Myanmar Migrant Workers as Guests of the Nation

ABSTRACT

In the past 20 years, the number of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand has increased tremendously. Due to several criminal incidents in which offenders were Myanmar workers shown in the news over the last decade, many Thais have developed prejudice against Myanmar migrant workers. This article contends that a museum can be a starting point in creating social change through focused research, exhibition design, and community engagement. I will explain how field research allowed the exhibit development team to gain first-hand experiences with Myanmar migrant workers and overcome their own prejudice. This attitude change among team members led to the overarching concept of the Myanmar Up-Close exhibition, which was that direct contact with Myanmar migrant workers could make Thai people understand migrants better and ultimately reduced prejudice against them. Thus, the exhibition, education programs, and the public event were all designed to encourage interactions between Thais and the Myanmar.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• social issues
• prejudice
• migrant workers
• Thailand
• Myanmar

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Wasana Sriprachya-anunt, PhD, is a lecturer at the Faculty of Learning Sciences and Education, Thammasat University in Thailand. She earned a doctoral degree in Art Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a strong interest in museum learning. Over the past couple of years, she has expanded her interest and explored other topics in education such as innovations in ethics development and learning in museums and informal learning in other settings.

Notes

1 Aung, “Migrants Are Not Commodities.”

2 Myanmar was formerly known in English as Burma. “On 18 June 1989, the name of the state was changed from the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma to Union of Myanmar through the enactment of the Adaptation of Expression law”. Liow, “Myanmar (Burma),” 25. Despite the fact that the UN endorsed the name change, many English speaking countries still use the former name. Dittmer, “Burma vs. Myanmar,” 2. In this article, I refer to the country as “Myanmar,” but use Myanmar and Burmese interchangeably when I refer to the language and the people.

3 Chantavanich and Vungsiriphisal, “Myanmar Migrants,” 214–5.

4 Foreign Workers Administration Office. Tables 21 and 22.

5 Archavanitkul and Vajanasara, “Employment of Migrant Workers,” 36.

6 Chutintaranond, “Image of the Burmese Enemy.”

7 Janes, Troubled World, 13.

8 Boonyakiet, Exhibition in the Making, 69–73.

9 Taweesak Woraritruengaurai, interviewed by Wasana Sriprachya-anunt, Bangkok, Thailand, April 5, 2017.

10 Ibid.

11 Boonyakiet, Exhibition in the Making, 37.

12 Ibid., 89.

13 Boonyakiet, Exhibition in the Making, 122.

14 Taweesak Woraritruengaurai, interviewed by Wasana Sriprachya-anunt, Bangkok, Thailand, April 5, 2017.

15 Boonyakiet, Exhibition in the Making, 135.

Additional information

Funding

This research received funding from the Thailand Research Fund (TRF).