Monday Meeting ครั้งที่ ๘ หัวข้อ Multicultural Citizenship and Hill Tribes in Thailand

เอกสารประกอบงาน Monday Meeting ครั้งที่ ๘

หัวข้อ Multicultural Citizenship and Hill Tribes in Thailand‏

วันจันทร์ที่ ๙ พฤศจิกายน ๒๕๕๒ ณ ห้องประชุม ๒๒๑ คณะนิติศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์

Questions

Research Questions            

Whether multicultural citizenship can serve as a model for Thailand’s citizenship policy: as a way to ensure citizenship/human rights of hill tribe permanent residents (the hull tribe population)

1. When and why did those groups referred to as the ‘hill tribes’ arrive in Thailand?

2. What has been the historical treatment by the Thai government of these peoples?

3. Whether it is currently possible for members of hill tribes to gain formal citizenship? Can they become Thai citizens? Yes.

4. What criteria do they need to meet?

5. When did it become possible for them to gain citizenship? Did this occur in a single reform or incrementally? (tell the politics of it)

6. Why did the Thai government change the policy enabling them to be eligible for citizenship?

7. How many hill tribe groups in Thailand?

8. How does the government categorize hill tribes?

9. Are all hill tribes subjected to the same laws?

10. What are those laws?

11. What part of Thailand does the hill tribe population concentrate in?

12. What are their main occupations?

13. What are their every day life activities?

14. What are differences between groups?

15. Are their cultures and traditions extremely different from the Thai ones?

16. What are civil/political/social/cultural rights do they have as non-citizen residents?

17. Do different types of identity cards determine rights they may have? 

18. Do they enjoy individual or group rights?

19. What sort of rights do they have before/after gain citizenship?

20. Does receiving citizenship make huge difference (in practice) in term of rights?

21. Once they have citizenship, are they are able to exercise fully their citizenship rights, or do they face discrimination? If so, what kind? (activate the rights?)

22. How many of them have already gained citizenship? Percentage?

23. Do they participate in political activities or the public sphere? How?

24. What do they actually want from the government: being recognized as a Thai or being recognized as a distinct ethnic group but also as a member of the Thai political community?

25. Can they speak/write in Thai? If not, what are languages they usually use?

26. Does the inability to speak Thai play an important role in discrimination against hill tribe people or in creating a sense of hostility/social and political disintegration?

27. What are opinions of Thai nationals toward granting hill tribe people Thai citizenship? Sentiments? The willingness/ability to tolerate or work together with others who are different from themselves? Why?

28. Do Thai nationals uphold the idea of public diffusion of cultural dialogues and negotiation? 

29. Whether pressure from the international community and human rights regime has significantly driven a change in Thai citizenship policy?

30. What research exists about the history, human rights and citizenship status of, and government policy relating to hill tribe peoples?

31. Can Thai nationals (are they willing to) learn the way of hill tribes and transform their values? If yes, does it mean that the Thai civic culture (which is really to be exposed to scrutiny/subjected to re-interpretation – ‘open’ civic culture) is civic pluralist? If yes, can the cultural differences in Thailand be sufficiently acknowledged by multicultural citizenship policy?

                                                                      By AJ Pienkhuntod