Thai Migrants Research Articles

Between Marketization and Demarketization: Reconfiguration of the Migration Industry in the Agricultural Sector in Israel

This paper focuses on the consequences of the implementation of a bilateral agreement between Israel and Thailand for migrant workers in the agricultural sector. Its purpose is to shed light on the key mechanisms of the transition from the marketization to demarketization of recruiting migrant workers, and to show how this transition affects the forms of labor recruitment and its consequences for the labor migrants. The study is based on three face-to-face surveys conducted among 180 agricultural workers from Thailand. Fifty-five were surveyed in 2011 before the implementation of the bilateral agreement, and 125 were interviewed after the agreement was implemented. Relying on a “before” and “after design, we first highlight the ways in which the private recruitment industry operated in Israel in the context of a state-sponsored temporary labor migration program, identifying the actors involved in the process and explaining how they profited from the labor recruitment. Second, we shed light on the importance of bilateral agreements in eliminating illicit practices for recruiting foreign workers in Israel and its practical consequences for the Thai migrants arriving under the new arrangement. We discuss our findings in light of the theories presented in the paper.

Blessing the living spaces of migrants: religious practices of Thai workers in Japan and their meanings

ABSTRACT Existing literature suggests that religion plays a significant role in migrants’ social and cultural capital, engaging them with their ethnic communities both within and across the host countries’ borders. This article proposes that religion provides a mechanism for migrants to reconstitute their spaces under the subjugation of a migratory structure. The article reports findings of a case study of Thai technical intern trainees who are guest workers in Japan, examining their religious practices and the reconstitution of their living spaces, and considering the meanings associated with those practices. It focuses on a broad spectrum of Thai religiosity, which is characterized by an amalgam of diverse ritual and cosmological domains. It allows for the inclusion of a broader range of religious practices serving as repertoires for Thai migrants. Living in subjugating circumstances in Japan, religious practices such as carrying sacred objects and worshipping mystical entities instil in migrants’ spaces a sense of being blessed and protected. The reconstituted space is transnationally connected to mystical powers and their families in Thailand. The new essence of comfort and familiarity attached to their living spaces helps mitigate constraints during their stay in the destination country.

Psychiatric symptoms among migrants to Malaysia from the southernmost provinces of Thailand.

The objective of this paper is to examine the level of psychiatric symptoms and associated factors among Thai migrants from the southernmost Thai provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narithiwat who are working in Malaysia. Comparisons will be made with the sending population in the southernmost provinces of Thailand. Data are drawn from survey and in-depth interviews with Thai migrants who are working in Malaysia. Comparisons are made with a probability sample of working age adults in Thailand. The twenty item Self Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ) was the measure of mental health. The study found that the migrants, on average, have normal levels of psychiatric symptoms. However, although about 24% of migrants reported more eight or more symptoms that may indicate a need for evaluation. There are many stressors in their lives including distance from families, reduced social support, legal matters surrounding immigration, and discrimination/exploitation of migrant groups. The study highlights the need for policy makers and non-governmental organizations to give attention to migrants' mental health, well-being and sustainable livelihoods.

Framing the Mother Tac: The Racialised, Sexualised and Gendered Politics of Modern Slavery in Australia

Centred on the slavery trial “Crown vs. Rungnapha Kanbut” heard in Sydney, New South Wales, between 10 April and 15 May 2019, this article seeks to frame the figure of the “Mother Tac” or the “mother of contract”, also called “mama tac” or “mae tac”—a term used amongst Thai migrants to describe a woman who hosts, collects debts from, and organises work for Thai migrant sex workers in their destination country. It proposes that this largely unexplored figure has come to assume a disproportionate role in the “modern slavery” approach to human trafficking, with its emphasis on absolute victims and individual offenders. The harms suffered by Kanbut’s victims are put into context by referring to existing literature on women accused of trafficking; interviews with Thai migrant sex workers, including Kanbut’s primary victim, and with members from the Australian Federal Police Human Trafficking Unit; and ethnographic field notes. The article unveils how constructions of both victim and offender, as well as definitions of slavery, are racialised, gendered, and sexualised and rely on the victims’ subjective accounts of bounded exploitation. By documenting these and other limitations involved in a criminal justice approach, the authors reveal its shortfalls. For instance, while harsh sentences are meant as a deterrence to others, the complex and structural roots of migrant labour exploitation remain unaffected. This research finds that improved legal migration pathways, the decriminalisation of the sex industry, and improved access to information and support for migrant sex workers are key to reducing heavier forms of labour exploitation, including human trafficking, in the Australian sex industry.

Globalising the Thai ‘high-touch’ industry: exports of care and body work and gendered mobilities to and from Thailand

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the global trade of Thai tourism and related service industries such as restaurant, spa and hospital – service activities in which the body and bodily emotions of both service consumers and providers are central. I will demonstrate how the Thai state and private sector market Thai services to the world and construct Thailand as a destination for bodily and spiritual fulfilment. Analysing Thailand as an exporter of care and body labour, this article highlights the important role the nation-state and local socioeconomic structures play in shaping global care chains. State policy that promotes tourism and related service industries as a key economic development strategy has shaped current interrelated forms of transnational mobilities between Thailand and more affluent countries – marriage migration, health and medical tourism, and retirement migration. I also explore the interface between Thai state policies on the export of care and lived experiences of Thailand-Europe transnational migrants. Through their occupation choices, marital relocation decisions and care arrangements, Thai migrants in Europe and European migrants in Thailand both resist and reproduce the commodification of care and body work.

Raising citizens in ‘mixed’ family setting: mothering techniques of Filipino and Thai migrants in Belgium

As states increasingly regulate ‘mixed’ family formation, self-positioning has become central to the lives of migrant spouses, including women. To understand this process, the present article investigates the mothering techniques of Filipino and Thai migrant women in Belgium, that is, the decisions, actions and ways of being they consciously enact in response to state policies ‘here’ and/or 'there' to secure the mother–child bond in space and time. Interviews and observations reveal these women’s main techniques: obtaining Belgian nationality for themselves, prioritising a single nationality (Belgian) for their children and staying at home (in the case of Filipino migrant women) or working (in the case of Thai women). This self-positioning sets these women’s own path and prepare their children’s route towards full, active membership in the nation. Mothering appears therefore as a fertile site of citizenship, which from afar echoes the public–private divide but in close-up reveals the porosity of such dichotomy.

Early Detection of Breast Cancer and Barrier to Screening Programmes amongst Thai Migrant Women in Australia: A Qualitative Study

Background:Breast cancer screening programme is seen as the best practice to detect breast cancer early. However, there are circumstances that can prevent immigrant women from attending screening programmes. Little is known about Thai migrants and the barriers to their seeking breast cancer screening when living in a new homeland. This paper aimed to discuss the barriers to attending screening services among Thai migrant women living in Australia.Methods:This study adopted qualitative approach. Semi-structured in-depth interviewing and drawing methods were employed as data collection technique with 25 Thai migrant women who had not experienced breast cancer and were living in Metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Thematic analysis method was employed to analyse the data.Results:Basing on the Health Belief Model, most Thai migrant women did not perceive that they were at risk of breast cancer. Despite seeing a breast cancer screening programme as important, the women rarely paid attention to breast cancer screening and used the mammography services provided by the Australian health care system. The barriers included the location of the services, unfamiliar patterns of health care provision, and language difficulties.Conclusions:There are many barriers that that they encountered in Australia that prevent Thai migrant women living in Melbourne Australia to pay attention to mammographic screening service provided by Australia health system. Our findings suggest that health services and interventions need to be designed more sensitive to the needs and socio-cultural context of migrant women in general and Thai migrant women in particular.

Deferral and Intimacy: Long-distance Romance and Thai Migrants Abroad

Aek's fiancée, Fern, was already married to a European man. But each month, she sent remittances back to Aek so that he could build them a home and rubber orchard in their hometown in northeastern Thailand. In the meantime, Aek waited for Fern to return. But in the time spent waiting, plans, aspirations, and even bodies changed. As Aek and Fern charted a life together, this deferred life grew more and more spectral. This article is an ethnographic study of the Thai male romantic partners of Thai women working abroad as sex workers or marriage migrants, and their engagement with the problems of impermanence and deferral. Via the "work of waiting" (Kwon 2015) of those left behind, I argue here that waiting is in tension with the impermanence of hopes, selves, and bodies. I ask: what does it mean to "wait," when what is promised, who promises, and the future date when promises are to be realized are each in flux?

“Women in groups can help each and learn from each other”: The role of homosocial practices within women’s social networks in building local gender contracts

Feminist scholars struggle to articulate gender relations in different contexts. Using the concept of local gender contract - a place specific agreement of gender relations, we explore how women’s networks challenge or shift gender contracts in their communities. Based on two empirical case studies of women´s groups from Eastern Africa and Thai migrants in Sweden, we show gender contracts are challenged through women’s homosocial activities. We highlight tensions between gender contracts and the women’s goals revealing a complicated process of assent and resistance. This study expands gender contract theoretically and provides a way to understand vulnerable women’s activities.

Illegal immigration, deportation policy, and the optimal timing of return

Countries with strict immigration policies often resort to deportation measures to reduce their stocks of illegal immigrants. Many of their undocumented foreign workers, however, are not deported but rather choose to return home voluntarily. This paper studies the optimizing behavior of undocumented immigrants who continuously face the risk of deportation, modeled by a stochastic process, and must decide how long to remain in the host country. It is found that the presence of uncertainty with respect to the length of stay abroad unambiguously reduces the desired migration duration and may trigger a voluntary return when a permanent stay would otherwise be optimal. Voluntary return is motivated by both economic and psychological factors. Calibration of the model to match the evidence on undocumented Thai migrants in Japan suggests that the psychological impact of being abroad as an illegal alien may be equivalent to as large as a 68 % cut in the consumption rate at the point of return.

The role of labour broker networks in setting the price of working abroad for thai migrant workers

The objective of this research was to study the role of labour broker networks in fixing the price for Thai migrants to work abroad. In order to understand the role of these networks, it was necessary to focus on two specific research questions. The first question was how these labour broker networks are formed; and the second question was why, or for what purposes, are these networks being created. Data was collected through in-depth interviews as well as participatory and non-participatory observations with 37 key informants who were labour brokers belonging to legal labour agencies and labour sub-brokers. Key informants were selected by a snowball technique from Udon Thani, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Chaiyaphum, and Nongkhai. Data analysis was done using the ATLAS.ti program. The study found that the labour broker networks in the north-east of Thailand are loosely established through ties formed via cultural or community activities without any formal organization. In the main, these networks are set up on the basis of personal relationships among members. The rationale behind the establishment of these networks is to maintain personal relationships and to exchange work-related information. The results of the study indicated that the social networks of labour brokers are informal, and that these networks are linked to other networks that exist among labour brokers and sub-brokers forming larger local and regional networks. The costs incurred by Thai migrant workers having recall to the services of labour broker networks forms part of the overall cost of working abroad. Moreover, it was found that in some cases labour sub-brokers had provided loans to Thai labourers to cover the costs of travelling abroad.

Thai Migrant Workers Government Support for the Sustainable Living of Thai Migrant Workers Before and After Working in Singapore

Thai Migrant Workers Government Support for the Sustainable Living of Thai Migrant Workers Before and After Working in Singapore

Beingkhon phias a Form of Resistance among Thai Migrant Workers in Korea

SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthropology, sociology, and history.

Thai Migrant Workers in Agriculture Farms in New Zealand: A Short Case Study

This paper’s aim is to study the problems Thai migrant workers face in agricultural farming in New Zealand and to provide guidelines for solving these problems. This study used in-depth interviews conducted between the years 2007 and 2012, with accidental sampling, and the data were analyzed using a content analysis. The study found that the main motivation of Thai workers is to send remittance back home to pay off family debt. Many Thai workers came to work in New Zealand because their relatives motivated them, and the problems they face while there include a limitation of working visas, English language barriers, and an inability to find work. In order to solve these problems the Thai government should train Thai workers both before and after working aboard.

Doing Love in the Borderland of Transnational Sex Work: Female Thai Migrants in Denmark

By bringing love to the fore as an unfixed category, this article analyses the highly complex lives of female Thai migrants who sell sex in Denmark. In doing so, the article challenges the static and rather normative binary categories of “sex work” versus “prostitution” and “empowered woman” versus “victim of human trafficking” that are produced in the literature on sex work and prostitution. This binary approach is likely to portray the lives and subject positions of female migrants who sell sex in a rather one-sided way. The article argues that the category of love is highly relevant in studies of transnational sex work if we want to grasp the complexity of the lives of female migrants who sell sexual services.

What are the Health Needs, Familial and Social Problems of Thai Migrants in a Local Community in Australia? A Focus Group Study

This study explored the health needs, familial and social problems of Thai migrants in a local community in Brisbane, Australia. Five focus groups with Thai migrants were conducted. The qualitative data were examined using thematic content analysis that is specifically designed for focus group analysis. Four themes were identified: (1) positive experiences in Australia, (2) physical health problems, (3) mental health problems, and (4) familial and social health problems. This study revealed key health needs related to chronic disease and mental health, major barriers to health service use, such as language skills, and facilitating factors, such as the Thai Temple. We concluded that because the health needs, familial and social problems of Thai migrants were complex and culture bound, the development of health and community services for Thai migrants needs to take account of the ways in which Thai culture both negatively impacts health and offer positive solutions to problems.

Burning Red Desires: Isan Migrants and the Politics of Desire in Contemporary Thailand

The Red Shirt movement, which reached its peak during May 2010, has been met with puzzlement and ambiguity by media and scholars in and beyond Thailand. Often presented as a one-man-driven movement or a ‘peasant revolt’, the movement has remained opaque to many observers. This article analyses the ongoing conflict through the eyes of Isan (North Eastern Thai) migrants in Bangkok, especially motorcycle taxi drivers, as motivated by ‘politics of desire’. In particular, the article explores how desires for consumption are voiced by a new emerging regional middle class with a diffuse feeling of being stuck between an agricultural past and a self-employed present, due to structural limitations on social and personal development. The author examines the historical emergences and failures of these desires in a complex web of conflicting and overlapping claims to representation, capitalism and class mobility. Positioning desires at the core of the analysis and exploring their configuration and suppression in Thailand through discourses of capitalist access, self-sufficiency and social justice allows severed links to be recovered and apparent contradictions to be reconfigured. This seems necessary to understand the otherwise disconnected and incomprehensible economic, discursive and spatial dimensions of the Thai political conflict.

The Importance of Ethnic Competency: Labor Trafficking, Thai Migrations, and the Thai Community Development Center

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000, 2011) created new conditional residency visas and new avenues for American citizenship for the victims of human trafficking. Thai migrants have benefited from its provisions, but their disproportionate presence in this category has indicated the depths of this problem within the Thai immigrant community. This paper examines anti-trafficking advocacy, and it begins by criticizing existing Asian American pan-ethnic organizations. It addresses the limits of their approaches, and argues that ethnic-specific organizations still play an important role in helping victims as well as the ethnic communities in which they will settle.

The Importance of Ethnic Competency: Labor Trafficking, Thai Migrations, and the Thai Community Development Center

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000, 2011) created new conditional residency visas and new avenues for American citizenship for the victims of human trafficking. Thai migrants have benefited from its provisions, but their disproportionate presence in this category has indicated the depths of this problem within the Thai immigrant community. This paper examines anti-trafficking advocacy, and it begins by criticizing existing Asian American pan-ethnic organizations. It addresses the limits of their approaches, and argues that ethnic-specific organizations still play an important role in helping victims as well as the ethnic communities in which they will settle.

Thai migrants in Japan: Experience and return

Thai migrants in Japan: Experience and return