refugee camp M

Umpieng Mai is a medium sized camp (15 000 inhabitants) along the Thai Burmese border. The camp has existed for over ten years and its main problem is the ongoing brain drain as a result of resettlement. The UNHCR has resettled roughly 50 000 refugees to third countries in the 5 years of ongoing program.  The eight schools (with a total of 5 000 students; a third of the camp population) have serious problems finding capable teachers as the successful ones choose to resettle in a country where they may have opportunities for further education.

The same goes for the camp leaders. The camps are guarded by the Royal Thai Authority military army. Inside the camps, however, there is a combination of ethnic Karen, Burmese and Thai law, which in practice means that there are very old fashioned, strict rules and very old fashioned, strict punishments. The young capable camp leaders are also more interested to find opportunities in a third country (such as the USA, Australia, the UK and many European countries) rather than stay involved in local politics. This means that the ruling body of the camp is mostly elderly, with old fashioned sense of law and order.

Umpieng Mai camp is a combination of three older camps that merged for safety reasons. As is the case with most of the Burmese refugee camps in Thailand, no formal infrastructure was laid out before hand. NGOs don't know where or when the Royal Thai Government will allocate them a new plot of land. Hence it is impossible for them to plan, and the road structures are usually imposed after the houses. Spatially the urban layout of the plan has a center where shop owners (demographically previously urban Muslims) are situated, and outer areas where farms (generally previously rural Karen) are situated. Central to the camp is again its sports ground where again the bored youngsters excel at Karen football.

Public and private are hardly distinguished in the camps as the bamboo structures are close enough together to hear your neighbors breathe at night. The typical ethnic Karen typology of the hearth persists; a central room where family activity such as eating, sleeping and recreation takes place is very private. The road infrastructure is the other extreme and is a very dynamic space that doesn't allow for intimacy. The most important domain is the semipublic balcony terrace where exchanges with neighbors are made.