Livelihood of Tai Cross-border migrants: construction of identities and citizenship in cultural space

Abstract

Tai migrant workers are likely to be under a precarious living condition wherein they are deemed invisible people and bare life. Likewise, being low-wage labour coupling with their status as the stateless, have exacerbated their working condition wherein they are exposed to various risks. Moreover, they cannot express their existence in a society because they are only considered as economic resource.

The objectives of participating in cultural space of migrant workers is to change their identity through reconstructing their new identity, especially via resistance against a single rigid definition of citizenship by contesting meaning. By doing so, rather than being confined to only economic space, those migrants can adjust and construct their new identity which enable them to negotiate with the existing definition of citizenship and substitute with a new definition which is more complex and flexible.