Contested rights: Subjugation and struggle among Burmese forced migrants in exile (original) (raw)
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Based on qualitative interviews conducted between 2008 and 2012 with Burmese forced migrants in Thailand, this study focuses on the practice of protection and management within long-stay refugee camps. Beyond official refugee status deter- mination, the everyday interactions between authority-types and forced migrant subjects affirm or challenge notions of who gets to be considered a refugee and who is entitled to humanitarian protection. This article considers authorities as ‘street-level bureaucrats’, who rely on institutional power and resources as they wield discretion to interpret camp policy and Thai law in ways that reflect percep- tions of Burmese migrants as criminal and deviant. At the same time, this study shows that forced migrants develop strategies to survive this context and assert their claims to rights and their own notion of what it means to be a refugee; pointing to ways protection can be enhanced in such protracted situations.
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This paper examines the interfaces of local community based humanitarian organizations with displaced Karen people in Thai-Burmese border spaces and their claims for cultural rights. It argues that Karen people have to organize themselves in a context where they do not have access to social welfare of the state and in which the state is hostile and oppressive to them. Applying Merry’s thesis on the localization and vernacularization of international rights frameworks in the local context, the paper explores the context of power in which different humanitarian actors intervention in the local conflict zone. The author finds that Karen displaced people have differentiated access to humanitarian assistance and that powerful organizations like the Karen National Union are able to benefit while essentializing Karen culture and suppressing internal difference among the Karen to position itself towards the international donor community, thereby becoming “liked” or “preferred” refugees. The...
Fears that ‘refugee warriors’ will use refugee camps as a base for military operations, exploit a wider refugee population, or misuse international aid have led to the development of policies intended to ensure the separation of combatants and civilian refugee populations. However, a dogmatic approach to that policy goal may miss the true complexity of both refugee protection and the relationships between a refugee population and a military group. This article examines an alternative possibility, that a non-state armed group may be a potential partner in refugee protection and welfare promotion. It draws on the experiences of refugees from Burma living in camps in Thailand, where there has been a long-standing connection between camp governance structures and a political/military organization movement, the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army. While camp governance activities have been flawed, they have also displayed a high level of integrity. It is argued that in such a situation, where there is a proven record of working to improve civilian welfare, international organizations might usefully explore possibilities of engagement with non-state armed groups as partners in refugee protection, with the specific goal of encouraging a more representative, accountable, and democratic approach to governance.
Negotiating a Border Regime for Rights of Refugees on the Thailand-Myanmar Border
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This article examines how refugees displaced from Myanmar in Mae Sot city on the Thailand-Myanmar border use various types of identification documents as a tool to extend their rights, including the right to citizenship, the right to work and the right to education. https://www.ritimo.org/Negotiating-a-Border-Regime-for-Rights-of-Refugees-on-the-Thailand-Myanmar
Rethinking Repatriation: Karen Refugees on the Thai-Myanmar Border
SMU Scholar - Dissertation, 2019
In this dissertation I explore the experience of Karen refugees living inside a refugee camp along the Thai-Myanmar border in one of the world’s most protracted refugee situations. This research situates displacement within theories of time, (im)mobility and resistance while also drawing on literature in forced migration concerning repatriation, exile, protracted refugee situations and policy development. A key component of this work focuses on analyzing the relationship between resistance and waiting by applying these concepts to the experience of Karen refugees who have spent decades waiting in camps while currently being faced with a voluntary repatriation program. I frame voluntary repatriation as a globally accepted durable solution to protracted refugee situations and as such, the preferred outcome of protracted displacement by the international refugee regime. Building on conceptualizations of waiting as an active strategy, I add both strategy and resistance to this concept in the context of protracted refugee situations, showing how I will further develop this theoretical framework through my own ethnographic work. Since my contribution to this theoretical trajectory is to make ‘waiting as resistance’ and ‘waiting as strategy’ central to an analysis of the repatriation framework, I will explain how holistic frameworks of return can guide effective policy implementation.This dissertation also traces the specific histories and geo-political situations that gave rise to the current state of a protracted refugee crisis along the Thailand-Myanmar border. With special consideration paid to the emergence of a voluntary repatriation program being implemented by the UNHCR in the region, I explore how Karen refugees respond to the notion of return to Myanmar. In the concluding chapters I offer an applied contribution in the form of a policy recommendation for Thailand that I have termed Protracted Sanctuary Status. Within this framework I offer a suggestion that is modeled after the U.S. immigration category of Temporary Protected Status with a few key changes that address both the need for legal employment in Thailand as well as the precariousness refugees from Myanmar currently face.
Uneven Humanitarianism: Abandoned Refugees along the Thai-Myanmar Border
Review of Human Rights, 2017
This essay considers the case of uneven humanitarian aid distribution along the Thai-Myanmar border, where forcibly displaced migrants from Myanmar have been abandoned by the UNHCR and international humanitarian organizations. Based upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork along the Thai-Myanmar border amongst Tai migrants from the Shan State in Myanmar, I attend to the effects of the inequitable distribution of rights and privileges in an international humanitarian system that is predicated on the neoliberal logic of uneven development. After two centuries of British colonial occupation and later Burman authoritarian rule, the ethnic minority groups along the Thai-Myanmar border are now facing another crisis – that of abandonment as NGOs search for new and more pressing humanitarian disasters elsewhere. The essay addresses a concept I call uneven humanitarianism as a neocolonial condition for peoples living in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands by specifically focusing on Tai peoples who are living in unofficial refugee camps that lost foreign funding in 2017. I argue that the ad hoc treatment and eventual abandonment of these vulnerable groups – that are currently in the midst of the world's most protracted civil war and displacement situation – constitutes a failure of the " responsibility to protect " humanitarian project.
Navigating a Hostile Terrain: Refugees and Human Rights in Southeast Asia
Sociology Compass, 2011
Countries in Southeast Asia serve as origins, transit routes, and destinations for an increasing number of refugees, asylum seekers, and other people displaced by conflict and persecution. In this article, I consider existing academic literature on refugees and forced migration and situate current trends and processes related to refugees in Southeast Asia within such work. I begin by surveying sociology material on refugees and forced migration processes in general, also drawing from related fields of human geography and interdisciplinary refugee studies. I then review current mixed migration trends and corresponding state responses in the context of globalization and contemporary conflict in Southeast Asia, placing refugee movements within this setting. Finally, using examples from the region, I consider two rough areas of inquiry in need of further sociological exploration – (i) purposive transnational refugee actions and processes and (ii) the dynamic social spaces created and developed out of refugee migration. Human rights implications of these issues are considered throughout, and suggestions to reconsider human rights protection beyond nation-state-focused models are given.