’; Squire, Contested Politics.

⁶ Foucault, Michel, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 329 Google Scholar. The article adopts a Foucaultian approach not in the sense of employing Foucault or applying his concepts, but in the sense of developing ideas and engaging with concepts and practices in a Foucaultian manner (see, for example, Walters, William, ‘Foucault and frontiers: Notes on the birth of the humanitarian border’, in Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke (eds), Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 158 Google Scholar). Thus, for instance, the article does not seek to understand what power or resistance means, or to define what it is, because concepts have no fixed meaning but are in the process of being created and transformed.

⁷ The article is based on fieldwork undertaken in Kuala Lumpur between 2012–13. I lived in Malaysia from 2011–13, during which time I worked at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. During the last six months of this period, I volunteered for the UNHCR, as an English teacher in a (Chin) refugee learning centre.

⁸ Scheel, Cf. Stephan and Squire, Vicky, ‘Forced migrants as illegal migrants’, in Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Kathy Long, and Nando Sigona (eds), The Oxford Handbook on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 191 Google Scholar.

⁹ Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 10; Hedman, Eva-Lotta, ‘Refuge, governmentality and citizenship: Capturing “illegal migrants” in Malaysia and Thailand’, Government and Opposition, 42:2 (2008), pp. 367–368 Google Scholar; Nah, Alice, ‘Struggling with (il)legality: the indeterminate functioning of Malaysia’s borders for asylum seekers, refugees, and stateless persons’, in Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr (eds), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 35–36 Google Scholar; Somwong, Pranom and Huberlant, Marie, Undocumented Migrants and Refugees in Malaysia: Raids, Detention and Discrimination, No. 489/2 (International Federation for Human Rights/Suaram, 2008), p. 9 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Refugee camps did exist in Malaysia at the time of the so-called Vietnamese boat people refugee crisis. Most of these refugees were resettled in the West. The last refugee camp closed in 2001.

¹¹ Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 1; Hedman ‘Refuge’, pp. 371–2; Ministry of Home Affairs, ‘The People’s Volunteer Force’, available at: {http://www.rela.gov.my/index.php/en/maklumat-rela/peranan-fungsi} accessed 13 January 2016.

¹² See, for example, Amnesty International, Trapped: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Malaysia (London: Amnesty International Publications, 2010)Google Scholar; Davidson, Helen, ‘Malaysia accused of arresting asylum seekers and refugees’, The Guardian (4 September 2013)Google Scholar; Hedman, ‘Refuge’, pp. 367–8; Smith, Amy, In Search of Survival and Sanctuary in the City: Refugees from Myanmar/Burma in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Bangkok: International Rescue Committee, 2012)Google Scholar.

¹³ Rajaram, Prem Kumar and Grundy-Warr, Carl, ‘The irregular migrant as Homo Sacer: Migration and detention in Australia, Malaysia and Thailand’, International Migration, 42:1 (2004), p. 50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ For Agamben, the refugee is a ‘limit-concept’ that challenges the prevailing account of politics defined in terms of citizens, rights, and the nation-state. In this respect, the figure of the refugee could stand at the basis of a ‘coming political community’ beyond the nation-state. See Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1995), p. 78 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See McNevin, ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’, pp. 194–5, for a critique of this particular point. See fn. 4 for a more general body of literature.

¹⁶ Nesadurai, Helen, ‘Malaysia’s conflict with the Philippines and Indonesia over labour migration: Economic security, interdependence and conflict trajectories’, The Pacific Review, 26:1 (2013), p. 93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spaan, Ernst, van Naerssen, Ton, and Kohl, Gerard, ‘Re-Imagining borders: Malay identity and Indonesian migrants in Malaysia’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 93:2 (2002), p. 166 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Quoted in Mydans, Seth, ‘A growing source of fear for migrants in Malaysia’, The New York Times (10 December 2007)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Hedman, ‘Refuge’, p. 366.

¹⁹ Foucault, Michel, ‘Truth and power’, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 119 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Michel Foucault, ‘Two Lectures’, Power/Knowledge, p. 98.

²¹ Colin Gordon, ‘Afterword’, Power/Knowledge, p. 256.

²² Whilst a number of publications discuss both governance and resistance, their relationship is often not explored. See, for example, McNevin, ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’; Moulin and Nyers, ‘Country of UNHCR’; Puumula, ‘Political life’; Scheel and Ratfisch, ‘Refugee protection’; Squire, ‘Contested politics’; Walters, ‘Foucault and frontiers’; Tazzioli and Walters, ‘Sight of migration’.

²³ Foucault, ‘Truth and power’, p. 97.

²⁴ In fact, most states in the region have not signed the UN Refugee Convention, including Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

²⁵ Cf. Moulin and Nyers, ‘Country of UNHCR’.

²⁶ Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 17.

²⁷ Compare William Walters’ article on humanitarian borders, in which he refers to Foucaultian scholarship that shows that knowledges, techniques, and strategies were invented across a great variety of institutional sites and for multiple ends. He suggests approaching humanitarianism ‘as a field which exists in a permanent state of co-option, infiltration but also provocation with the state (but also with other supranational and international entities as well).’ See Walters, ‘Foucault and frontiers’, pp. 148–9.

²⁸ See, for example, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Factsheet: Refugees in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: UNHCR). According to the Factsheet, ‘[u]nlike migrants, refugees do not choose to leave their countries … The key difference between economic migrants and refugees is that economic migrants enjoy the protection of their home countries; refugees do not.’

²⁹ Nah, ‘Struggling with (il)legality’, p. 55.

³⁰ Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population, Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–78, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 48 Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 65 Google Scholar.

³¹ Cf. Scheel and Ratfisch, ‘Refugee protection’, p. 928.

³² Ibid., p. 926.

³³ See Moulin and Nyers, ‘Country of UNHCR’, for a different account of the contestation of the UNHCR’s monopoly of knowledge production, whereby refugees reappropriate the category of the refugee direct resistance to the UNHCR.

³⁴ On ‘reversibility’, see Tazzioli and Walters, ‘Sight of migration’; on ‘reinscription’, see McNevin ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’.

³⁵ Puumula, ‘Political life’, pp. 955–6; see also Darby, Phillip, ‘Pursuing the political: a postcolonial rethinking of relations international’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 33:1 (2004), pp. 1–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ McNevin, ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’, p. 193. On ‘agency’, see, for example, Moulin and Nyers, ‘Country of UNHCR’; Nyers, ‘Abject cosmopolitanism’; Rygiel, ‘Bordering solidarities’; on ‘autonomy’, see, for example, Mezzadra and Neilson, ‘Né qui’; Mezzadra, Sandro, ‘The gaze of autonomy: Capitalism, migration and social struggles’, in Vicky Squire (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity (New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar; Papadopolous et al., Escape Routes.

³⁷ On ‘ambivalence’, see McNevin, ‘Ambivalence and citizenship’; on ‘irregularity’, see Squire ‘Contested politics’.

³⁸ Darling, Jonathan, ‘Another letter from the Home Office: Reading the material politics of asylum’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32:3 (2014), pp. 485 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 495.

³⁹ Bennett, Jane, ‘The force of things: Steps toward an ecology of matter’, Political Theory, 32:3 (2004), p. 355 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Darling, ‘Another letter’, p. 490.

⁴⁰ Johnson, Cf. Leif, ‘Material interventions on the US–Mexico border: Investigating a sited politics of migrant solidarity’, Antipode, 47:5 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Nah, Alice, ‘Seeking refuge in Kuala Lumpur: Self-help strategies to reduce vulnerability amongst refugees’, in S. G. Yeoh (ed.), The Other Kuala Lumpur: Living in the Shadows of a Globalising Southeast Asian City (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 153 Google Scholar.

⁴² Ibid., pp. 156–7. See also Hoffstaedter, Gerhard, ‘Place-making: Chin refugees, citizenship and the state in Malaysia’, Citizenship Studies, 18:8 (2014), p. 878 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 21.

⁴⁴ Moulin and Nyers, ‘Country of UNHCR’, p. 363.

⁴⁵ See UNHCR Malaysia, ‘About Project Self Help’, available at: {http://www.unhcr.org.my/Project_Self_Help-@-About_Project_Self_Help.aspx} accessed 13 January 2016.

⁴⁶ Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 22.

⁴⁷ Wubin, Zhuang, Chin Refugees: A Life in Kuala Lumpur (Asian Geographic Society, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Nah, ‘Seeking refuge’, p. 162.

⁴⁸ See, for example, Crisp et al., Our Turn, p. 23.

⁴⁹ Smith, Search of Survival, p. 37.

⁵⁰ Malkki, Purity and Exile.

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⁵² Fernandez, Luis and Olson, Joel, ‘To live, love and work anywhere you please’, Contemporary Political Theory, 10:3 (2011), pp. 412–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 200 Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Tazzioli and Walters, ‘Sight of migration’. For literature on migration that focuses on visibility in relation to disciplinary power, see Browne, Simone, ‘Getting carded: Border control and the politics of Canada’s permanent resident card’, Citizenship Studies, 9:4 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salter, Mark B., ‘Passports, mobility, and security: How smart can the border be?’, International Studies Perspectives, 5 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵⁷ Deleuze, Cf. Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 262 Google Scholar. See also Ansems de Vries, Politics of Life.

⁵⁸ Nah, ‘Seeking refuge’, p. 149.

⁵⁹ Ibid., pp. 157–8.

⁶⁰ Scheel and Squire, ‘Forced migrants’.

⁶¹ Obama, Barack, ‘Remarks by President Obama at the Dignity for Children Foundation’, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, available at: {https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/21/remarks-president-obama-dignity-children-foundation}Google Scholar accessed 13 January 2016. It is worthwhile to note that this account was not challenged during a press conference the next day. See ‘Press Conference by President Obama’, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, available at: {https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/22/remarks-president-obama-press-conference} accessed 13 January 2016.

⁶² The White House, ‘Remarks by President Obama at the Dignity for Children Foundation’. See also ‘President Obama met with young Muslim refugees and it was absolutely heartwarming’, Huffington Post, available at: {http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-muslim-refugees_564ff9c9e4b0d4093a57f652} accessed at 13 January 2016.

⁶³ Mayberry, Kate, ‘First-class refugees: Malaysia’s two-tier system’, Aljazeera, available at: {http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/class-refugees-malaysia-tier-system-151221061627431.html}Google Scholar accessed at 13 January 2016; Arfud, Intan Zulaika, ‘Malaysia is in no state to accept more refugees – NGOs highlight their concerns’, Malaysian Digest, available at: {http://www.malaysiandigest.com/news/581592-malaysia-is-in-no-state-to-accept-more-refugees-ngos-highlight-their-concerns.html}Google Scholar accessed 13 January 2016.

⁶⁴ Mayberry, ‘First-class refugees’.

⁶⁵ Parameswaran, Prashanth, ‘Malaysia begins receiving 3,000 Syrian migrants’, The Diplomat, available at: {http://thediplomat.com/2015/12/malaysia-begins-receiving-3000-syrian-migrants/}Google Scholar accessed 13 January 2016.

⁶⁶ Tazzioli and Walters, ‘Sight of migration’.

⁶⁷ Ibid.