Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the strategical appropriation of humanitarian resources by a group of Burmese immigrants living in a garbage dump in Mae Sot (Northern Thailand). It aims to reflect on the concept of “development” used by aid workers and its differences with that of beneficiaries of interventions.

Paper long abstract:

Being located closely to the Thai-Myanmar border, the dump has been a place of shelter and settlement of about four hundred Burmese immigrants since the late 1980s. The garbage dump is mostly regarded as a highly marginalized space because of its location and living conditions, and over the years has attracted several NGOs and humanitarian organisations. The governance those agencies exert can be conceived (Pandolfi, 2003) as a new form of sovereignty at the intersection of "biopolitics" (Foucault, 2004) and "bare life" (Agamben, 1995), beyond the authority of Thai nation-state. Aid interventions are different in perspectives, approaches and methods but, at the same time, they tend to share the concept of the dump as a peripheral and "needy" place. Humanitarianism strategically employs such a representation to attract financial and political resources, within the framework of an"ethos of compassion" (Fassin, 2007). However, even when aid programs are well-orientated, most fail, including "participatory" ones.

On the other hand, dump dwellers are able to strategically appropriate aid resources. Also, the benefits of a de facto suspension of Thai law enforcement has pushed them to become mostly sedentary. The apparently undesirable "suspended condition" they live within allows them to avoid persecutions and life struggles from Myanmar, and at the same time to protect themselves from Thai immigration policies.