“Good” Sons and “Dutiful” Daughters: A Structural Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of the Migration and Remittance Behaviour of Northern Thai International Migrants

Abstract

International labour migration from Thailand may be understood as part of a generalised process of global capitalist expansion and the increasing mobility of labour both within and across national borders. Yet the diverse experiences of international labour migration become meaningful only from the vantage points of migrants’ own experiences and beliefs, as shaped by the particular sociocultural context in which they live. International labour migrants may be understood as social actors, negotiating moral positions in different social fields as they try to accumulate respect and status, and construct personhood (Malkin, 2004). This chapter uses a structural symbolic interactionist approach to explore the labour migration and remittance behaviours of Northern Thai men and women who went abroad for employment in another East or Southeast Asian country. It focuses on the sociocultural norms that contextualise and shape migrant men and women’s remittance behaviour, the purpose of those remittances and their symbolic meanings, and the ways in which migrants and their families deploy actual and symbolic remittances to reconstruct their identities, reduce stigma and improve individual and familial status.