2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(2) ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT THREE: RECONCILING IDENTITIES, JANUARY 2018 This final account follows a personal quest of my teenage Shan participant to solve the complications surrounding her legal status. I first met Nida 91 in 2016 when she was 12 years-old at a ‘camp’ for construction workers in the outskirt of Chiang Mai. Nida and her parents live in a small three-by-four metre room in a row of structures made of bamboo walls and tin roof. Over the two years of our relationship, I have witnessed Nida’s transformation from a carefree child into a serious teenager preoccupied with her legal status. Previously, Nida was registered under two distinct identities in the Thai registration database but she recently found out that at least one of her identities had been withdrawn by the Thai state without her knowledge. Urgency and worry arose, due to the fact that she needed the 13 digit identification number to register for the national examination in order to progress to high school. ‘If I cannot resolve my legal situation by then, my future will be hurt’, Nida told me. Nida’s parents arrived in Thailand by foot in 1992 from the Shan state of Myanmar, at the cusp of Thailand’s first migrant-labour registration. In its first 15 years of labour management, the Thai government often used the amnesty policy and periodic registration to manage irregular migrants. Her parents later were registered and held the one-year work permits issued to aliens when Nida was born at a public hospital in Chiang Mai in 2003. She was registered at birth as Nida B. and her parents were listed as Mong and Mon B. Given her parents’ legal status as temporary migrant workers and not highlanders, it is amiss that the identification number issued to Nida’s birth certificate started with number seven, implying a pathway for Thai citizenship through s 7 bis (2) of the 2008 Nationality Act. 92 The top left of her birth certificate issued by District C Office, however, stated ‘a person residing in Thailand illegally’. ‘Burma’ was listed as her nationality. Her address was listed as the Central District, different from her parents’ address. 93 This birth certificate was used to enrol her in school. Despite the conflicting information on her birth certificate, Nida held out hope that she would one day apply for Thai citizenship using this birth certificate. Under the government-led survey during 2005–09, Nida was registered in District C under another name (‘Leena B’) and was issued another personalidentification number starting with the number zero. In this registration, her parents’ names were also different from the ones on her birth certificate. The nationality was left as blank. 94 The address listed was that of her aunt who lives in District C. Nida thus has two conflicting identities with two different identification numbers, both granted to her by the Thai authorities from two different districts. 91 A pseudonym. 92 Nationality Act (n 25) s 7 bis (2). 93 The central address is usually used for zero card holders. Thai citizens and permanent resident aliens are registered in a house registration: Thor.Ror 14 (Resident Registration Book, Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Temporary aliens, legal and illegal, are registered under Thor.Ror 13 (Resident Registration Book, Ministry of Foreign Affairs). A house registration is a key document in a citizenship application. 94 Nationality (สัญชาติ) is used here as a synonym for citizenship. 230