CAMBODIAN MIGRANTS’ SOCIAL PROTECTION, LOCAL INTEGRATION AND MULTIPLE BOUNDARIES IN THE THAI BORDER VILLAGES OF KHOK SUNG, SA KAEO PROVINCE

Abstract

This thesis is designed to examine the local integration and social protection for Cambodian migrants in the Thai border villages of Khok Sung district, Sa Kaeo province. Cambodian migrants can be divided into three groups: former refugees, intermarriage migrants and current migrant workers. Much attention is paid to the migrants’ negotiation the multiple boundaries of physical, social and legal in order to see how local integration and local acceptance are met and transformed into social protection. In order to see the phenomenon from the inclusive view points, this study also covers the causes of the migration flow into the preferred destination in which links to the geographic, historical and demographic conditions of ethnic relations between Thai-Cambodian borders’ population. The research methods draw upon extensive interview with more than one hundreds interviewees and key informants and also apply with ethnographical technique of non-participant observation. I visited the migrants and local people with different villages, seeing their livelihoods, attitudes and perceptions from migrants and local citizens to find out the different limitations of existing social protection items for migrants from local collective practice and state based mechanism. This study reveals that migrants’ settlement and local integration process are strongly influenced by ethnic and intermarriage relations between Cambodian migrants and host citizens in Khok Sung district. These conditions provide the migrants with the networks as supporting systems and the sympathizers in the receiving society. The migrants seem to be recognized by the local villagers or by themselves as the members of host community in a different way than what outsiders would imagine so-called migrants and aliens. They are totally included into community welfare and insurance programs except only what are so called legal barriers and selective included by state based mechanism into social protection schemes. Therefore, it seems that the differences of existing social protection items from the community and the state can eventually able to supplement some roles during the absence of one another.