Thailand Policies Towards Migrant Workers From Myanmar PDF Download

The issue of migrants from Myanmar working in Thailand became significant in 2015 when numerous famous foreign news outlets reported about conditions of slave labor in Thailand. The Thai military government launched several immediate policies in order to deal with the issue and improve Thailand's image. Even though the image of the state was enhanced, the problems about migrant workers from Myanmar still exist: migrant workers from Myanmar are still exploited and looked down upon by many native-born people. Therefore, in this dissertation, I investigate the stories, life experiences, and problems of migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand. Drawing from close to twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Samut Sakhon Province, I argue that migrant workers from Myanmar in Samut Sakhon Province are economically and socially segmented and exploited at different scales through three ways of being constructed as Other: space, politics, and identities. Concerning spatial aspects, I discuss how migrant workers' social networks, government policies, job opportunities, income, brokers, and social and cultural preferences influence migrant workers' decisions to come and work in Samut Sakhon Province. Consequently, the area has become a cultural safe-haven for migrant workers from Myanmar. However, the area has also become an ethnic enclave causing people who reside there to be seen as others. Second, considering political aspects, I focus directly on how state actors view and manage migrant workers from Myanmar. Migrant workers from Myanmar have been intentionally constructed as others and as problems in Thailand not because they are sources of the problems, but because their insecure status (being problems and others) enables numerous Thai people and officials to exploit them. Finally, in terms of identity aspects, I focus on how they routinely encounter other workers in the factory and how the migrant workers are excluded by other workers. Based on my empirical study, I found that identities are a significant factor that divides people into in-group and out-group. However, I also illustrate several cases in which migrant workers were accepted by the native-born group members by the strategic use of identity in a new environment.