The border city of Mae Sot is a crucial border crossing between Thailand and Burma and hence a large trading hub, as well as a host to a large migrant population. There are markets on on the Thai and Burmese sides, as well as illegal selling of alcohol and cigarettes going on informally next to the markets.
The formal and informal occur side by side as the concrete Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge is an official border crossing checkpoint with heavily armed guards and strict identity document controls, whilst underneath the bridge there is a secondary infrastructure of rubber tubes which taxi back and forth transporting illegal goods (drugs, teak, alcohol, jade) and persons (migrant workers, human trafficking).
As a result of the many migrant workers and refugees in the border region, there are many illegal children seeking schooling in the region. A plethora of NGOs and missionary schools have arisen that answer to this demand. It has been estimated that there are around 30 000 migrant students in 70 schools.
During my stay in a migrant school I was asked to teach the students something about my home country. I started with a description of our water management system but quickly their questions turned political. Trying to explain the Dutch politics of consensus (opposed to the current military Burmese dictatorship), it became obvious that the students had had no formal introduction to political science and basic theories. I spent the next few days giving an introduction (within my limited capacity!) to philosophy and politics.
The goal was also to discuss Agamben’s point regarding their status as biopolitical bodies, as persons fleeing ethnic cleansing of one failed nation state with a choice of entering into the unwelcoming economically exploitative arms of another nation state, or into the captivity and dependency of refugee camps, a new juridico-political paradigm in which norm becomes indistinguishable from the exception.
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