กลยุทธ์การต่อรองเพื่อสิทธิและสวัสดิการทางสังคมของแรงงานข้ามชาติในจังหวัดเชียงใหม่

Abstract

This study is a socio-anthropology research focusing on the negotiation strategy for rights and social welfare of the Tai Yai migrant workers in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. On their arrival in Thailand, these migrants faced many problems of discrimination pertaining to the Thai laws because of their unequal status, being non-Thai. In this research, information was collected from related documents and interviews on narrative stories and experience of migrant workers. We conducted interview with concerned individuals for their roles in the process of bargaining for getting access to the rights and social welfare of foreign migrant workers in Chiang Mai. Interviews were also conducted with concerned governmental organizations, Ngos and lawyers and also through participatory and non-participatory observations in the campaigns mounted by the networks of foreign migrant workers in different aspects whether in politics, social and cultural. This is reveal through tradition of Tai Yai trans migrant workers such as Tai yai New Year celebration, the Poi San Long festival and the Tai Yai National Day in Doi Ta Lang, near the Thai border, Amphur Bang Mapra, Ma Hong Son province. In collecting information, the researcher worked as coordinator of the Northern Labor networks so has experience working with the Thai workers in Chiang Mai and Lumpoon provinces. But I also became a volunteer to teach Thai language to migrant workers at the Learning Center for Migrant Workers. The Center receives complaints and develops activities to create awareness about the rights of migrant workers and social activities. It also conducts training on language skill such as Thai, English and Burmese languages. The Center is managed both by Migrant Workers’ Federation and Human Right Development Center. This study focuses on the negotiation strategies adopted by migrant workers. The finding is that MW are invisible in Thai society and this is closely related to the status of citizenship defined by the State according to the law. The consequence is that MW are discriminated from various rights, abused in wage payment and subjected to ideology related to racial biais, nationalism and authoritarianism. This creates the gap in the laws at the expense of the benefits of MW. But, on the other side, the study found that MW carry on their struggle to acquire various rights as economic citizenship and adopted the concept of flexible citizenship. Other than creating their own identity, MW in Chiang Mai also pursued other strategies in negotiating to get access to Worksmen Compensation Fund and the freedom of movement in order to open up the public space and the space in everyday life by adopting economic capital, social capital, cultural and symbolic capital to create dynamic movement. The researcher adopted the social thought of Bourdieu as the basis of our study. This is to look at the social space as the reproduction of symbolic and power relation interacting at the 3 levels.