2 - Situating the Sama Dilaut/Bajau/Bajo as Mobile Maritime Communities Across Archipelagic Southeast Asia: Convergence and Divergence in Processes of Marginalisation and Integration

This presentation provides a comparative analysis of the differing dynamics of marginalisation and integration of the most widespread maritime mobile group in Archipelagic Southeast Asia: the Sama DiLaut in the southern Philippines, the Bajau Laut in east Malaysia (Sabah), and the Bajo in eastern Indonesia, all ethnonyms for the same ethnic group which I generically label Bajau. It traces the ethnogenesis of the Bajau in terms of processes of socio-economic specialisation in what historian James Warren has labelled the Sulu Zone, now differentiated into border areas of the three states mentioned above. The paper then traces differential colonial impacts upon the Bajau communities within the three zones, focusing particularly upon sedentarisation processes initiated in the respective colonial periods and continued differentially by the three independent states that have emerged. Within the independence period it traces the impact of these three states’ differing policies of imposing marine protected areas and how these have interacted with processes of sedentarisation and economic transformation. It then compares how Bajau have been placed with regard to Indigenous politics in these states, with due regard to how the Bajau’s lack of ancestral (landed) territory as sea dwellers has affected consideration of their rights with regard to concepts of ancestral domain, native title, and customary (adat) rights. Finally, it assesses comparatively the position of the Bajau with regard to full citizenship in each of these states, paying attention to how each state has situated itself with regard to UN conventions on statelessness.