How Filipino-Malay Bruneians negotiate identity, belonging and exclusion across the different cultural worlds they inhabit.

Brunei’s racial and religious classifications provide an important context for understanding identities that are mixed, situational or culturally hybrid. Filipino-Malay Bruneians may be officially categorised as Malay while also navigating cultural and racial perceptions associated with their Filipino heritage.

The study examined how belonging is shaped by language, appearance, religion, class, gender and recognition from others. It further explores how stereotypes historically associated with Filipina migrant labour can influence the experiences of biracial children, including how they experience belonging within Bruneian society.

As second author, I conducted all 12 participant interviews that formed the study’s primary interview dataset. Participants included six men and six women aged 20 to 30, recruited through personal networks and snowball sampling. Interviews were open-ended and conversational, with follow-up interviews conducted where clarification was needed.

My own Filipino-Malay Bruneian background formed part of the study’s auto-ethnographic and reflexive methodology. This provided insider access while also requiring conscious attention to positionality, subjectivity and potential bias.

Following data collection, both authors identified general patterns and discourses and conducted triangulation to support the validity of the data.

The study used a qualitative approach combining auto-ethnography and in-depth interviews.

Interviews were conducted with 12 Filipino-Malay Bruneian participants between October and December 2019, with follow-up interviews between January and February 2020. The conversations explored family history, self-identification, national sentiment, biracial experience, cultural affinity and everyday practices.

Participants were recruited through established personal networks and snowball sampling. Pseudonyms were used throughout to protect confidentiality and anonymity.

In-depth Interviews · Auto-ethnography · Open-ended Interviewing · Snowball Sampling · Reflexive Practice · Triangulation

Liminality
An in-between social position in which belonging to one category does not fully exclude nor guarantee belonging to another.

Hybridity
The ability to inhabit and move across more than one cultural world, which can be both empowering and marginalising.

Situational Identity
The strategic foregrounding of different aspects of identity depending on context, audience, circumstances or perceived risk.

Belonging
A sense of social recognition and acceptance that depends not only on self-identification but also on affirmation from others.

Othering
Processes through which individuals or groups are marked as different, inferior or outside the imagined social norm.

Positionality
How a researcher’s social position, background and relationship to participants can shape access, interpretation and the research process.

Language can enable belonging and expose difference
Participants who spoke Tagalog often described stronger access to Filipino identity and community, while limited proficiency could produce feelings of distance, awkwardness or exclusion.

Appearance shaped how identity was read by others
Participants described being categorised differently according to physical appearance, dress and language, revealing tensions between self-identification and external perceptions of what a Bruneian, Malay or Filipino person should look like.

Identity was situational and context-dependent
Participants sometimes foregrounded different aspects of their Filipino, Bruneian or Muslim identities depending on where they were, who they were speaking to, and what felt socially or personally safer.

Racialised stereotypes affected belonging
Labels such as anak amah were linked to broader gendered and class-based stereotypes surrounding Filipina migrant labour and could shape experiences of embarrassment, exclusion and social stigma.

Hybridity could be both enabling and marginalising
Moving between more than one cultural world could provide flexibility and access, but participants could also experience exclusion when they were not seen as sufficiently “authentic” within either cultural context.

“I was so traumatised from the bullying that happened in the previous school, I don’t want to be called anak amah.” - Interview participant.

The quote captures how social labels can shape identity far beyond simple categorisation. In the study, anak amah (child of maid) carried racialised and classed meanings connected to stereotypes surrounding Filipina migrant women.

For this participant, repeated name-calling escalated into bullying and contributed to his decision to conceal his Filipino heritage after moving schools.

The wider research showed that belonging depended on more than how participants identified themselves. Language, appearance, religion, family background and social stereotypes all influenced whether they were recognised by others as authentically Filipino, Malay, Bruneian or “mixed.”

Belonging is claimed, granted, questioned, withheld.

Interview data were collected with informed consent, in accordance with procedures standard in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Universiti Brunei Darussalam.

Because the interviews contained private and potentially sensitive information, pseudonyms were used throughout to protect participants’ confidentiality and anonymity.

• Victor Turner : liminality and “betwixt and between” positioning

• Stuart Hall : relational identity, difference and the construction of the “other”

• Ien Ang : diasporic identity, cultural hybridity and multiple belonging

• David L. Brunsma, Daniel J. Delgado & Kerry Ann Rockquemore : multiracial identity, liminality and the identity matrix

• Yen Le Espiritu : multiple identities and intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and class

• Judith Nagata : situational identity and identity selection

• Chang-Yau Hoon & Sahrifulhafiz : mixed-race identity, hybridity and boundaries of belonging in Brunei

• Nicole Constable : Filipino labour migration and transnational marriage

• Ashraf Zahedi & Anne-Marie Hilsdon : gendered, racialised and classed representations of Filipina migrant women

Hoon, C.-Y., & Fermin, M. (2022). “I don’t want to be called anak amah: The identity conundrum of biracial Filipino-Malay Bruneians.” International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 18(2), 227-254.
Published online: 25 July 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21315/ijaps2022.18.2.10