Infrastructure and Anxiety of Return

This paper considers anxiety in the Thailand-Burma borderland, specifically as it relates to (mostly ethnic Karen) refugees in the Mae La camp, which has been in existence for over thirty years. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that refugee anxiety in Mae La is no longer rooted in uncertainty or makeshift living conditions in the camp, but rather in recurring threats of camp closure. Counter to conventional notions of refugee camps being temporary and of refugees living a life in a suspended state, waiting to either resettle or return, Mae La reflects a quite different dynamic. Its long-term nature has led to temporally very different dynamics. Refugee anxiety and uncertainty have given way to an attention to the present, which is channeled through building infrastructure. This has anchored refugees and attached their lives to the camp. Anxiety has thereby morphed into anxiety about a future in which they might be forced to leave behind their lives and everything they have built.