Forced Migration Online: Blog

Since the mid-1980s, over two million Burmese migrant workers have entered Thailand, searching for a better future.

The jobs they have found are dirty, dangerous and difficult. Often undocumented, migrant workers risk arrest, extortion, deportation and other human rights abuses.

Something of these difficulties and tragedies faced by these workers are documented in these images by Thailand-based documentary photographer John Hulme.

The exhibit ‘In Search of a Job – Any Job: The Life of Burmese Migrant Workers‘, was held by the Refugee Studies Centre and International Migration Institute in Oxford. It ran from 17 – 25 February 2011.

• In Search of a Job – Any Job: The Life of Burmese Migrant Workers
• John Hulme’s website

A new collection of photographs, focusing on Karen and Karenni refugees in Thailand, is now available to view in the FMO photo gallery.

The Karen people reside primarily in southern and southeastern Myanmar (Burma), where they make up approximately 7 percent of the population. The Karenni people are a subgroup of the Karen people.

An estimated 400,000 Karen and Karenni refugees have fled to Thailand, in order to escape persecuting by Myanmar’s military government, many of them living in camps on the border. These photographs provide a rare glimpse into daily life in two camps along the Thai-Burma border: Mae La and Ban Mai Nai Soi.

The photographs were taken by Amity Malack, a graduate from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

A full archive of FMO photo collections can be accessed through the FMO photo gallery.

• Photographs: Karen refugees in Thailand

A special issue of Forced Migration Review ‘Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement’ is now in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

This 40-page special issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR), published by the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University, reflects discussions at the international conference on the Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (‘GP10’) held in Oslo on 16-17 October 2008.

The FMR special issue includes shortened versions of some of the conference presentations, plus a selection of other articles, most of which present case studies on the application of the Guiding Principles in different countries.

Full Issue

• FMR 2008, Special Issue: Ten Years of the Guiding Principles

Individual Articles

• The genesis and the challenges
• Achievements, challenges and recommendations
• Assessing the impact of the Principles: an unfinished task
• The Guiding Principles and the Responsibility to Protect
• Achievements and limitations of the Guiding Principles in Burma
• Protecting IDPs in Europe
• Experience of the Guiding Principles in Georgia
• Africa: from voluntary principles to binding standards
• Can the Guiding Principles make a difference in Kenya?
• Uganda’s response to displacement: contrasting policy and practice
• Guiding Principle 29 and the right to restitution
• Obstacles to realising Guiding Principle 29 in Afghanistan
• Seeking electoral equality for IDP voters
• Time to apply the Guiding Principles in Nepal
• Returnees in Sierra Leone
• Guiding Principle 27 and Philippine typhoon response
• Internal displacement in the Central African Republic
• UNHCR and the Guiding Principles
• Training to strengthen protection of IDP rights
• The future of the Guiding Principles

This podcast was recorded at the Refugee Studies Centre’s Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture which was on Wednesday 21st May 2008 at Somerville College, University of Oxford. The Elizabeth Colson Lecture is held annually in honour of Professor Elizabeth Colson, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University gave this years lecture on the subject of Zomia.

“Zomia is a shorthand reference to the huge, massif of mainland Southeast Asia, running from the Central Highlands of Vietnam westward all the way to northeastern India and including the southwest Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and western Guangxi.”

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

Issue 30 of Forced Migration Review with its feature theme on Burma is now in the digital library. FMR is one of five journals available.

With the ‘Saffron revolution’ of September 2007, Burma was catapulted into the centre of international attention. It was briefly headline news as people monitored the regime’s response and watched for hints of progress towards democracy and the restoration of rights. With little action on either front (and no visible resurgence of violence or protest), interest has since waned. This issue of FMR aims to help bring the crisis of forced displacement of Burmese people back into the international spotlight.

The feature section on Burma includes 29 articles exploring the extent of the displacement crisis, factors affecting displaced people and the search for solutions. The issue also includes 19 articles on other aspects of forced migration.

• FMR 30: Burma’s displaced people