Illegal Birth and the Dilemma of Color, Culture, and Citizenship in Malaysia

Maria, a foreign domestic worker in Malaysia, was in labor. A friend of her employer drove her to a private maternity clinic. Maria was a foreign worker in Malaysia; therefore her pregnancy was illegal and in violation of her work contract. To keep her job, Maria had to give up her infant for adoption and return to work immediately. Through an informal network of friends and neighbors, a childless Malaysian Chinese couple learned about the availability of a baby for adoption. They rushed to the clinic to meet Maria but upon arrival were told that the clinic would not admit Maria as a patient. In desperation, Maria, the friend of her employer, and the adoptive parents sped through the city, stopping at one clinic after another, in search of one that would deliver the baby. At each clinic the receptionist and the nurses argued over the legality of accepting Maria, and each one decided against admitting her. After many hours of agonizing labor pain, Maria found a clinic on the outskirts of the city that agreed to deliver her baby. Handing her healthy little baby girl over to the adoptive family, Maria spoke with the finality of never seeing her child again: “Do not bring her up as a Muslim.” The clinic registered the names of the adoptive parents to pass them off as the child’s biological parents and obtained a birth certificate for them at the local police station. The grateful adoptive parents paid for the medical charges and, according to Chinese custom, presented Maria with an angpou, a red envelope containing a token monetary gift for her to purchase restorative medicinal herbs to help with postpartum recovery. The adoptive parents gave the child a Chinese name that means sunny and smart. The arrival of Sunny (a pseudonym) provides much joy to the adoptive parents, but also provokes much fear in that they could lose the child if her identity became known.

How can we understand Maria’s crisis and the adoptive parents’ fear of losing their child? In one sense, Maria’s crisis is representative of the plight of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia and other countries. Malaysia is not unique in its abuse of domestic workers: Human Rights Watch has documented comparable problems of abuses in other Asian countries, the Middle East, South America, and the United States (2005). Maria’s “illegal pregnancy” and her wish for her newborn signify her desire to have agency in defining her daughter’s destiny and not merely to be the recipient of discriminatory state laws and policies. On the other hand, this case highlights the many challenges that go with “proving” citizenship and identity in a nation bound up in history, culture, and communal politics despite its growing movement towards a multiethnic national identity. Sunny’s lack of documentation is not unique. There are similar, untold stories of children in Malaysia, and elsewhere in Asia, especially of those in the rural areas whose parents are too poor to register their children’s birth or those born to illegal immigrants who became “stateless” (Sadiq 2009, Refugees International 2008).¹

For the purpose of this paper, I position Maria’s labor crisis and the question of citizenship within a number of theoretical frames: (1) the crisis of Maria’s “illegal” pregnancy, labor contracts, and Malaysia’s system of labor control; (2) identity, control of social boundaries, and citizenship; (3) agency and citizenship negotiation; and (4) citizenship and human rights.

This ethnography provides an opportunity to address Malaysia’s human rights and regulatory policies on labor practices and citizenship policies in the context of the country’s current demand for international labor. Through the story—by documenting the motives and actions that constitute the practices of everyday life, in the tradition of de Certeau (1985)—I wish also to show how the rigidity of the formal discourse of country and culture is being challenged by migration, illegal pregnancy, illegal birth, humanitarian motivations, intricate layers of relationships and networks, fears and desires, and a family’s love for a child. Recognizing also how narratives can...