ABSTRACT
By the time I arrived in Phnom Penh in 1996, the Second Prime Minister Hun Sen had called a French Cambodian government official a “dog” and declared vigorously that those holding two passports were “down-grading for the nation” (Ker 1996). One month later, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) declared single citizenship for government leaders an official position. During the fracas, I interviewed the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Marina Pok, a French Cambodian citizen. When asked about her position on the dual citizenship of government officials, she queried in French-accented English: “Why should one give up one’s dual nationality? Is it against the interest of the nation? Is it to have a pure Cambodian nation?”2 This dual affiliation had become as excruciating as “sitting between two chairs.” My paper focuses on the charged debate in Phnom Penh regarding the status of dual citizens in the Cambodian government during the 1990s. Through it, I show how the sense of “true” belonging to the post-war nation diverged between local and transnational government officials. Those who were against government officials carrying dual citizenship included both CPP members and diaspora Cambodians, though their arguments differed. Ultimately, the arguments for and against dual citizenship sought a baseline definition of national identity and a way to identify those who could signify its center.
