2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(2) LEGIBILITY TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY OF GOVERNING James Scott argues that legibility is a central problem in statecraft; a modern state seeks to ‘see’ and ‘know’ its population using various legibility tools in order to assert control; population registration and identification are among the key tools.57 From the first identity card issued to residents of Bangkok and Thonburi in 1943 until today, the Thai state’s legibility practices have evolved to be more tightened, integrated and sophisticated. 58 Since 1983, the Thai state has employed the 13digit personal identification number to document the subjects in its territory. 59 Each digit contains specific information about the person such as the province at which they were registered and, to an extent, reveals their relationship to the state (Thai citizen or non-citizen). 60 In principle, the same personal identification number appears across all official documents, suggesting a coherent system that tracks and traces a person’s documentary records. 61 While the database connectivity makes the state appear omnipresent, ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing’ all its populations, there are still identity discrepancies and loopholes in the bureaucracy as shall be demonstrated by one of the ethnographic accounts later. In the case of Thailand, the national identification system — in the forms of an identification card and a 13-digit number — is among key practices to make society legible. It has been historically set up not for universal allocation of rights, but for ethnological classification, surveillance and differentiation . 62 The personal identification number and the identification card not only demarcate scopes of physical and social mobility but also a pathway toward citizenship. 63 The first digit, in particular, suggests how a person is categorised by the state. A Thai citizen born after 1984, for example, is assigned number one as the first digit in their personal identification number, while those classified as ‘hill tribes’ and ‘[o]ther highlanders who are not hill tribes’ are usually assigned number six, suggesting their status as long-term alien residents. 64 An offspring of a number six card holder is usually issued a number seven card. The number six and seven card holders may be able to apply for Thai citizenship through s 7 bis (2) given that they satisfy other 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 James C Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press 1998) 2. Pinkaew Laungaramsri, ‘Contested Citizenship: Cards, Colors and the Culture of Identification’ in John A Marston (ed), Ethnicity, Borders, and the Grassroots Interface with the State: Studies on Southeast Asia (Silkworm Books 2014) 143. Laungaramsri has also published a book in Thai in 2018 that explores in depth the history and bureaucratic practices of the Thai state with regards to population registration, identification card and other identity documentation: Pinkaew Laungaramsri, Identity Documents: Genealogy of Population Control in Thailand (Research Administration Centre Chiang Mai University 2018) in Thai: ปิ่ นแก้ว เหลืองอร่ ามศรี อัตลักษณ์เอกสาร: วงศาวิทยาการควบคุมประชากรของรัฐไทย (ศูนย์บริ หารงานวิจยั มหาวิทยาลัยเชียงใหม่ 2561). Archavanitkul (n 55) 186. ibid. See also ระเบียบสํานักทะเบียนกลาง วาดวยการจัดทําทะเบียนราษฎร [Regulations of the National Registration Office on Civil Registration] (Thailand) Statute No 151–52, 125 Royal Thai Government Gazette 46, 26 November 2008, art 152(2). Passports and driver licenses have their own series numbers but still display the 13 digit identification numbers. Laungaramsri, ‘Contested Citizenship’ (n 58) 148; Toyota (n 14) 111, 120. Stateless highlanders and other persons without legal status are physically confined to a province under which they are registered. Until 2016, they were only elgibile to hold one of 27 specified occupations. See ‘Thailand’ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Web Page) <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/imvisible-thailand/>. See also Grisada Boonrach, Statelessness Situation and Thailand’s Solutions, tr Bongkot Napaumporn (Report, Ministry of Interior 2017) 9 n 23 (‘Statelessness Situation and Thailand’s Solutions’). Cheva-Isarakul (n 10). 222