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Exploring notions of activism and space as narrated by Karen displaced persons and refugees in the Thai-Burma borderlands, this book looks beyond refugees as passive victims or a ‘humanitarian case’. Instead, the book examines the active engagement the Karen have with their persecution and displacement and their subsequent emplacement in the borderlands. A key focus of the book is to look at this engagement in terms of spaces of solidarity – constructed through patterns of activism, paths of connectivity and processes of cultural recovery. The book also studies the spatial configuration of borderlands, examining the impact of cross-border activities and their inter-related nature.
“The strength of this wonderful monograph is thus a form of participatory action research, in which neutrality is not desirable and in which the researcher has a strong stake in the struggle for justice and the reconstruction of home and freedom in political exile…Sharples succeeds to use her position to amplify the voices of a very vulnerable, but resourceful people.” • Anthropos
“This is a first-rate book… One of its major strengths is the position of the author in writing from an informed position, following many years of immersion in the context.” • Linda Briskman, Western Sydney University
Rachel Sharples is a Researcher in the Challenging Racism Project in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University. She has worked with the Karen and conducted research in the Thai-Burma borderlands since 2002.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction: Spaces of Solidarity
Chapter 1. Movements across space: The Thai-Burma borderlands as a social construct
Chapter 2. From buffer zone to friendship bridge: The contemporary context of the Thai-Burma borderlands
Chapter 3. By the shade of a tree: Scales of resistance, patterns of activism
Chapter 4. This story is not for myself: Paths of connectivity/networks of solidarity
Chapter 5. ‘Symbolic anchors of community’: Processes of cultural recovery
Conclusion: The Space Between
References
Index