CMU Intellectual Repository: Shan on the move : negotiating identities through spatial practices among Shan cross-border migrants in Northern Thailand = ไทใหญ่ย้ายถิ่น : การต่อรองเชิงอัตลักษณ์ผ่านปฏิบัติการทางพื้นที่ของแรงงานข้ามพรมแดนชาวไทใหญ่ในภาคเหนือประเทศไทย / Sachiko Yasuda

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Thesis Title Shan on the Move: Negotiating Identities Through Spatial Practices Among Shan Cross-border Migrants in Northern Thailand

Author Ms. Sachiko Yasuda

Degree Master of Arts (Sustainable Development) Thesis Advisory Committee

Dr. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti Chairperson

Dr. Wasan Panyagaew Member

ABSTRACT

Migration and displacement have played a significant role in creating a new human landscape which transcends territorial boundaries in today’s world. Thailand is not an exception regarding such a global phenomenon and has experienced a large-scale transnational migration from its neighboring countries for the past few decades. This ethnographic study focuses on Shan cross-border migrants who are constantly on the move and live dispersed throughout Northern Thailand. The main aim of this study is to shed light on the dynamic process through which Shan cross-border migrants negotiate and represent their identities by manipulating various spatial practices in everyday life.

By employing a multi-sited ethnography, this study depicts different social and political contexts where they happen to be located, whether in Loi Taileng along the Thai-Burma border or in the city of Chiang Mai and its vicinities. The study examines how a variety of spatial tactics are performed among Shan cross-border migrants in different socio-political contexts respectively. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork in Loi Taileng, which represents a center of the Shan resistance movement as well as a

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conflict zone and a place of refuge for the displaced Shan, this study illustrates the ways in which this particular place on the margin has been transformed into a connecting space and how various transnational networks and cultural flows are

“vehicles” that link the dispersed and displaced Shan across territorial boundaries.

Throughout the process, the Shan State Army-South plays a fundamental role in forming a new sense of solidarity and collective and defensive identity which is articulated in a highly politicized way in opposition to the dominant Burmese military regime.

Meanwhile, in the context of Chiang Mai and its vicinities, Shan cross-border migrants negotiate their vulnerable positions in relation to the Thai state and express a collective sense of Shan-ness as a distinct cultural and ethnic entity rather than a political representation. This study especially elaborates the ways that Shan cross-border migrants construct different forms of social space by manipulating multiple networks including social, economic, religious and political dimensions.

Most significantly, this study argues that the dynamic process of negotiating Shan-ness is neither an exclusive nor dichotomous choice but a flexible and tactical positioning always under transformation.

All in all, transnational spatial practices, which are imperative elements to formulate tactical identities of Shan cross-border migrants, cannot be examined only within a fixed place and locality. Rather than emplacing or implanting their homes and homelands in a new settlement, whether it is at the margin of the Thai-Burma border, in urban Chiang Mai or anywhere else in Thailand, this study highlights that Shan cross-border migrants manipulate space and place through a variety of spatial practices and merge these geographically separate places into an interconnected social world in the absence of a territorial base. It is in this territorially unbounded social world that Shan cross-border migrants can craft their identities and make themselves visible and audible.

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