Navigating life on the border: Gender, migration, and identity in Malay Muslim communities in southern Thailand

This study examines the ways in which Malay Muslim ("Nayu") residents navigate their lives in the southeastern border region of Thailand. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in Nayu communities in Sungai Kolok district in Thailand as well as in Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, I discuss changing forms of economic activities, migration, marriage, education, media consumption, and everyday social interactions.;While many studies of national border regions have focused on border residents' transcendence of national boundaries, I argue that navigating lives on the border through situated choices has strengthened the significance of the national boundary for Nayu residents. As an ethno-religious minority on a national border, Nayu residents' identities are multiplex, and their everyday choices are embedded in multiple social fields. The border is a presence in each choice they make, and the national boundary has become both a crucial element that orients their everyday practices and an important marker with which they make sense of the social forces that influence their lives. Moreover, male, female, and transgendered Nayu residents experience their lives on the border in distinct ways, variously influenced by gendered state polices and regional economic structures, and discourses of gender, ethnicity, religion, and modernity.;My research indicates that the stagnant local economy, the growth of industrial and service sector jobs in Malaysia, and imaginations and desires intertwined with notions of ethnic, religious, gender and national identities have formed new patterns of border-crossing. Seasonal, agricultural migration mostly undertaken by men has given way to mid- to long-term migration for industrial and service sector work that includes young unmarried women. The gender balance of cross-border marriages has also changed, expanding women's roles as the builders of cross-border networks. Nayu migrants' work experiences highlight the differences between the ethnic Malays in Thailand and Malaysia. Facing intensifying immigration controls and anti-immigrant discourse, Nayu border-crossers utilize "Thai" socio-cultural knowledge to resist marginalization. Nayu men and women with different marital, familial, class and generational backgrounds navigate gendered political, economic, and ideational forces with situated choices based on the advantages and limitations that they face in their own life contexts.