A hundred years and still a guest: The perpetual foreigner stereotype among Thai-Indians

The perpetual foreigner stereotype has been studied almost exclusively among Asian Americans in white-majority Western societies. This study extends this line of research to an intra-Asian context by examining discrimination and belonging experiences among Thai-Indians whose families have lived in Thailand for generations. Semi-structured interviews with 16 participants aged 18 to 23 showed consistent denial of their Thai identity even though they held citizenship, language fluency, and birthplace. The term khaek, denoting both guest and ethnic outsider, labelled them as foreign in everyday interactions even when families had been in Thailand for generations. Discrimination ranged from daily microaggressions to severe harassment and had become so commonplace that the community had stopped discussing it with each other. Rather than arising solely from personal experience, expectations of rejection were transmitted through warnings from teachers, family, and community members before participants encountered discrimination directly. Participants also contested this treatment, exposing assumptions about who looks Thai, confronting discriminatory remarks, and reframing difference as something of value, though the label continued to be applied. These findings show that perpetual foreigner treatment can take shape in Asian-majority societies through everyday language and social practices, even without formal laws classifying the community as foreign, and can be reproduced across generations through shared expectations of exclusion even as it is challenged by those it categorises.