Thai-Lao relations

Pluralities of people’s crossings of the Mekong Thai-Lao border occur as locals subvert, reject, ignore, and embrace the logic of the national border. From a state-centric point of view, the everyday movements of these people, who rely mainly on a subsistence economy and have their own modes of crossing, are undocumented. I argue that people’s mobility co-exists with the practice of sedentary assumption. The aim of this thesis is to promote theory related to the Third Space in Borderland Studies by the presentation and analysis of people’s pluralities in border-crossings. The borderland area of Khong Chiam (Thailand)-Sanasomboun (Lao PDR) is the location of an in-between state in which spatial negotiations, temporal negotiations, and negotiations of political subjectivities contribute to the nature of mobility in the Third Space. To achieve the objective of this thesis, ethnographic methodology was used over six months of fieldwork from March to September 2016, and included participant observations, interviews and essay-readings that involved 110 participants in the borderland site. People’s movements across the Mekong River border occur daily without formal state approval. From the perspective of the Thai Ban, the river is a lived space in which they catch food and use for transport. However, their interpretation of the Mekong as the state boundary does not completely disappear. This thesis examines the everyday banal pluralities of the Thai Ban’s border-crossings by weaving together the three concepts of space, temporality, and negotiations of political subjectivities. The spatial and temporal negotiations involved in the border-crossings shape and are shaped by this other interpretation of the Mekong as a lived space, and different political subjectivities contribute to the pluralities of the crossings. The presentation of these pluralities of border-crossings adds to Borderland Studies specifically and the social sciences in general in the development of an understanding of the Third Space. As this thesis focuses on people’s mobility at quasi-state checkpoints and in areas along the Mekong Thai-Lao border with no border checkpoints, it is suggested that future research examines the everyday practices of border-crossings at land borders.

This research is titled ‘Temporal Dimension in Thai-Lao Relations: The historiography of Ubon Ratchathani and Champassak from 1954 to 2018’. The research questions are 1) What are the ways in which the temporal dimension of the Ubon Ratchathani and Champassak borderlands in the international relations of Thailand and Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) is interpreted? 2) What are the ways in which such an interpretation can push forward the temporal dimension in International Relations with regards to the Thai-Lao relations? The research method includes document analysis and it took two fiscal year from 2018 to 2019 to complete the research, as the project funded by the Faculty of Political Science, Ubon Ratchathani. The results of the research are 1) the border-centric temporal interpretation of Ubon Ratchathani (Thailand) and Champassak (Lao PDR) has provided three ways of explaining the Thai-Lao relations. First of all, it is the combination temporal interpretation between the local elites, Ubon Ratchathani and Champassak, and those from the centre of the state, Bangkok and Vientiane. The Thai-Lao relations, therefore, are still state-centric. Secondly, the narrative of Thai-Lao relations from the border-centric perspective differs from that of state-centric. The state-centric temporality produces unilinear historiography, meanwhile the border-centric one offers a stuttering narrative. When the two perspectives meet, it leads to the pluralities of temporal dimension which is a characteristic of the borderland when it is described as the Third Space according to Nail (2016). This will lead to the second point of the research findings
Border-centric temporal dimension offers a novel aspect to International Relations for these following reasons. First, with this perspective, the pluralities of temporal dimension in international relations can be found. It is a combination between state-centric and border-centric temporality. Therefore, the borderlands of Ubon Ratchathani and Champassak is a Third Space. Second, the features of post-Orientalism temporal dimension can be witnessed. This research argues that spatial and temporal interpretation are interrelated. Therefore, the state-centric temporality is interrelated with Westphalian state space introduced to the region in 1893 after the arrival of the French. Said (1977) described the neatly separated state space of Westphalian concept introduced to the colonial areas as Orientalism. As this research argues, it is impossible to distinguish what is Orientalism and what is not. The findings of this research stand that, true, there is a combination between state-centric and border-centric interpretation. It is further argued that the Orientalist perspective of temporality is mixed with the local. This situation is called post-Orientalism of temporality. It is concluded that the temporal dimension as found in the text in social science, especially International Relations, when the borderland of Ubon Ratchathani and Champassak is mentioned, is post-Orientalist.

This book focuses on the ways in which unofficial modes of bordercrossings by the Thai Ban along the Mekong Thai-Lao border are practised in their everyday lives, and how can these unofficial modes of bordercrossing can be theorised as a contribution to existing borderland studies. In doing so, the book discusses the importance of the notion of the Third Space and its effects on the pluralities of border-crossings in the borderland by weaving together spatial negotiations, temporal negotiations, and negotiations of political subjectivity. To illustrate the importance and complexity of the notion of the Third Space, the borderland of Khong Chiam-Sanasomboun, an area composed of quasi-state checkpoints as well as mobile checkpoints, is used as a case study. The author employs an ethnographic approach using the four methods of participant observations, interviews, interpreting visual presentations, and essay readings to examine the everyday practices of the Thai Ban people in crossing the border between the riverine villages in the two nation-states of Thailand and Lao PDR. With this, the findings in the fieldwork reveal that people engaged in everyday border-crossings in the riverine area do not simply embrace or reject the existence of Thai-Lao territory. Most of the time, the stance of Thai Ban people is the mixture of subversion, rejection, and acceptance of the boundary resulting in the sedentary assumption in the form of Thai-Lao territory co-existing with people's everyday mobility.

Laos, which in many respects is Thailand's most important neighbor, contributes greatly to its electricity security. More than 50 percent of the electricity in northeastern Thailand comes from Laos. Thus, electricity has become the main product which impacts the relationship between Thailand and Laos. Interestingly, Thailand's Electricity Generating Authority (EGAT) plays a very important role in linking and sustaining this relationship. This article aims to analyze Thailand's energy security and foreign policy with respect to Laos through the action of Thai state enterprises by focusing EGAT's role as an important intermediary in these policies. The study used qualitative research to find answers through primary and secondary resources. It found that the hydroelectric power in Laos is very important for Thailand, especially in the Northeast region. EGAT has played a significant role in establishing a framework for electricity policy relations between Thailand and Laos.This actor has never been mentioned before as a key player in foreign policy. This article recommends that Thailand still needs to reduce its dependence on a foreign power by strengthening its domestic electricity security, especially in the Northeast.

By weaving the concepts of power, people, and space, this independent study analyzes the ways in which statelessness discourse are produced. The Acts of Nationality of 1961, 1966, 1992/1, 1992/2, and 2008, and the Revolutionary Council Declaration of 1972 will be approached by discourse analysis. The language used in the five Acts and the Revolutionary Council Declaration of 1972 will be analyzed to detect how significance, identity and politics of nationality are produced and reproduced. This independent study further examines the ways in which the nationality discourse constitutes the lives of transnational peoples in the Thai-Lao border of Ubon Ratchathani province.

Wisaijorn explores how the concepts of space and temporality in traditional geopolitics have influenced the understanding of the Thai-Lao border since Laos became independent in 1954. Arguing that a state-centric conceptualisation of the Thailand-Laos border falls into both a territorial and temporal trap, Wisaijorn contests that privileging a theoretical border silences the voices of people on the ground. In doing so he expands the concept of a temporal trap with the addition of a temporal dimension – analysing how the state claims a monopoly not only on a geography, but also a history. Rooted in orientalism, colonialism and the expediencies of the cold war, the border operates in the interest of elites and ignores the lived reality of peoples on the ground. By bringing these voices back into the discussion, Wisaijorn presents a more complex framework, which reveals a human dimension missing not only from this particular case, but more broadly from the conceptions of borders within International Relations theory. A fascinating case study for scholars with an interest in mainland Southeast Asia, which also makes a valuable theoretical contribution to International relations discourse.