While statelessness remains a global phenomenon, it is a global issue with an Asian epicentre. This chapter situates the book within the context and multi-disciplinary scholarship on statelessness in Asia by reviewing the causes, conditions and/or challenges of statelessness. It recognizes statelessness in this region as a phenomenon beyond forced migration and highlights the arbitrary and discriminatory use of state power in producing and sustaining statelessness. The chapter reviews the ‘state of statelessness’ in Asia, including applicable international, regional and national legal frameworks. It also maps some of the core themes that emerge from the contributors’ examination of the causes and conditions of statelessness in Asia. These include: the relationship between ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity and statelessness; the legacies of colonialism; contemporary politics surrounding nation-building, border regimes and mobilities; as well as intersecting vulnerabilities. The chapter concludes with some preliminary thoughts on frameworks of analysis and future research agendas, including challenges and prospects for reform.

This chapter discusses the 1953 legal challenge to Ceylon’s (present-day Sri Lanka) voter registration laws before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, one of the first against domestic legislation on citizenship from a former British colony. The Kodakan Pillai appeal, as the case was known, was part of multiple challenges to the immigration, nationality and citizenship regime in Ceylon at the time which discriminated against people who had migrated to Ceylon from India but had permanently settled there for multiple generations. The appeal ultimately failed, and the malaiyaha thamilar – plantation laborers and their descendants – form part of minority populations in Sri Lanka today, stigmatized as ‘migrants’ and outsiders, frequently lacking documentation and evidence of citizenship, and consequently, to land ownership or welfare benefits. Drawing on a rich legal archive of citizenship applications filed before the Commission for Indian and Pakistani Residents in the 1950s, alongside the Kodakan Pillai appeal, this chapter serves as an illustration for why the legal history of statelessness in Asia is important. Given this historical context, it also cautions against solutions to statelessness in the region that solely rely on improved documentation of political belonging.

Childhood statelessness is an urgent global human rights issue. Yet, there is limited ethnographic data on the everyday and varied experiences of stateless children and youth, whose representations in mainstream media and campaign materials tend to transmute them into generalized subjects with an ostensibly universal experience of total abjection. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in northern Thailand, this chapter examines the process of ‘learning to be stateless’ among Shan youth participants and the impact of statelessness during their various life stages. The chapter argues that statelessness is not necessarily a fully and actively internalized status since birth but a dynamic condition that constantly undergoes re-interpretation by the affected youth at punctuated moments and at various life stages. By examining the contemporary regime of statelessness in a country such as Thailand, where stateless persons have access to certain rights as children but not as adults, this chapter calls attention to the intersection of life stages and statelessness and the complex ways in which such regimes of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion place the emotional and practical burdens on stateless persons as they transition from childhood into adolescence and adulthood.

Myanmar (also known as Burma; see the discussion of terminology later in the chapter) has endured prolonged periods of military rule and hosts some of the world’s lengthiest internal conflicts. In the early 2010s, cautious hopes for democratic reform flared up on the local and international level, as the military initiated a top-down political transition process. These hopes were extinguished as the military continued to dominate the political landscape and terrorize the population, notably with its horrific violence against the Rohingya in 2017 and with a new military coup in 2021 and the subsequent violent repression of dissent. Throughout the long periods of military rule, the country has faced fierce contestation over political legitimacy and territorial control between the military and various armed and non-armed resistance groups. Burmese society, moreover, has historically been divided along the lines of ethnicity, class, age, gender, religion and rural or urban background. Diversity within the population gained political relevance when Burma was colonized by the British and during the subsequent independence struggle. Ethnic minorities, generally referred to in Myanmar as ‘ethnic nationalities’, make up over 30 per cent of the population and have borne the brunt of the military violence directed against populations in the border areas. The nominally socialist military government which took power in 1962 was confronted with a large-scale popular uprising, resulting in a military reshuffle in 1988. This era of military change-over marked the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi as leader of the political opposition; her party won the elections of 1990 but was not allowed to take power. Meanwhile, armed ethnic resistance continued in the borderlands, while a Burman-dominated ‘democracy movement’ was established, partly from exile, in the 1990s.

In 2003, the military announced its ‘Roadmap to Democracy’, which resulted in a new constitution in 2008 and elections held in 2010. These developments intensified existing debates around the desired future of the country and how this should be achieved. By the time a quasi-civilian government under President Thein Sein took power in 2011, Myanmar’s political transition had caught international attention. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest just days after the 2010 elections and her re-entrance into national politics in 2012 increased international interest during what some call Myanmar’s ‘honeymoon period’.

This common joke refers to both political parties and civil society organizations (CSOs) in Myanmar. It demonstrates the vibrancy of associational life but also points towards the internal divisions that have arguably played into the military’s divide and rule tactics. This chapter explores what constitutes Burmese civil society over time, and what the various groups stand for. The concept of civil society is explored as it developed and became used in Myanmar after exposure to Western influences. Chapter 3 then introduces a number of fault lines in Myanmar society and analyses how they are reflected in civil society. Understanding diverse identities based on gender, age, class, education level and other characteristics is essential for the analysis of positions and contestations within civil society in the course of the political transition process. An additional factor discussed concerns the interaction between civil society actors based inside the country and those in exile. As with other factors, this ‘inside–outside’ division is not static, as activists moved in and out of the country in recent decades depending on the openness of political space over time. The way various civil society actors experienced and navigated this political space will be discussed in Chapter 4.

Tracing the ‘civil’ in civil society

As previously mentioned, civil society is a much used, but also much contested and criticized concept. On the most general level, it can help interpret how social relations and collective action take shape over time (Edwards, 2011). For practitioners and scientists, the concept often serves as a blanket term to cover various organized non-state actors and activities, leading to a possible conflation of analytical and policy goals (Lewis, 2001). The critical and systematic engagement with the theory and practice of civil society is complicated by overly simplistic expectations, based in Tocquevillian definitions and democracy promotion schemes. These concern civil society’s presumed positive role in society, its ability to criticize or check on the role of the state, and its counter-hegemonic qualities (Chambers and Kymlicka, 2002; Edwards, 2009). In contrast, Gramscian theorists are more likely to regard civil society as a sphere of contestation, exploitation and hegemony (Hedman, 2006; Glasius, 2012).

This chapter centres on the notion of ‘space’, or room to manoeuvre, for civil society under authoritarian rule. Under the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) government, Myanmar civil society actors operated in a very restricted political space. Many of them adapted to working under the radar of the government, while others refused to make concessions and faced regular repression, imprisonment and threats to their lives. In the course of the political transition, new opportunities opened up for civil society to get involved in politics and contribute to policy development. For others, including ethnic nationalities and vocal dissidents, room to manoeuvre remained limited, or even diminished. This created tensions within civil society over the nature of this new space, and the question of the extent to which civil society in transitional Myanmar could really operate independently from the government. This chapter and the next illustrate both sides of the debate. They show how the space experienced by various actors was determined by a number of factors including individual background and strategies to mobilize support, the location and timing of activities, and the language in which they were phrased.

While the whole military-led ‘Roadmap to Democracy’ was contentious, particular contestations emerged around the 2008 constitution and the referendum held in the days after cyclone Nargis, as well as the local and international humanitarian responses to the cyclone. Heated debates arose once elections were announced for 2010. The main political opposition decided to boycott the elections due to their unfair nature and the obstructions it faced to meaningful electoral participation. Others, particularly those affiliated with the previously mentioned Third Force, saw the elections as a unique opportunity to create political platforms outside the influence of the military. This chapter discusses the ruptures that occurred within Myanmar civil society as space opened up for some but closed down for others. The following chapters focus on the way these discussions were portrayed towards outside observers, with the 2010 elections as a specific case study.