Alexander Trupp - Migration, Micro-Business and Tourism in Thailand: Highlanders in the City

Alexander Trupp is a senior lecturer at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji; a former lecturer at the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University, Thailand; and editor-in-chief of the Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Geography at the University of Vienna, Austria.

1Migration, Micro-Business and Tourism in Thailand

Highlanders in the city

Alexander Trupp

2Indian Immigrant Women and Work

The American experience

Vijaya M Ramya and Bidisha Biswas

Alexander Trupp

First published 2017

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2017 Alexander Trupp

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ISBN: 978-1-138-21081-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-36365-3 (ebk)

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The most important actors of this book are all the Akha vendors and micro-entrepreneurs who shared their experiences and knowledge with me. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for that.

I would further like to thank my parents, Ilse and Fritz, as well as my relatives Ingrid, Joe, Wolfgang and Evi, who have always shown an interest in my studies and supported this research in many ways. I appreciate the efforts of my sister Claudia for regularly listening to my doubts and for providing useful comments on my draft version. I am obliged to my wife, Kosita Butratana, for endless support during and after fieldwork periods.

Many thanks go to Karl Husa, Sirijit Sunanta, Erik Cohen, and Claudia Dolezal for taking the time to comment on previous versions of this book. In Chiang Mai, I would like to thank Prasit Leepreecha and the Center for Ethnic Studies and Sustainable Development (CESD) of Chiang Mai University for hosting me as guest researcher and providing support during my fieldwork. My visiting professor and lecturer appointments at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA) and the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University between August 2014 and June 2016 allowed me to collect supplementary data and finalize this manuscript. I also benefited from inspiring conversations with Panadda Boonyasaranai, Miqjur Manqlaeq, Rainer Einzenberger, Alois Humer, Clemens Wieser, Elisabeth Gruber, Tibor Aheuer, and Maria Dabringer.

I am indebted to the National Research Council of Thailand for permission to conduct research, the University of Vienna and ASEA-UNINET for grants to cover fieldwork costs, and the Department of Geography and Regional Research for general support in research and teaching.

Finally, my thanks go to any other unnamed persons who supported this research with their interest and suggestions or practical and moral support.

Visitors to Thailands urban and beachside tourist areas in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, or Pattaya notice the presence of colourful and predominantly female souvenir vendors offering self-made and mass-manufactured products. A high percentage of these vendors are members of the highland ethnic minority group of Akha who over the last decades have migrated temporary and in few cases permanently into Thailands urban and beachside tourist areas. Most existing research on ethnic minorities and tourism in Southeast Asia in general (Oakes, 1997; Cohen, 2001; Cole, 2007; Yang and Wall, 2009; Phommavong and Srensson, 2014) and in Thailand in particular (Cohen, 1989; Toyota, 1993; Michaud, 1997; Trupp, 2014; Dolezal, 2015) has been conducted in village contexts and thus hardly embraced the more recent phenomenon of urban-based highland minorities.1

Initial research on internal migration in the Thai context focused on describing spatial mobility patterns and identifying socio-economic determinants and constraints based on the results of the national migration surveys (Goldstein and Goldstein, 1986; Husa, 1988). In addition to elaborating large data sets, anthropological village case studies were conducted. Early research viewed internal migration as a rational choice of poor rural residents to escape poverty and poor rural infrastructure, a choice that originated in a climate where national and international scholars and agencies feared population explosions in seemingly ever-growing urban areas. Bangkok rapidly grew into a dominant primate city (Husa and Wohlschlgl, 1997). However, at least since the 1990s, it has become evident that migration to urban areas cannot be stopped, and organizations such as the United Nations Development Fund argued that it is equally important to improve the life of migrants as it is to stem migration (Chamratrithirong, 2007, p. 3). This understanding led to a shift from focusing on the determinants of migration to its consequences. The next phase of research discovered the concepts migration and development and migration management, which took into account both the benefits and disadvantages of population movements (Chamratrithirong, 2007, p. 4). It was also increasingly recognized that rural and urban areas must be seen as interconnected rather than separated. Migration in this context is seen as a livelihood strategy in order to increase and diversify the household income (Rigg, 1998). The creation of multi-sited households and living arrangements can further enhance material and nonmaterial exchange between rural and urban areas (Schmidt-Kallert, 2012).