Exploitation and escape: journeys across the Burma-Thailand frontier

Along the Burma-Thailand border, through official channels or via countless informal paths, efforts to escape from the difficulties of life in Burma are ongoing.¹ In many individual stories, obvious push factors such as war and poverty are combined with the groaning boredom, educational void and incessant petty hassles that dictate life for Burma’s non-elite citizens. Those who flee these familiar hardships are confronted by a new language, culture and economy. Few receive a warm welcome on the Thai side of the border and most find they are forced to survive at the bottom of a stark social and political hierarchy, often under conditions far from the comfortable life that they may have originally imagined. As bama (Thai for Burmese) they are generally regarded as a dispensable and temporary imposition.²