This panel focuses on Thai people’s migrations into other countries and investigates their patterns of transnational mobility between their national homeland and destinations. They might also migrate from one country to other countries to suit their requirements and livelihoods; using social capital such as kinship, friendship and other networks.
In this panel, we use the term “migrant” to include Thai people and communities who are both high-skill and low-skill, short-term and long-term, and whose objectives are both educational and professional. These include those who move for cross-cultural marriage; those who acquire secure and legal, semi-legal, and illegal residential statuses; and those considered second or third generations in new countries.
Furthermore, this panel focuses on Thai migrants’ livelihood and communities in relation and adaptation to immigration laws and regulations, integration policies, and social norms and cultural acceptance. Thai migrant communities construct “imagined community” in order to maintain their Thainess through Buddhism and popular Thai traditions.
We encourage scholars who are now working on the mentioned themes and are studying the described phenomena to contact and/or send their individual abstracts directly to this panel’s conveners before 15th November, 2016 to: aerbusarin@gmail.com; soimart.r@gmail.com.
