Youth agency in everyday precarity: the experiences of young migrants and refugees growing up on the Thailand-Myanmar border

ABSTRACT

Using the lenses of agency and precarity, this article examines how young migrants and refugees negotiate legal and social marginalisation growing up along the Thailand-Myanmar border. It explores the pervasive insecurity, vulnerability and uncertainty characterising the young people’s worlds, and the ways they strive to manage their circumstances and protect themselves from despair. The study on which the article is based involved 44 semi-structured qualitative interviews with 35 young men and women who were either born in Thailand to migrant or refugee parents, or had arrived from Myanmar, with their families or alone, before the age of 12. A social constructionist epistemology and qualitative case study methodology underpinned the research, chosen to facilitate a bottom-up, person-centred approach, and prioritise the young people’s perspectives within their cultural contexts. The findings capture the everyday precarity of the young people, living as ‘illegal aliens’ under Thai law. Arrest, detention, abuse, labour exploitation, and restricted access to state services, including accredited education and affordable healthcare, are daily challenges. However, the young people are far from passive victims of their circumstances, and resist reduction to those terms. As agentic social actors, they are both cognisant of their constraints and actively – relentlessly – engaged in managing them.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• precarity
• youth agency
• migrants
• refugees
• Thailand-Myanmar border

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all the young men and women who generously shared their time and personal stories. We are also grateful to our many advisors, colleagues and friends along the Thailand-Myanmar border, as well as at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, and Trinity Research in Childhood Centre, Trinity College Dublin who provided critical guidance and support along the way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.