Rural–Urban Hierarchies, Status Boundaries, and Labour Mobilities in Thailand

Abstract

Thai national development strategies have sought to expand infrastructure and reduce poverty in the country's northern and north-eastern regions by constructing industrial estates, facilitating foreign investments, increasing market integration, and encouraging capital flexibilities. Despite government efforts to decrease material divisions between rural and urban spaces, rural–urban migration strategies commonly exist within household economic portfolios. Such labour mobilities and development initiatives rework spatial relationships between rural and urban, whereby economic activities and social networks create complex national political economies that challenge strict dualistic modelling. Yet, ethnographic data collected since 2009 illustrate that rural–urban differences were present in class and status hierarchies among northern and north-eastern migrants in Bangkok. Specifically, respondents' imaginings of their place within the Thai social order correlated to what degree they associated with urbanity and remained in Bangkok. Further, respondents' class and status identities exhibited correlations with whether they identified with culturally defined ‘migrant’ categories, which commonly represented otherness and contained ethnic undertones. This paper illustrates that while geographic and economic flexibilities necessarily problematise dualistic views of rural–urban spaces, associated labour mobilities may simultaneously reinforce perceptions of rural–urban difference and create identity and status divisions among those engaged in migration.