Displaced People at the Thai-Burma Border: Their Mobility and Invisibility

The paper focuses on displaced persons living along the Thai-Burma border, understood as a zone of contact, and of economic activity. The displacement can be viewed as a series of events over time (rather than a single shift), often precipitated by ongoing fighting between ethnic minority groups and the Burmese “State Peace and Development Council” (SPDC) military operations. The paper explores the borderland as a space of production, extraction and trade. The Moei River forms a natural border separating the two countries, with people of both sides belonging to the same ethnic Karen group, many of whom are related