Internet Centers/Usage by Burmese Ethnic Migrants in Mae Sod: Traversing the Borders of Internet Divide and Recasting Ethnic Identities

This work was carried out under the Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program at the University Pompeu Fabra through the support of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). It analyses the use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools by Burmese/Myanmar women migrant workers and refugees in Thailand. From the Abstract: "This paper, taken from an on-going research on the use of Internet centers by marginalized women in the Thai-Burma border, reflects upon the various means of appropriation of the technology. The Internet has ostensibly liberating effects on these women, but this paper proposes that there is more to the feeling of being free in the virtual world. There is currently a 'project' of affirming, claiming, and molding traditional ethnic identities through the use of Internet. The paper imagines this as revolutionizing the discursive mode of resistance and rebellion by these marginalized women against the military regime in Burma. Using their agentic qualities, the women transform their social scripts as ‘marginalized’ and ‘displaced’ into ‘empowered’ women who are informed, educated, and aware of their human rights. Set in the border town of Mae Sod in Tak province Thailand and against the backdrop of an omnipresent - but mute - population of illegal migrants from Burma, the discursive inferior-superior relationship between Thais and Burmese, and the complex networking of bodies and organizations providing humanitarian and development aid in the border, this paper looks at the symbiotic relationship between the use of the Internet and the re/construction of ethnic identities. The paper argues that the incomplete and ongoing self-making ethnic identity project shapes how Internet is used as much as how Internet is also shaping this identity project (i.e. construction of virtual identities, appropriation of modern identities, repairing ethnic identities, etc.)"

The author describes this paper as a contemplation on preliminary data gathered by the research team through interviews with migrant women of the Burma Women’s Union (BWU), a group founded by female Burmese student refugees to advocate for increasing women's participation in the Burmese political arena and providing support for women in the refugee camps. The women’s situation related to ICT usage is described as follows: "While the movements of their bodies are restricted [as illegal residents of Thailand] their minds are free to explore and travel to far away places through the Internet. The Internet becomes a window to the outside world, so to speak. However, this idea essentially only looks at the effects of Internet use. What was also obvious from the stories of the women was their active agency in utilizing and making full use of the Internet to adapt to their ways of life. A two-way process of change can therefore be imagined whereby the use of the Internet has led to many things (one of which is providing a shelter from their subjective positions) and at the same time women adopt the Internet to the r everyday life and use it to perform their ethnic identities."

The subjects in two case studies use the internet for maintaining contact with distant family members and friends who migrated elsewhere, accessing the news from Burma (one subject states that prior to internet access, she used radio and television for news), accessing cultural material in their languages, meeting new friends, and disseminating human rights, including gay and lesbian rights and information.

The paper observes that expansion of social networks, the retention of strong connections for political and family relationship functions, and the retention of culture and knowledge contribute to identity formation. "Indeed, the political struggle of the ethnic groups has shifted battlefield from the border to cyberspace and the growing community of ethnic groups from Burma scattered around the globe as well as their supporters are connected in a complex cyber network....The migrants also use the Internet to repair allegiance to their ethnic identities by performing cultural values pertaining to father-daughter relationship or sibling relationship.”

The paper offers this statement in lieu of a conclusion: "As Burmese ethnic migrants are placed within a complex framework of gendered and racialized economics and politics, their locations necessitate a continuous internalization and transformation of their identities from positions of ethnic ‘other’ in Mae Sod, ethnic non-Burmese, illegal migrants, displaced and marginalized to one that is ‘empowered’ by information and knowledge of their rights as women and as human beings. These contestations are practiced and resolved in the use of Internet..."