Wishful performativity: translation and the linguistic structures of a stalled rights imaginary in Mae Sot, Thailand

Abstract

AbstractFrom the perspective of a legal aid clinic that works with foreign workers in Mae Sot, Thailand, this article explores how the project of extending legal rights to migrants is structured by tensions between the ideals of translation – what translation should be, who ought to conduct it, and how its efficacy might be imagined – and the various ways in which translation actually occurs. Analysis of these tensions reveals three aspects of the linguistic mediation of rights discourse: first, it speaks to the foundational limits of rights advocacy, underscoring the fact that these limits are located in the materiality of human communicative practice; second, it brings to light the specific linguistic structures of rights discourse in Mae Sot; and, third, it considers how, despite the best efforts of legal activists, those structures circumscribe liberal rights imaginaries in the town.