We are pleased to announce that one of our team’s panel proposals has been accepted for the International Conference on Burma/Myanmar. The team will participate in the 5th International Conference this August at Chiang Mai University, where they will present their paper. The paper explores the confined lives of displaced individuals and seeks to understand their agency in coping with, and even thriving within, limited conditions.
Bencharat Sae Chua, Samantha Jeffries, and Sai Hkur have reconceptualized what it means to be confined. They explore the idea that confinement is relational and extends beyond physical sites such as prisons, refugee settings, and conditions of political exile. Instead, it encompasses the constrained social, legal, and political environments that individuals must navigate.
The panel examines how undocumented migrants, refugees, and political exiles navigate these constraints in their everyday lives.
Statement from Bencharat Sae Chua:
The aim of Burma/Myanmar studies, and its contribution:
“The work contributes to the effort to reconceptualise exile. It changes the narratives about life in exile – from those in need of help to those of active change agents.”