Maber, Elizabeth JT; Zar, Ei Thin; (2025) Shifting spaces of resistance: Non-state education and anti-authoritarian resistance in exile

This paper explores the distinctive educational spaces created by exiled members of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) as a site of resistance to authoritarianism in Myanmar. Drawing from empirical work conducted in 2022-3 in Mae Sot, Thailand, with 16 CDM participants, we examine the shifting dynamics of social relationships through the changing landscape of engagement with education. Building on conceptualisations from Deleuze and Guattari (2013), we discuss the oscillations and interactions of social space through the interplay of smoothing and striation that are reflected in these shifting dynamics and further exacerbated through the dislocation of displacement across borders. In so doing, we aim to explore a more complex picture of the dynamics of participation in the CDM in relation to education, and the shifting relationships between teachers, students and the state.