The inversion of majority/minority at the de/reterritorialised urban higher education enclave: Xiamen University Malaysia

Abstract

This article examines the inversion of majority/minority at Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM), the offshore campus of a mainland Chinese public university and the catalyst development of a satellite township in Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. Using the framing of the de/reterritorialised urban higher education enclave, it examines how, within the campus gates, the interests, needs and priorities of the ‘migrant majority’ (mainland Chinese users) take precedence over other user groups that have, in turn, become the ‘minorities’. Given the Malaysian state’s longstanding defensive stance towards ‘Chinese’ education, the existence of XMUM is unprecedented. This article shows how this de/reterritorialised international branch campus has been made possible by the broader Sino-Malaysian geopolitical and urban capitalist relations. The inversion of majority/minority on campus challenges and complicates Malaysia’s state-sanctioned multi-ethnic co-existence, which prioritises the Muslim Malay majority over other groups. Nevertheless, students’ views complicate the neat categorisations of majority/minority and inclusion/exclusion. Such perspectives highlight the need to examine the de/reterritorialised branch campus as a space in-the-making.

Migrant-led diversification and differential inclusion in arrival cities across Asia and the Pacific

“…Based on a longitudinal study with migrant professionals in Singapore, Bork-Hüffer’s (2022) entry addresses diversification and its concomitant spatial relationality by analysing how online and offline spaces facilitate class-based friendships. Koh’s (2022) contribution demonstrates the subversion of power on the off-shore campus of Xiamen University Malaysia where it is the ‘immigrant Mainland Chinese majority’ who sets the terms of inclusion/exclusion in the physical and virtual spaces of the university. Differential inclusion on the de/reterritorialised campus is also tied to wider geopolitical relations between Malaysia and China.…”

Arrival cities and the mobility of concepts

“…In many ways Migrant-led Diversification and Differential Inclusion in Arrival Cities Across Asia-Pacific deploys ‘arrival cities’ as a heuristic, working across and between very different cities, forms of migration and (non)settlement. This includes a city-state with sustained migration-led demographic growth, transient labour migration and institutionalised differential inclusion (Bork-Hüffer, 2022; Goh and Lee, 2022; Yeoh and Lam, 2022; Ye et al, 2022); a post-earthquake city undergoing unexpected forms of migrant-driven diversification (Collins and Friesen, 2022) and cities shaped by the specificities of education-based migration, deterritorialisations and cross-border mobilities (Koh, 2022; Leung and Waters, 2022). It also covers the affective hospitality of forced migrants who may or may not be offered permanent settlement to remain (Sidhu and Rossi-Sackey, 2022); the complex reconfiguration of suburban spaces by new settlements and generational diversity (Robertson et al, 2022); the elite transnational migrants that are shaping the socio-spatialities of a city haunted by the myth of homogeneity (Yamamura, 2022) and the urban transformations of island archipelagos that are facilitated by the interacial relationships of foreign investors (Ortega, 2022).…”

“…As many of the papers show, the very status of any arrival city is continuously under revision. This includes historic turns in migration policies that respond to labour shortages or weakened economies such as those seen in Japan (Yamamura, 2022); close relations between national elites who pave the way for deterritorialised higher education spaces as seen in Malaysia (Koh, 2022), or national policies for attracting foreign investment through tourism and retirement visas as in the Philippines (Ortega, 2022). Economic downturns and uplifts, whether global or industry-specific, changes to labour policies, state imaginaries and public cultures of negotiating difference – whether fragile or progressive – all play a role in the lived and fluctuating experiences of the arrival city, as do global events such as the recent pandemic.…”

“…(This is contrasted with those migrants – Pro-Tokyoites who demonstrate a desire for bicultural curriculums, an openness to the development of competencies, and very different forms of social interaction.) Elsewhere, while research has demonstrated that educational spaces, such as those of the university campus, can provide important spaces for encounter across difference, as Koh (2022) demonstrates in the context of deterritorialised spaces of education in Malaysia, they can also foster social bubbles and function as spaces of segmentation that impact micro-socialities. Different infrastructures of arrival, imported foods, the prevalence of Mandarin and the relegation of Muslim needs on campus create bubbles and effectively suspend state-led multi-ethnic coexistence.…”

“…In addition to foregrounding the experience of Asian-Pacific arrival cities and the spatial formations that have been obviated by the privileging of western contexts, this special issue poses a challenge to a range of other concepts and approaches, including the neglect of island geographies in urban studies – especially archipelagic territories in the Global South (Ortega, 2022); the North American formulation of the ‘ethnoburb’ (Robertson et al, 2022); the tendency for migration work to focus on large urban centres to the detriment of smaller ones (Collins and Friesen, 2022) and the predominance of the residential within studies of enclave urbanisms (Koh, 2022) to name just a few. At the same time, while never explicitly discussed, the issue forces a reflection on the varied meanings and uses of ‘arrival’, demonstrating the political potentials of mobile concepts that take on different meanings in very different contexts.…”