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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar & parts of Thailand in March 2025 to theorise transnational ties between Burmese migrant workers, diaspora support and the everyday practices sustaining relief, social order and resistance against Myanmar’s post-coup dictatorship.

Paper long abstract

In late March 2025 a half-finished building collapsed in Bangkok, Thailand, trapping dozens of Burmese construction workers and killing at least 20. At the same time, much of Mandalay and surrounding areas in Myanmar were reduced to rubble, destroying thousands of lives and livelihoods. These tragedies were linked by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck near Mandalay and rippled across the region. The quake, its aftershocks, and the transnational outpouring of mutual aid disrupted the perceived separation between the lives of Burmese migrant workers abroad and the politico-economic crisis confronting their families and communities at home.

Building on scholarship that treats disasters as moments revealing relations of inequality and solidarity, this paper examines how precarity, interconnectedness, and mutual struggle sustain survival and resistance to dictatorship in Myanmar more than five years since the 2021 coup. It connects dynamics often analysed separately: the mass exodus of predominantly young people since the coup—especially to Thailand, now home to 6–8million Burmese migrants—and the locally embedded systems of social governance, humanitarian support, and resistance across much of the country under anti-dictatorship administration.

These systems depend on financial, logistical, and political support from migrant workers and the wider diaspora amid limited international engagement, and were central to organising relief after the 2025 earthquake. We argue that tracing material bonds and reciprocal obligations linking migrants to communities in Myanmar reveals a transnational moral economy of precarity, solidarity, and resistance that helps explain the resilience of anti-dictatorship struggle more than five years after the coup.