Report on citizenship law : Indonesia

It is important to note at the outset that the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ are used interchangeably in this report. Moreover, the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ refer to a ‘politico-legal’ term denoting membership of a state (Weis 1979: 1). The Indonesian citizenship regime has been formed through two fundamental historical processes: “decolonization and the emergence of multi-ethnic states, and postcolonial nation building in a period of emerging globalization” (Hassall 1999: 49). The first process has resulted in an emphasis on citizenship as a ‘boundary’, whereas the second has seen citizenship as a more complicated concept, involving a “site of ideological construction” (ibid.). In the transition period to independence, the socio-political as well as legal character of Indonesia was determined through several competing ideologies of politics, culture, religion and ethnicity. However, it is important to note that during Dutch colonisation, there was a legal policy regulated by Article 163 of the Indische Staatsregeling (the Constitution of the colony of the Dutch East Indies) which created a racial division of the population of the Dutch East Indies into three categories: Europeans and its equivalent group (mostly Christians); far eastern (mainly Chinese and Arabs); and indigenous people (pribumi).1 Unsurprisingly, the Indonesian citizenship regime has, thus, been heavily characterised by nationalism, rather than any other issues such as culture.Research for the 2016/2017 GLOBALCIT Reports has been supported by the European University Institute’s Global Governance Programme, the EUI Research Council, and the British Academy Research Project CITMODES (co-directed by the EUI and the University of Edinburgh)