UNHCR's current #IBelong campaign presents stateless people as uniquely excluded, emphasizing the need for legal solutions to their situation. Such approaches to statelessness sidestep both the complexities of lived experience and the wider politics of state recognition. In response, this article utilizes ethnographic data from Sabah, Malaysia, and theorizations of the gray areas between citizenship and statelessness to argue for the fundamental connection between statelessness and irregularity. Such a connection is central to understanding both the everyday lives of potentially stateless people and Sabah's public discourse on statelessness as a mirage obscuring the problems of “illegals” and “street children.”. © 2017 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC © 2017, © Catherine Allerton.

UNHCR Children Sabah statelessness Malaysia Recognition irregularity

state role politics United Nations ethnography refugee Malaysia street children citizenship East Malaysia Sabah