ERIC C.
THOMPSON
Malay male
migrants: Negotiating contested
identities in Malaysia
A B S T R A C T
Ethnic identity has dominated the political and
social landscape of Malaysia throughout most of
the 20th century. Recent changes, including gov-
ernment development policies, feminization of the
industrial workforce, and rural to urban migration,
have transformed the underlying political economy
of the country. In relationship to these changes,
official discourse has sought to engender a "New
Malay" subjectivity, dissociating the Malay—peasant
complex of the early 20th century and associating
Malayness, instead, with urbanism and entrepre-
neurship. Malay male migrants figure centrally in
this articulation of identity and political economy.
Focusing on the articulation of multiple fields of
identity, I argue that social and cultural forces
are shaping and reshaping the lives of Malay
men, although their effects are felt differentially
by subjects who must negotiate intersecting
fields of ethnicity, gender, migrancy, religion,
and class. [identity, ethnicity, class, migrants,
masculinity, Malaysia]
National. University of Singapore
I
n 1992, the journalist Rehman Rashid returned to Malaysia after four
years of self-imposed exile and embarked on a journey of rediscovery
through the country of his birth. Toward the end of his journey, on a
train pulling into Kuala Lumpur, he observed of his fellow passengers:
These were the Real Malaysians, these people around me . . . each sealed
into the private cocoon of self, into which might be admitted only those
of their own kind. What had been the most frequent question asked of
me on this journey? "Are you Malay or Indian? Are you Eurasian? Are you
Muslim? What ARE you?" Everything that emerged subsequently—every
comment, opinion and answer—would depend on my response to that
question. [Rehman 1993:267]
Rehman's experience reflects the intense sense of ethnic and ethnic-cum-re-
ligious identity integral to the everyday experience of Malaysians. Perhaps
no other citizenry has a more deeply ingrained self-consciousness of ethnic
identity, represented in naturalized categories of "Malays, Chinese, Indians,
and Others." These categories are woven into everyday discourse and the
fabric of government in Malaysia and they are found in nearly every intro -
duction to every text written about the country. As I am obliged to reiterate
here, Malays (and other indigenous groups) make up 58 percent of the popu-
lation, Chinese 24 percent, Indians 7 percent, and Others 11 percent (Pejabat
Perdana Menteri 2000))
But as dominant an issue as ethnic identity is in Malaysia, I argue that
ethnic experience plays out in relationships not only to interethnic "groups
and boundaries" (Barth 1969; Nagata 1981) but also to the association and
dissociation of other articulated fields of identity—of gender, geography, re-
ligion, and class. The focal point of this analysis is the dissociation in late -
20th-century Malaysia of what I call the "Malay-peasant" complex.2 Working
around this focal point, I examine the problematic intersection of subjective
experience and the social, economic, and cultural dynamics that shape such
experience. I employ narratives of life histories culled from formal interviews
and numerous informal encounters to examine the experiences of two indi -
viduals, named Idris and Nizam (both pseudonyms), in relationship to fields
American Ethnologist 30(3):4 IR-438. Copyright © 2003, American Anthropological Association.
of Malayness, masculinity, migrancy, and class in Malaysia. Drawing on and