Toward a Neoliberal Regime of Belonging?: Rethinking Contemporary Statelessness Governance in Thailand

Critical migration scholars have noted the rise of neoliberalization of immigration and citizenship policies in the Global North, where citizenship is increasingly reconceptualized not as a right, but a privilege to be earned or a commodity to be “purchased.” However, this literature is in sufficiently explored in relation to statelessness governance and in the Global South contexts. This article examines the shift in the Thai state's governance of statelessness in the last two decades through the lens of neoliberal citizenship and belonging. Drawing on policy analysis and long-term ethnographic research in northern Thailand, I argue that what emerges in place of a previous regime of total exclusion and marginalization of ethnic “other” is a new regime of belonging that operates simultaneously on two levels. Firstly, neoliberal citizenship logics (such as contributions through financial and human capital, citizenship-as-investment, self-responsibilitization, deservedness and earned citizenship) are becoming central to mediating legal status for stateless persons. In particular, educated stateless youth, who are “products” of the Thai educational system, have come to understand citizenship in these terms. Secondly, immigration policies and related registration practices continue to create and sustain temporariness and precarity for labor migrants and their children. My preliminary findings suggest that a neoliberal regime of belonging has resulted in a new hierarchy among stateless persons—those with higher social and cultural capital are more likely to successfully navigate their way out of legal precarity. As a result of this regime of stratified belonging, I observe that statelessness in Thailand will not likely be eradicated despite the Thai state's public commitments.