State Recognition of Indigenous Peoples Rights in Southeast Asia

The State Legal Recognition of Indigenous People Rights in Southeast Asia is not uniform but generally lower than other regions in the world. This is due to contextual factors (democracy, Nation-Building processes, socioeconomic variables and ethnic and religious diversity) as well as dynamic factors (indigenous movements impact, the presence of other non-indigenous movements based on identity and the international context). The formers are related with the Political Opportunity Structure and the Resource Mobilization Theory and the last ones, are more focused on actors: movement organizational structures, repertoires of collective action and transnational networks. Then, the scope and success of the recognition of indigenous rights, depends on the impact of indigenous movements in more or less favorable contexts. This is because movements in the public sphere introduced new concepts of citizenship and demands for recognition, using stock or highly symbolic discursive elements. Both the disruptive capacity of the movements, and the receptivity of the States themselves to accept a multicultural nature and new models of citizenship, will determine the success of these initiatives. These two elements are closely related to the international context, following a model called the spiral model (Risse, Ropp & Sikkink: 1999). This paper is about how social movements based on identity, combined with the international pressures resulted from the state membership of various international regimes (of human rights, environment protection, drug eradication) can change, and widen the citizenship concept and therefore, raise the citizenship status of the Indigenous Peoples, because legal recognition, although insufficient, is a necessary first step to real recognition, and therefore the enjoyment of indigenous rights and full citizenship. The methodology is based on a QCA comparative analysis, of various casual combinations combined with a process tracing analysis.