Songthaew Trajectories: Ethnography of Checkpoint and Migrants' Strategic Uses of Border Identity Cards

Samak Kosem

Mobility ； Checkpoint ； Politics of Documentation ； Border Method ； Thai-Burma Border

台灣東南亞學刊

15卷1期（2020 / 04 / 01）

69 - 95

英文

This ethnographic research seeks to illuminate the intersectionality of the borderland, migration, and identity in different geographical settings. With focus on the politics related to the identification cards of migrant residents who daily negotiate their identities with the Thai authorities, the meanings of the cards used in different spaces and situations can be elucidated as individuals' political status. The mobility of people in the refugee camps and the nearby communities is analyzed by a key means of transport in the locality, considered as the border method that allows in-depth understanding of people's lives by following the trajectories of migrants traveling. This research describes the various versions of the ID cards, revealing how they create sites of spaces and moments of renegotiation for their bearers, subject to counter-hegemonic representations, interpretations, and uses. Making active use of these opportunities, border-crossing actors construct their own life projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-State. Finally, the paper will explain both simplified and more complex ID card management processes created by different agencies as effective and low-tech means of surveillance and differentiation of State power, both formal and informal, which inserts cultural politics into the everyday lives of individuals on the border.

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