MORE THAN CULTURE, GENDER, AND CLASS

Abstract

Class is back on the critical social research agenda in ways that are different from the class reductionism of “old” Marxism. Contemporary theorizations integrate culture, gender, and other axes of identity in interpreting socioeconomic processes. This article argues that the intersection of culture, gender, and class cannot adequately explain complex socioeconomic processes without sensitivity to migration or the legal status of individuals and bodily qualities conditioned by that legal status. This argument is made in the context of ethnic Shan migrants working in agricultural production in the Doi Soong (pseudonym) Royal Development Project site in northern Thailand. There, the “success” of the Project is fundamentally predicated on the simultaneous representation and erasure of Shan labor, whose exploitability is shaped not only by the dynamics of culture, gender, and class, but also by the migrants' historically contingent and lived experience as migrant (mobile) and precarious/undocumented (noncitizen) bodies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Hmong and Shan research participants from Doi Soong. I thank Robin Roth, Philip Kelly, and Peter Vandergeest for critical insights and various supports. I also thank Mary Beth Mills and Bernadette Resurreccion for critical reviews of this article; I have sole responsibility if I cannot do justice to these comments. I also thank Tom Fenton, editor of Critical Asian Studies, for his editorial assistance. Thanks to the Geography Department (York University), the York Center for Asian Research, and the Regional Center for Sustainable Development (Chiang Mai University) for supporting my research. This research was funded by Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChaTSEA) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

^1. Used hereafter without quotation marks.

^2. Shan migrant workers also “perform” (Judith Butler's word) these identities so that local Hmong employers hire them as waged labor.

^3. Used hereafter without quotation marks.

^4. In the context of Shan migrant workers, at least in the area of this research, the term “precarious” is more relevant than “undocumented” because not every one is undocumented. Some managed to acquire different types of “hill tribe cards” and “Ten Year Cards” available to those with no official documents in Thailand. Yet, none of these cards guarantees their rights and protection. As such, the workers may be documented, but their rights and protections may not be different from the rest of “undocumented” migrant workers from Myanmar.

^6. Royal Development Project, no date. Emphasis added.

^5. The royally initiated projects were started since 1959 in various parts of Thailand. They were “development” projects ranging from irrigation projects to road projects, fishery projects, school projects and so on. In 1969, the Royal Hill Tribe Development Program was launched to “help the hill tribes.” This program is known today as the Royal Development Project. If we consider all royally initiated projects including the “hill tribe” development projects, there are nearly 800 different projects, as identified by an unofficial, but resourceful website: geocities. com/RainForest/Vines/1701/kingm12.htm; accessed 11 September 2011.

^7. To safeguard the Hmong villagers and Shan workers, I do not reveal the exact location of my research site; I indicate the site only in general terms. My site is located in a Royal Development Center, which I call “Doi Soong” or “Doi Soong Royal Project” throughout this article.

^8. 1 rai = 1,600 square meters = 0.16 ha = 0.395 acre.

^9. Jayamangkala 2006.

^10. Highland Research and Development Institute, 2010.

^11. An additional reason for the loss of members is that villagers are now required to follow a “Good Agricultural Practices” environmental standard to be qualified for membership. Farming under GAP is financially costly. Exact data for the numbers of members who withdrew from the RPD are not available.

^12. During the period of data collection fewer than ten farmers in Doi Soong were producing organically.

^13. See Latt 2009.

^14. Interviews with RDP officers June-August, 2007; Kinnaree 2007, 108.

^15. Chanida 2008, 7.

^16. See Chanida 2008. These plans were not only military operations, but also economic and social development work such as agricultural and infrastructure development and school projects (to instill the King, religion and language as national ideologies).

^17. Hsieh 2001.

^18. Interviews with village elders, July–August, 2007.

^19. An exact number of Shan and other Burmese migrant workers in Thailand is unavailable. The common estimation is about 3 million in total.

^20. Not being a signatory to the 1951UNConvention on Refugees and the 1967 Protocol, Thailand does not officially use the term “refugees” but instead uses “displaced persons” to refer to those who seek refuge in Thailand (although the term “refugees” is often used by officials, NGOs and the media).

^21. Smith 2000.

^22. Wacquant 2008; Smith 2000; DeMott 1990; Glassman 2010.

^23. Wright 2006.

^25. Smith 2000,1027–28.

^24. Skeggs 2004; Acker 2000; McDowell 2003, 2006; Smith 2000.

^26. McDowell 2006.

^27. Ibid.

^28. Wills 2008; McDowell 2008; Dowling 2009; Kelly and Lusis 2006; Sayer 2006; Watt 2008; Skeggs 2004; Stenning 2005.

^29. Dowling 2009, 834.

^30. Sayar 2008; Watt 2005; Skeggs 2004.

^31. Ibid.

^32. McDowell 2008, 21. See also, McDowell 2003, 2006.

^33. Tolia-Kelly 2009; Raghuram and Kofman 2004; Wills 2008.

^34. Wills 2008.

^35. Royal Development Project, no date, 4.

^36. Interview, July 2007.

^37. More than 70 percent of research participants are in chronic indebtedness as they need to borrow money constantly to meet both family expenses and agricultural inputs. But the lack of an alternative forces them to intensify agriculture with the Shan. Whereas they used to cultivate just once or twice in the past fifteen years, many are now cultivating two to three times a year.

^38. Latt 2008, chap. 5.

^39. Interview, July 2007. Interviews with Hmong farmers are in Hmong language, and my research assistant translated interviews from Hmong to English.

^40. Gibson and Graham 1986, 133.

^41. Interview, August 2007.

^42. Latt 2008, chap. 6.

^43. This is not to deny the problematic realities that oppression and dispossession of ethnic Shan in Burma are part of the Burmese state's attempt to eliminate minority cultures and population as much as it is of territorial control. The purpose of my argument is to highlight that ethnic identities do not carry the same meaning, importance, and outcomes across space and time.

^44. Although a majority of Shan migrants, including my research respondents, came to Thailand due to oppression in Burma, Thailand does not recognize them as “displaced persons,” which is Thailand's official term for refugees. Official reasons of this refusal is that the Shan do not escape from “group flights,” but migrated to Thailand for economic reasons. Some speculate that the government's policy on the Shan amounts to the Shan's cultural similarity with Northern Thais. Sharing ethnic family and speaking similar dialects, the Shan can learn to speak Northern Thai dialect and assimilate into Northern Thai population quickly. If the government allows the Shan to stay in refugee camps in a massive number, more Shan will migrate to Thailand, while many will assimilate into Northern Thai population, which the government want to prevent.

^45. Interview, July 25.

^46. Personal communication with Meh, Chiang Mai, December 2007.

^47. Thongchai 1994.

^48. In my survey with the Hmong, 54 percent hire men and women equally, and 38 percent hire more men, which is higher compared to those who hire more women (8 percent). Thus, although the wage is the same for both men and women, women's working days are fewer.

^49. Miyake 2008.

^50. McDowell 2008.

^51. Shan who have access to land via Hmong friends.

^52. Dowling 2009.

^53. Stenning 2005, 990.

^54. It should be mentioned Shan workers prefer to live outside the village. Some Hmong villagers do not even want the Shan staying together because they do not want to have Shan communities in the area. Still, many Hmong express preference for staying separately. Thus, it is difficult to made clear-cut arguments over who likes or does not like the Shan staying together outside the Hmong villages. The only clear-cut argument that can be made is that a majority of the Shan are living in poor conditions.

^55. Interview, July 2007.

^57. Interview, June 2007.

^56. Various interviews.

^58. Thanks to Mary Beth Mills for raising this point.