Malaysians

Citizenship and diaspora

The Malaysian diaspora has a population of 1,730,152 in 2019, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.^[1] Malaysia does not keep track of emigration and counts of Malaysians abroad are thus only available courtesy of statistics kept by the destination countries. The diaspora includes both descendants of early emigrants from Malaysia, as well as more recent emigrants from Malaysia.

Since independence, a total of 688,766 naturalised foreigners had been granted Malaysian citizenship while 10,828 individuals had their citizenships revoked.^[12][13] The community of Malaysians in Australian external territory of Christmas Island makes up the majority of the population, while Singapore has the largest minority community of Malaysians, with 952,261 people, followed by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Ethnic groups and citizenship

Classification of 2010 Census ethnic group is as set by Inter-Agency Technical Committee (IATC) in Appendix 1. IATC is a committee formed to co-ordinate and monitor the implementation and use of standardised codes, classifications and definitions used by the Department of Statistics, Malaysia and other government agencies. For the purpose of tabulation and analysis, as well as taking into account the diverse ethnic group in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, Federal Territory of Labuan and Sarawak, major ethnic groups according to region as follows:

Information collected in the census including ethnic group and citizenship was based on respondent's answer and did not refer to any official document.

Information on citizenship should be used with caution as it is subject to content and coverage errors especially for non-citizens as in censuses in most countries.

Language

Malaysia contains speakers of 137 living languages,^[14] 41 of which are found in Peninsula Malaysia.^[15] Malaysian, or Standard Malay, is the official language, while English is considered the de facto language for business. The Bumiputeras speak various Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages as well as smaller language families such as Tai-Kadai and Creoles. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak varieties of Chinese from the southern provinces of China. The more common varieties in the country are Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Hainanese, and Fuzhou. Tamil is the predominant among Indian Malaysians, though languages like Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi are also spoken.

Religion

The Malaysian constitution guarantees freedom of religion while making Islam the state religion.^[16] According to the Population and Housing Census 2010 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 61.3% of the population practice Islam, 19.8% practice Buddhism, 9.2% Christianity, 6.3% Hinduism and 1.3% practice Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 0.7% declared no religion and the remaining 1.4% practised other religions or did not provide any information.