The floating world: Laotian refugee camp life in Thailand
Author(s):
Long, Lynellyn D
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : Stanford University, 1988.
Pages:
403
Language:
English
Abstract:
Refugee camps appear during crises arising from war and famine, but often develop into enduring political institutions. These institutions become buffer zones in continuing revolutions and counterrevolutions. Although political, historical, and economic forces create the need for camps, certain processes endemic to camp life transform former agriculturalists into semipermanent refugees. This ethnography documents the camp experiences of Lao and Hmong refugees in Ban Vinai, Thailand. Fieldwork was conducted with five families over eleven months during 1986 and in several other camps in Thailand to generalize these findings. The analysis incorporates social science data with refugee and relief worker narratives. In Ban Vinai, Hmong and Lao encounter a sophisticated international relief system and acculturate to Western organizational forms. The institutional impacts of camp life transcend the experience of living in a welfare society. Subtle and complex interactions between international workers and camp dwellers affect the consciousness each has of self and other. The camp experience elaborates gender and generational differences. Women become primary wage earners in marginal economic activities, tied to national and international markets. Men join the resistance and find solace in public rituals. Variant historical and life experiences create conflicting generational frames of reference, affecting each generation's sense of place and future. Boredom and ambivalence predominate and reflect the powerlessness of individuals and local organizations in a no-exit situation. Uprooted in time and space, refugees employ stories and ceremonies to express their losses and reaffirm their ties to place and a future. Transforming domestic, productive, and symbolic relationships, the camp imposes a refugee consciousness. Such a consciousness threatens the survival of ethnic identities and threatens to create permanent refugees. Yet, the people of Ban Vinai are not passive victims that the category refugee implies. They have learned to power of waiting.