Law and ‘race’ in the citizenship spaces of Myanmar: spatial strategies and the political subjectivity of the Burmese Chinese

ABSTRACT

As Myanmar undergoes political and societal transition, observers are asking questions about citizenship and ethnic identity. How does one think about citizenship and people's negotiations with law in political-legal regimes that do not subscribe to liberal democratic norms? This paper investigates how law marginalizes the Burmese Chinese minority in Myanmar and the nature of their legal participation. Since law asserts cultural power impacting the way people think and behave, we engage with the concept of legal consciousness to understand how perceptions of legal vulnerability shape political subjectivity ambivalently. The paper highlights the spatial strategies and everyday practices that the Burmese Chinese deploy to navigate oppressive laws, but signals that internal social divisions and geopolitical considerations deter collective action towards rights assertion. It argues that studying the multiple sites and scales through which law is engaged contributes towards recovering citizenship aspirations where engagement with power and authority are articulated differently from Western norms.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• law
• legal consciousness
• ethnicity
• ‘race’
• Myanmar

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers, Nick Cheesman, Tim Bunnell, Mary Gilmartin, Jayde Roberts, James Sidaway, Politics, Economies and Space (PEAS) members in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore (NUS), and colleagues at the NUS Centre for Asian Legal Studies for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank the respondents and research assistants who participated in this project, and Andrew Harding for supporting the project development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We recognize the contestation attached to ‘Burma’ and ‘Myanmar’.

2. The label ‘Burmese Chinese’ (miandianhuaren) underlines Myanmar as the country where the Chinese have settled generationally. This article refers to the majority Burma population as ‘Burman’.

3. Representational issues arise when constituting the subaltern as a subject of study (Spivak 1988/2010), but trying ‘harder to interpret, to listen, to translate’ (Jazeel 2014, 95) remains important in advancing the recognition of subjugated knowledges.

4. Personal communication with research assistant in Myanmar.

5. See Roberts (2011) on the Chinese from coastal China who settled in Yangon, and Chang (2014) on the Yunnanese Chinese.

6. Bearing ethnic affinity with the Chinese are the kokang who settled along the Burmese side of the Sino-Myanmar border. They are among the ‘national races’ constitutionally recognized in Myanmar.

7. For example, some Burmese Chinese identify as Christian or Muslim (Panthays).

8. http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs07/1947Constitution-facsimile-red.pdf.

9. Colonial categorizations of ‘tribe’ or ‘race’ based on language classifications (Scott 2009) were continued by the former military regime.

10. http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Citizenship%20Law.htm.

11. Identity cards must be renewed at ages eighteen, thirty and forty-five.

12. Many immigrant Indians who suffered from the nationalization law left Myanmar (Cheesman 2015).

13. The Association Registration Law came into effect on 20 July 2014 and superseded these laws. It does not criminalize non-registration (http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/Myanmar.html). However, it is too early to assess the new law's impact.

14. Roberts (2011) highlights that Burmese Chinese businesses forge alliances with power brokers in government offices. Our article focuses on how law is negotiated through temple spaces that function as schools and clan associations.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National University of Singapore [grant numbers R-241-000-106-112, R-109-000-126-133 and R-241-000-105-112].