‘Diagnosing’ Statelessness
documentary requirements including proof of birth and residency. 65 However, in
practice the regime of identification cards is far from stable and truly
representative of a person’s identity, especially along the border areas where the
issuance and revocation of cards have become common state practices. 66
Mass labour migration from the neighbouring countries to Thailand during its
economic boom in 1990s further complicated the country’s situation of
statelessness and the regime of identification. A largely migrant-export country
until the early 1990s, Thailand initially struggled to regularise the massive influx
of labour migrants from the Greater Mekong Sub-region. 67 Its early labour
migration policies have been described as a ‘series of practical responses to
unfolding events and changes in labor needs’. 68 Similar to the experience of the
highlanders, registration of migrants and children of migrants was erratic and
uneven. 69 Many of these children who were born in Thailand or brought to the
country as a child are at risk of statelessness due to exclusion from nationality laws
and lack of documentary proof from both Thailand and the country of origin.70
Between 2005–09, the Thai state implemented the ‘Strategy on Managing People
with
Personal
Legal
Status
Problems
and
Rights’
(ยุทธศาสตร์การจัดการปั ญหาสถานะและสิ ทธิบุคคล) by conducting massive countrywide surveys
and
issuing
a
‘person-without-legal
status’
identification
card
(บุคคลไม่มีสถานะทางทะเบียน), also known as a zero card or 10-year card as it permits a
non-Thai person to temporary reside in Thailand for 10 years. 71 This zero card is
a common identity document among children of migrants in northern Thailand
who were surveyed during this period. 72 With the arbitrary and inconsistent nature
of registration, it is also not uncommon for a person who should have been entitled
for a number six card to end up with the zero card.
Given the hierarchy within the regime of identification cards, they are therefore
not only a state instrument of control but, as argued by Pinkaew Laungaramsri,
‘survival resources to be assessed, classified and circulated according to a
hierarchy of values’, leading to various strategies to upgrade one’s status to
emerge, such as selling the identification cards of deceased highlanders to the new
immigrants and adding the names of new immigrants into the highlanders’
households to get a highlander card. 73
65F
6F
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
Nationality Act (n 25) s 7 bis (2).
Laungaramsri, ‘Contested Citizenship’ (n 58) 144.
Ana Revenga et al, Labor Migration in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (Synthesis Report
Phase 1, November 2006) 30; Supang Chantavanich, ‘Thailand’s Responses to Transnational
Migration During Economic Growth and Economic Downturn’ (1999) 14(1) Sojourn:
Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 159, 161; Pracha Vasuprasat, Agenda for Labour
Migration Policy in Thailand: Towards Long-Term Competitiveness (Report, International
Labour Organization 2010) iii.
Revenga (n 67) 10.
Premjai Vungsiriphisal, Siwaporn Auasalung and Supang Chantavanich, Migrant Children in
Difficult Circumstances in Thailand (Report, The Asian Research Center for Migration, 17
July 2010).
Archavanitkul (n 55) 141.
ibid 193.
ibid.
Laungaramsri, ‘Contested Citizenship’ (n 58) 159–160.
223