Migrant Workers as Economic Citizenship: Limitations of Accessing to Social Welfare in Mae Sot

Abstract

This research article aims to understand the migrant welfare system in Mae Sot area, Tak province, by focusing on the barriers and limitations of migrants in accessing welfare from the bottom-up approach. Migrant workers in Mae Sot find difficulties to access to the social welfare provided by Thai state due to three major limitations: 1) the government’s registration procedure is too complicated, costly and changing due to the instability of national politics. As a result, most of migrants in Mae Sot are not willing to register to the system that they do not understand and unable to pay.; 2) the concept of welfare in Thailand is tied to the fact that labor must have an employer. As a result, when legally migrant workers change employers or become a worker in informal job, they will fall out of legal status, which is a prerequisite for access to state welfare.; and 3) the way in which the social welfare of the Thai state is focused on being an individual. This conflicts with the actual characteristics of migrant workers in Mae Sot who come to work as family members. In order to deal with the limitation, Thai government has to broaden the meaning of "work" to cover more informal work. Thailand must reduce the difficulty of legal registration.And most importantly, under economic liberalization The Thai state must accept the definition of a broader "citizenship" by covering the social unit at the family level. Not only focusing on individual welfare. The concept of social welfare bonding with wages is no more consistent with the regional labor situation.