The chronopolitics of exile: Hope, heterotemporality and NGO economics along the Thai–Burma border

Abstract

In this article, we foreground chronopolitics – the politics of time – to examine the ways in which the heterotemporalities of Burmese exiles living in nine “temporary shelters” along the Thai–Burma (Myanmar) border mediate one of the most protracted displacement situations in the world. The imminent repatriation of these Burmese exiles, tens of thousands of whom have been waiting for decades to be resettled to an often elusive third country or to return to a peaceful Burma, has given way to a preeminent “crisis of hope.” The perception that the camps are “out of time” has diverted critical funding streams away from border-related issues and into Burma itself, which has led to a widespread shift in focus for thousands of NGOs in the region. It is within this temporal and spatial context that we argue that the political economy of hope is deeply entangled in the geoeconomics of Burma’s “opening up” to systems of global capital. The forestalled realizations of exiles’ hopes and potential futures are inextricably linked to not only geoeconomic change but also to the shifting foci of NGOs and stakeholders in the region towards liberalization policies and projects in Burma and away from Burma’s exile populations. In this way, along Thai–Burma border, the political economy of hope articulates with chronopolitics in ways that shed new light on the politics and temporalities of refugeedom.