Born Into Hostipitality – Are Second-Generation Refugees1 Temporary Guests or Residents "at Home"?

Main Article Content

Miriam Jaehn

Abstract

While the focus on Rohingya refugees in Thailand tends to be on those who fled from Arakan/Rakhine State due to their violent persecution by the military regime, this paper focuses on the second generation of Rohingya born and/or growing up in Thailand. Based on an ethnographic inquiry, I argue that despite the state’s hostipitality towards refugees, migrants, and stateless people, second-generation Rohingya create routes of home in Thailand. Focusing on the life story of Shafak, I show that second-generation Rohingya's sense of home is forged through floating intimate ties that allow them to secure their lives in Thailand and remake their homes elsewhere if needed. Though constructed as a ‘national security threat’ and perceived as unwelcome guests by the government, second-generation Rohingya act as residents and become residents at the margins of the nation-state where its sovereignty over territory and people remains challenged. I will demonstrate this specifically in Thailand's so-called deep South. In the end, I claim that second-generation Rohingya's routes of home along the thresholds of the nation-state beg the question of whether they can still legitimately be viewed only as 'temporary guests.

Article Details

How to Cite
Jaehn, M. (2024). Born Into Hostipitality – Are Second-Generation Refugees1 Temporary Guests or Residents "at Home"?. Journal of Human Rights and Peace Studies, 10(2), 294–315. retrieved from https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/HRPS/article/view/279411
Section
Research Articles

References

Aphornsuvan, T. (2007). Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending histories. East-West Center.

Bourdieu, P. (2002). Habitus. In Hillier, J. & Rooksby, E. (Eds.). Habitus: A Sense of Place (pp. 27-34). Ashgate.

Brun, C., & Fábos, A. (2015). Making homes in limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 5-17. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40138

Chachavalpongpun, P. (2023). Peace and Conflict Studies in Thailand: The Primacy of the State's Narrative of Security. Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 11(1), 95-117. https;//doi.org/10.18588/202305.00a336

Chantavanich, S. (2020). Thailand’s challenges in implementing anti-trafficking legislation: The case of the Rohingya. Journal of Human Trafficking, 6(2), 234-243. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2020.1691825

Cheesman, N. (2017). How in Myanmar “national races” came to surpass citizenship and exclude Rohingya. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47(3), 461-483. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2017.1297476

Coddington, K. (2020). Producing Thailand as a transit country: borders, advocacy, and destitution. Mobilities, 15(4), 588-603. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2020.1759928

_______. (2023). The everyday erosion of refugee claims: Representations of the Rohingya in Thailand. Social & Cultural Geography, 24(2), 274–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2021.1939125

Derrida, J. (2000). Hostipitality. Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 5(3), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/09697250020034706

Easthope, H. (2004). A place called home. Housing, Theory and Society, 21(3), 128–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036090410021360

Engvall, A. (2020). Violence in Southern Thailand's border provinces: Status, trends, and patterns 2004-2018. In Engvall, A., Jitpiromsri, S., Potchapornkul, E., & Ropers, N. (Eds.), Southern Thailand/Patani. Understanding dimensions of conflict and peace (pp.56-86). Peace Resource Collaborative.

Engvall, A., Jitpiromsri, S., Potchapornkul, E., & Ropers, N. (2020). Southern Thailand/Patani. Understanding dimensions of conflict and peace. Peace Resource Collaborative.

Fortify Rights. (2022, December 15). Human rights concerns regarding the draft notification of the protected person screening committee [Open letter]. Fortify Rights. https://www.fortifyrights.org/tha-inv-let-2022-12-15/

Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press.

International Court of Justice. (2023, November 16). Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) [Press release]. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/178/178-20231116-pre-01-00-en.pdf

Jaehn, M. (2022). From refugees to legitimate minority? Rohingya performing national belongings in Thailand. Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 37(3), 465-489. https://doi.org/10.1355/sj37-3c

Jittiang, B. (2022). Policy entrepreneurship and the drafting of refugee law in a non-signatory country: The case of Thailand’s national screening mechanism. Journal of Refugee Studies, 35(4), 1492-1507. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feac032

_______. (2023). In the name of national security: Thailand and the securitisation of the Rohingya. In Khanif, A. & Hooi K. Y. (Eds.), Marginalisation and Human Rights in Southeast Asia (pp.151-166). Routledge.

Kellett, P., & Moore, J. (2003). Routes to home: homelessness and home-making in contrasting societies. Habitat International, 27(1), 123-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0197-3975(02)00039-5

Laungaramsri, P. (2020). Governing by paper: mediating textual border and negotiating mobility in Thailand. South East Asia Research, 28(3), 267-283. https://doi.org/10.1080/0967828X.2020.1813622

Malyrojsiri, P. (2020). Language and Language-in-education as key features of the conflict and its transformation. In Engvall, A., Jitpiromsri, S., Potchapornkul, E., & Ropers, N. (Eds.), Southern Thailand/Patani. Understanding dimensions of conflict and peace (pp. 232-272). Peace Resource Collaborative.

Massey, D. (1992). A place called home. New formations, 1992(17), 3-15.

McCargo, Duncan. (2011). Mapping national anxieties: Thailand’s Southern conflict. NIAS Press.

_______. (2009). Tearing apart the land. Islam and legitimacy in Southern Thailand. NUS Press.

Missbach, A., & Philips, M. (2020). Reconceptualizing transit states in an era of outsourcing, off shoring, and obfuscation. Migration and Society, 3(1), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.3167/arms.2020.111402

Moretti, S. (2015). The challenge of durable solutions for refugees at the Thai–Myanmar border. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 34(3), 70-94. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdv008

Nelson, A. (2020). From romance to tragedy: House ownership and relocation in the resettlement narratives of Nepali Bhutanese refugees. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(4), 4053-4071. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa079

Nillsuwan, B. (2023). Interacting with global refugee complexity and wresting control: Shan refugees and migrants in Thailand. Asian Politics & Policy, 15(2), 226-248. https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12694

Oh, S. (2013). Rohingya boat arrivals in Thailand: From the frying pan into the fire?. ISEAS Perspective, 11, 1–6. https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/ISEAS_Perspective_2013_11.pdf

_______. (2014). Burmese refugees in Thailand: Should they stay or should they go? ISEAS Perspective, 18, 1–9.

Prasse-Freeman, E. (2023). Refusing Rohingya: Reformulating ethnicity amid blunt biopolitics. Current anthropology, 64(4), 432-453. http://doi.org/10.1086/726125

Saltsman, A. (2014). Beyond the law: Power, discretion, and bureaucracy in the management of asylum space in Thailand. Journal of Refugee Studies, 27(3), 457-476. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feu004

Shryock, A. (2012). Breaking hospitality apart: bad hosts, bad guests, and the problem of sovereignty. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18(1), 20-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01758.x

Simonsen, K. (2012). In quest of a new humanism: Embodiment, experience and phenomenology as critical geography. Progress in Human Geography, 37(1), 10-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512467573

Sirriyeh, A. (2010). Home journeys: Im/mobilities in young refugee and asylum-seeking women’s negotiations of home. Childhood, 17(2), 213-227. http://doi.org/10.1177/0907568210365667

Sold like fish: Crimes against humanity, mass graves, and human trafficking from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Malaysia from 2012 to 2015. (2019). SUHAKAM & Fortify Rights.

Stothard, D. (2023, September 12). 34th #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar [Video]. SEA-Junction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc9HtJcXsQk

Subedi, D. B., & Garnett, J. (2020). De-mystifying Buddhist religious extremism in Myanmar: confrontation and contestation around religion, development and state-building. Conflict, Security & Development, 20(2), 223-246. https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2020.1739859

Taylor, H. (2013). Refugees, the state and the concept of home. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32(2), 130–152. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdt004

Thabchumpon, N., Moraras, B., Laocharoenwong, J., & Karom, W. (2014). Social Welfare and Security. In Chalamwong Y., Thabchumpon, N., & Chantavanich, S. (Eds.), Temporary shelters and surrounding communities: Livelihood opportunities, the labour market, social welfare and social security (pp. 57-167). Springer.

Wilding, R. (2017). Families, intimacy and globalization: Floating ties. Bloomsbury.