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Lifestyle migrants, a relatively privileged group of transnational migrants, have not been the prime focus of debates on (migrant) urban citizenship. This article addresses this knowledge gap through a case analysis of the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme during a period of overlapping crises (the COVID-19 pandemic and Malaysia's political crisis, 2018–2022). Using a citizenship in crisis lens, it explicates how different stakeholder groups exert claims about MM2H migrants' urban citizenship status and rights. In doing so, it makes visible the national/local scalar tensions underlying each group's normative understanding of lifestyle migrants' urban citizenship – who are "rightful members", the conditions of their "rightful membership", and the rights that they "rightfully have". It offers a nuanced analysis of the limits and possibilities for MM2H migrants (and their advocates) to claim and enact their urban citizenship rights, in light of Malaysia's regime of differentiated and hierarchical rights as well as the centring of government powers at the national scale. This analysis challenges extant understandings regarding the empowering and emancipatory possibilities of (migrant) urban citizenship. Beyond this case, this article emphasises the need to contextually position analyses of (migrant) urban citizenship to the relevant regime of rights.
Sin Yee Koh (Thu,) studied this question.