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ENGLISH by
Michiko Tsuneda page
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The fact that many women marry Malaysian men does not mean they idealize Malaysian men in contrast to men in their communities in Thailand, beyond the social and economic access and comfort they may bring. And while they recognize the Melayu ethnic link, distinctions between Malaysian Malays and Thai Malays have been emphasized through increased interactions between the two groups as people with different national backgrounds and social belongings. The perceived increase in the number of marriages between “foreign immigrants” and Malaysians is viewed as a social threat in Malaysia (Healey 2000). Across the border in Thailand, many women who have married fellow Muslims in Thailand consider marrying a Malaysian a dangerous gamble. They characterize Malaysian men as “womanizers” always looking for second and third wives. According to them, women from Thailand are often “tricked” into becoming second wives or easily abandoned when a man finds a new wife. Nevertheless, many women do marry Malaysian men, and for some it is an aspiration to pursue. They say they are fortunate to live a comfortable life in Malaysia and to be able to provide a good education for their children. The parents of many women proudly tell stories of their daughters in Malaysia who help them financially. And financial support is not the only advantage that women who marry Malaysian men can bring home. They become an important mainstay of networks of people across the border, opening doors to their friends and relatives in Thailand to live, work, or study in Malaysia. Malay-speaking communities in southern Thailand depend heavily on these informal personal networks to find jobs across the border and avoid jobs brokered by middlemen. They are critical in the pursuit of expanded economic and social opportunities.
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Concluding Remarks Malay-speaking Muslims living in the southern border region of Thailand both suffer from and take advantage of the presence of the national border, much like residents of borderlands elsewhere in the world (Donnan and Haller 2000; Donnan and Wilson 1999). As members of an ethnic minority on the national margin, they navigate their lives maneuvering among ambiguous and multiple identities. Yet how much one can control and use such ambiguity to advantage depends on the position an individual occupies in the “power geometry” (Massey 1994, 149) of the region. Furthermore, in the “gendered geography of power” (Pessar and Mahler 2002), individual agency is influenced not only by politico-economic and judicial forces, but also by various types of imaginations and desires. Border-crossing is neither all-empowering nor all-oppressive to Thai-Malaysian “borderlanders”. The ability to choose to stay or move is not available equally to everyone at the border, but is structured by gender, ethnicity, and class. Men and women of different generations and marital status in Malay-speaking Muslim communities in the southern border region of Thailand experience the borderland and border-crossings with different degrees and forms of limits, pressures, and advantages.
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As attaining dual nationality is becoming increasingly difficult due to tightening state control, women have come to play ever more important roles in establishing cross-border networks. While men often view themselves as transient workers in pursuit of money in a land that is “not their own,” young single women working in Malaysia maintain and create social links that the national border shapes, while cultivating new possibilities unlike those offered by conventional gender relations at home. References Fraser,
Thomans, 1960, Rusembilan: A Malay fishing village in southern Thailand,
Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. |
Chin,
Christine, 1998, In Service and Servitude: Foreign female domestic workers
and the Malaysian "modernity" project, NY: Columbia University
Press. |
Pessar,
Patricia R. and Sarah J. Mahler, 2002, “Gender and Transnational Migration.”
Paper from Conference on Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives,
Princeton University, 30 June-1 July 2001. |
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