Positioned at the island interface of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the east Malaysian state of Sabah bears witness to some of the largest clandestine cross-border flows across the globe. This article examines what a Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah has called “an insidious problem which has turned out to be an all-consuming nightmare.” It highlights the situated (meta)semiotic work involved in determining and enforcing the state's seemingly indeterminate and unenforceable borders between citizens and suspected non-citizens, while also showing how inquiries into migrant illegality are ultimately inquiries into “excess.” It demonstrates how experiences of and orientations to excess take expressive shape in migrants and Malaysians' fashions of speaking and forms of life. It concludes by considering how these transnational dynamics across a sprawling archipelagic region lend a provincializing angle of vision on American(ist) anthropology's own hemispheric parochialism.

中文翻译：

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过度的幽灵：马来语群岛的通行和治安

马来西亚东部沙巴州位于马来西亚、印度尼西亚和菲律宾的岛屿交界处，见证了全球一些最大的秘密跨境流动。本文探讨了沙巴非法移民问题皇家调查委员会所称的“一个阴险的问题，结果却是一场吞噬一切的噩梦”。它强调了涉及确定和执行国家在公民和可疑非公民之间看似不确定和无法执行的边界的情境（元）符号学工作，同时还表明对移民非法性的调查最终如何成为对“过度”的调查。它展示了过度的经历和取向如何在移民和马来西亚人的说话方式和生活方式中表现出来。