Home away from Home: The Migrant Yunnanese in Northern Thailand

Abstract

In the face of a complex external situation, the migrant Yunnanese in northern Thailand have undergone repeated moves since the 1950s, and the narratives of their lives experiences disclose an ongoing negotiation of their inner self with the external social world across time and space. The feeling of “dwelling in displacement” is the fundamental basis of their narrated stories and this constructs particular discourses on “home away from home”. The primary aim of this paper is to analyze their conceptualizations of home and the intertwining of their various migration patterns. It seeks to see how they are shaped by external structural forces on the one hand, and their reaction to them with their interstitial agency on the other. Moreover, by probing their diasporic consciousness linked to the longue duree of Yunnanese mobility, the paper attempts to accentuate the different layers of their perceptions of time and place, and to illuminate their interplay.