Undocumented Immigrant Workers: Gender and Social Experiences of Transnational Shan Women Workers.

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the experience of undocumented immigrant labors in Chiang Mai through an investigation of Shan women’s ability to reframe their subject positions in their new work place. It argues that different forms of social identity such as gender, ethnicity and class have shaped diverse social experiences. Shan women have migrated to Thailand with different motivations and expectations and inevitably engaged in exploitative working relations. This paper explores how Shan women who have worked in the market place in Chiang Mai city have sought to negotiate their subject positions and subvert their marginal ethnic position within the oppressive labor relation through their attempt to establish informal relationship and sisterhood with the Thai female employers in the market place.