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Accepted Paper:
The "Ideal Farmworker" becoming "The Entrepreneur Returning Migrant": Migration as Development in the Thailand-Israel labor migration regime
Shahar Shoham
(The Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin)
The paper analyses the creation of the socially constructed imagined figure of "The Entrepreneur Returning Migrant" as part of the implementation of Migration as Development agenda in Thailand and its role in creating disciplined labor force to the Israeli exploitative agriculture sector.
Paper long abstract:
The paper focuses on a socially constructed imagined human type I name as the figure of "The Entrepreneur Returning Migrant". The figure was constructed around the migration from Isaan region in Thailand to Israel to work as farmworkers in the exploitive agriculture sector for the past four decades. The figure represents the construction of the ideal returning male migrant from Israel as an expert in agriculture and potential entrepreneur, capable of accomplishing upwards mobility through knowledge and skills acquired in Israel, as part of the neoliberal agenda of Migration as Development (MAD). The paper specifically explores the history of the agriculture development aid projects of Israel in Thailand and its effect on the development of the Thai rolling elite imagination of Israel as a source of innovation and advanced agricultural techniques. I argue that the figure plays a role in creating a discipline Thai workforce to the Israeli labor market, based on practices of othering, discrimination, and control. The paper examines how returning migrants understand and experience MAD by discussing notions of success, failure and exclusionary structures and practices in Thailand. The paper is based on multi-scalar ethnography done with people from Ban Phak Khad, a sending migration village community in Issan, together with archival research and media and cultural productions content analysis. The analysis is also based on materials from what I identify as the "Translocal Vernacular Migration Archive" (TVMA), a collection of cultural and material productions created and curated by migrants around the experiences of migration to Israel.