นักศึกษาม้งกับฟุตบอลประเพณี: กีฬา สภาวะสมัยใหม่ กับการกลายเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของรัฐไทย

Abstract

This article explores a transitional process and an ethnic identity maintaining among groups of Hmong university students in Chiang Mai city. It considers that this Hmong university student’s migration to the city is a social process which is related to a transition and a social integration in to Thai society within the contexts of state and minorities. The article demonstrates that at the everyday levels in living their lives in modern society the Hmong university students have to encounter with ‘the state of marginality’, being in between the two cultures and societies. Namely, they have to live their lives both, as ‘a Hmong’, in according to the expectations of traditional Hmong society and as ‘a Thai’, that is expected to be royal and patriotic to the national country. These powerful conditions lead to the state of ambiguity that these Hmong university students have to negotiate, between ‘Hmong-ness’ and Thai-ness, through a construction of shifting identity which operates through the uses of language, living practices, Hmong social club participations, and the construction of social space for their owns. All of these social activities, at the end, is seemingly, a reflexive process which leads to the self questioning among the Hmong university students. These questions to their ethnic identity have a consequence on their identity construction and worldviews, and the ways to live their life which are more complicated, but flexible and challenging to traditions that are seen as ‘backward’ or unjust. At the same time this reflexive process also strengthens them to be proud of and to persist and practice on their cultures and traditions and other aspects of Hmong identity in the contexts of national integration into the Thai nation-state.