Abstract
This article investigates a concern among encamped elder Karen refugees (an ethnic minority from Myanmar) living along the Thai–Myanmar border that the youth are disconnected politically and culturally. I argue that Karen youth are creative, active participants reimagining and revitalising Karen politics and culture in their image. I explore how displaced youths have found a voice in Karen rap and how they express this voice in the digitally mediated lived space of YouTube. I consider YouTube as a lived space where citizenship is reimagined and long-distance nationalism is articulated. Finally, I contend that YouTube is transforming Karen youths’ political experiences and mobility and that they are actively political – just not in the way the elders expect.
Highlights
This article investigates a concern among encamped elder Karen refugees living along the Thai–Myanmar border that the youth are disconnected politically and culturally
The tranquillity of Saw Ka Lu’s fenced garden seems a million miles away from the oft-challenging environment of the camp. His house and garden are right in the middle of Mae La Temporary Shelter, a refugee camp with a population of over 34,000 inhabitants (UNHCR, 2020), located on the Thai–Myanmar border
The vivid presence of music underpins daily life, which was evident in each visit I made to Mae La camp (Mae La going forward)
Summary
Agamben (1998, 2005) focused his thoughts on the Greek meaning for ‘life’ He makes a distinction between zoē, meaning living common to all living things (the body, reproductive life, the animal) and bios meaning the political life (the mind, political ideas, and participation). Not all music is political; focusing on group identity, historical memory, and a way of living ideas, it is beneficial to this study to draw from the subversive sounds of hip-hop culture and rap music to unpack these themes. Starting as a political and oppositional art form, it became the voice of Afro-Americans (Ben Moussa, 2019: 1045) in the South Bronx, New York City, during the 1970s These defiant political messages fluidly cross borders where hip-hop culture is embraced by marginalised groups and reimagined in their image
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