Rangkla, Prasert
Description
This thesis addresses the situation of Karen refugees in Mae Sot, a town on
Thailand's border with Myanmar. It focuses on the specific case of Buddhist Karen
who originate from the Hpa-an plain of Karen State, Myanmar, and who have
settled outside the refugee camp system. This study investigates how relations of
refuge are socially constructed in an intercultural non-institutional context.
Drawing upon life history interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in a number of
Mae Sot...[Show more] neighbourhoods, it delineates a mode of refugeedom which is locally
created in the conjuncture between local perspectives on refuge and the universal
notion of refugees, and through recourse to traditional and modern resources and
idioms.
Rather than seeing refugees as victims, or as autonomous agents who become an
objectified target of relief, this thesis emphasises that refuge is culturally
constituted in social relations of the borderland. In adopting self-settlement, Hpaan
Karen people’s access to security is intimately intertwined in the host-refugee
relationship. Vernacular refuge is identified as the provision and receipt of
informal and officially unrecognised forms of protection that are nonetheless
intelligible cross-culturally as relations of refuge. These relations entail reciprocity,
negotiation and hierarchy, nonetheless they confer a degree of safety, stability and
dignity. The notion of vernacular refugees provides an alternative to the obsessive
search for durable solutions for displaced persons by illuminating the practical
arrangements for security and protection which have emerged out of this refugee
group's struggle with powerful social forces.
In this study, I explore how conditions of displacement and refuge-seeking
intersect with three subthemes: mobility, protection and place. The study traces
Karen people's cultural conceptions of suffering in Myanmar and its relevance in precipitating mobility toward Thailand. I go on to examine dynamics of Karen's
access to protection on arriving at the Thai border and the genesis of the selfsettlement
option. My research reveals that this non-institutional form of
protection is provided in relatively mundane and daily aspects of social life.
Investigating domains of economic transaction and local administration, I argue
that the potential for informal protection is embedded in the host-refugee
relationship, both in sentiment-infused hierarchical employer-worker exchanges
and in dyadic negotiations between local authorities and Karen residents.
Seeking to understand the Karen refugees' sense of place, I explore Karen people's
active deployment of their cultural and religious repertoires to make a home in
their new locality. Based on observations of the Karen wrist-tying ceremony, this
study argues that a sense of individual well-being is reinforced by aesthetic and
sensory experiences of ceremonial materials imbued with auspicious metaphors. 1
further pay attention to their Buddhist projects and practices and find that Karen
locality is reconstituted by Buddhist cosmological symbols, protection from
powerful beings and festive sociality. By exploring Karen reactions to options for
durable resettlement and local integration, the study turns again to the issue of
mobility and describes practical moves underway towards a post-refugee status
through Karen people’s engagement in mobile and multi-sited livelihood strategies.
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