Abstract:One major aim of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) integration programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is to foster regional 'community' for sharing resources, people and financial flows. This 'community' is the target of both economic growth and poverty reduction. The emphasis on 'community' in the ADB's mushrooming quantity of documents raises important questions about what kinds of people are included, in what roles and with what kinds of support and protection. This paper explores these … Show more
“…The two main laws governing migration to Thailand are the Thailand Immigration Act (1979) and Foreign Employment Act (2008), both of which consider refugees as “illegal” migrants. Major cross‐border migration flows between Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are primarily managed through temporary and ad hoc cabinet decisions that prioritise governing flows depending on Thai employers’ needs (Latt, ). Latt () argues that the inclusion of forced migrants within Thai law as “illegal” and the subsequent use of tacit or arbitrary policy mechanisms to govern this population are in fact legal processes that produce illegal migrants.…”
Section: Project Design: Convention Promises and Precarious Methodsmentioning
In this paper, I argue that conditions for asylum seekers in countries that have signed the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereafter “Convention”) are increasingly paralleling those in non‐signatory countries. The similar deterioration of treatment of asylum seekers is symptomatic of the disintegration of the existing refugee protection system established by the Convention. This paper focuses on the case of Thailand, a non‐signatory country that has been widely criticised for its treatment of refugees, and compares three significant trends in refugee protection with those in the UK. In Thailand as well as the UK, protection takes shape as ad hoc, arbitrary and differentially applied across space, leading to extreme precariousness. Two concepts frame my comparison of the Thai and UK contexts: the landscapes of protection that encompass the range of practices engaged in refugee governance, from signed treaties to soft laws, subcontracted service providers and substandard media coverage; and the graduated levels of protection that rely on spatial logics to manage access to protection and shape both refugees’ imagined futures as well as their present status. This comparison challenges the implicit distinctions between developed and developing countries, as well as signatories and non‐signatories to the Convention, that have predominated in refugee scholarship, and extends recent scholarship that deconstructs the coherence and authority of the nation state. I conclude that these presumed divisions are not only inaccurate, but mask the precarious and dangerous realities that asylum seekers and refugees face in both locations. Increasingly, the protections offered by the Convention have become a façade for arbitrary and harmful treatment of refugees.
“…The two main laws governing migration to Thailand are the Thailand Immigration Act (1979) and Foreign Employment Act (2008), both of which consider refugees as “illegal” migrants. Major cross‐border migration flows between Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are primarily managed through temporary and ad hoc cabinet decisions that prioritise governing flows depending on Thai employers’ needs (Latt, ). Latt () argues that the inclusion of forced migrants within Thai law as “illegal” and the subsequent use of tacit or arbitrary policy mechanisms to govern this population are in fact legal processes that produce illegal migrants.…”
Section: Project Design: Convention Promises and Precarious Methodsmentioning
In this paper, I argue that conditions for asylum seekers in countries that have signed the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereafter “Convention”) are increasingly paralleling those in non‐signatory countries. The similar deterioration of treatment of asylum seekers is symptomatic of the disintegration of the existing refugee protection system established by the Convention. This paper focuses on the case of Thailand, a non‐signatory country that has been widely criticised for its treatment of refugees, and compares three significant trends in refugee protection with those in the UK. In Thailand as well as the UK, protection takes shape as ad hoc, arbitrary and differentially applied across space, leading to extreme precariousness. Two concepts frame my comparison of the Thai and UK contexts: the landscapes of protection that encompass the range of practices engaged in refugee governance, from signed treaties to soft laws, subcontracted service providers and substandard media coverage; and the graduated levels of protection that rely on spatial logics to manage access to protection and shape both refugees’ imagined futures as well as their present status. This comparison challenges the implicit distinctions between developed and developing countries, as well as signatories and non‐signatories to the Convention, that have predominated in refugee scholarship, and extends recent scholarship that deconstructs the coherence and authority of the nation state. I conclude that these presumed divisions are not only inaccurate, but mask the precarious and dangerous realities that asylum seekers and refugees face in both locations. Increasingly, the protections offered by the Convention have become a façade for arbitrary and harmful treatment of refugees.
“…As a result, the literature (e.g. Triandafillidou & Maroukis, ; Skeldon, ; Asis, ; Jordan & Duvell, ; Brennan, ) displays a persistent tendency to disaggregate these two elements of labour movement (Hickey, ; Latt, ; Lindquist et al ., ; Molland, ), so that: in both the academic and popular literatures, migrants and others inhabit either an entirely legal world facilitated by for‐profit businesses and non‐profit organizations in which they follow the regulations and laws, or they use criminal syndicates who smuggle them (Kyle & Goldstein, : 1).The implications of this conceptual distinction have been explored in greatest detail in the context of the US‐Mexico migration system. There, various authors (Torres & Wicks‐Asburn, ; Menjívar, ; De Genova, ) have emphasized the ‘liminal’ nature of legal status and how it shapes the lifeworlds even of those legally entitled to work and remain.…”
Section: Thinking Beyond the Meso‐level: Linking Large Scale Processementioning
confidence: 99%
“…As a result, the literature (e.g. Triandafillidou & Maroukis, 2012;Skeldon, 2009;Asis, 2004;Jordan & Duvell, 2002;Brennan, 1984) displays a persistent tendency to disaggregate these two elements of labour movement (Hickey, 2015;Latt, 2013;Lindquist et al, 2012;Molland, 2012), so that: in both the academic and popular literatures, migrants and others inhabit either an entirely legal world facilitated by for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations in which they follow the regulations and laws, or they use criminal syndicates who smuggle them (Kyle & Goldstein, 2011: 1).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, heeding Levitt's (2012) and Sturgeon's (2013) broad calls for greater attention to the cultural dimension of migration, this study is directed towards two specific aims. First, it seeks to extend Kubal's (2013) concept of semi-legalityas empirically demonstrated by Latt (2013) and work on 'liminal legality' more broadly (Torres & Wicks-Asburn, 2014;Menjívar, 2006) by demonstrating how documentation constitutes a dynamically integrated element within the cultural, personal and logistical context of a migration system. In doing so, it aims to embed the abstract concept of legal status within specifically place-based realities of employment and brokerage.…”
This paper uses the exodus of Cambodian migrant workers from Thailand in June 2014 as a focal point around which to explore Cambodian migrant attitudes towards the systems of documentation and brokerage that influence their movement. From the perspective of Cambodian returnees and their families, it builds on recent work exploring narratives of brokerage by demonstrating how documentation itself — and by extension the legality of migration — is viewed through a contextual lens. Specifically, it argues that documentation is not only viewed according to the formal regulatory framework governing migration between the two countries, but forms part of a more complex structure of influences in which norms of employment and brokerage are equally prominent. From this position, the paper suggests that migrants did not only respond directly to threats of a crackdown by authorities following the 2014 coup, but were additionally influenced by the actions of employers and brokers, whose guarantees of protection — or otherwise — were seen as vitally important in their migration decisions.
“…This is the second year that prizes have been awarded both to the best paper by a graduate student, and to the best overall paper. Like last year, when the inaugural prizes were awarded to Sai Latt and Janet Sturgeon respectively (Latt, 2013;Sturgeon, 2013), the co-editors compiled a shortlist for each category from which special committees of editorial board members selected the winning papers. The results are as follows.…”
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
