This open access IMISCOE Regional Reader explores the issues faced by migrant groups in Southeast Asia and the challenges of getting of their human rights recognized. It analyses the different responses, or lack thereof, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to these highly complex situations which are shaped by contemporary debates around borders and concepts of states, migrants’ rights as well as access to citizenship and how these concepts and paradigms are intertwined with issues such as agency and resilience of migrants. Crucial attention is given to the region’s lesser known populations and issues such as the Vietnamese in Thailand, people of Indonesian descent (PIDs) in Southern Philippines, independent child migrants across the region, and the vulnerabilities of migrant workers facing the COVID-19 pandemic. With its unique regional focus, this book provides a valuable resource to those studying human rights and migration issues, policy makers and researchers and students.
Sriprapha Petcharamesree was teaching at the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand for 26 years. She received her first degree from Thammasat University and her Ph.D. from the University of Paris-X Nanterre, France. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor by the University of Oslo in 2017 for her contribution to human rights works. She plans to join Chulalongkorn University’s Law School as a senior researcher in January 2023.
Her first formal contact with human rights works started when she served as a field worker for UNHCR in 1977 and then as social worker at the UNICEF’s Emergency Operations for Cambodian Refugees in 1979. Since 1990s she has been active in human rights field both among academic community and human rights advocates at national, regional and international levels. Her recent works focus, among others, on issues of, citizenship, migration, statelessness, human rights in international relations and human rights education. She has been studying the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member states for the past 25 years. Between October 2009 to December 2012, she was appointed the Thai representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights.
Mark Capaldi has a doctorate degree with the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies at Mahidol University, Thailand, where he currently works as a lecturer. The research topic of his dissertation was children’s agency within independent child migration in Thailand.
He has worked directly with child-led organizations on issues such as child migration and trafficking, street children and working children, and has also implemented projects on children in conflict with the law, on violence and abuse against children and addressing the vulnerability of children of internally displaced persons and as child migrants. Much of this work has been in South and East Asia, where Mark has lived for 30 years when he worked with Concern Worldwide, PACT Inc., Save the Children UK and ECPAT International.
As Deputy Director of ECPAT International (2001-2011), Mark Capaldi worked to end the commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. He supported a wide range of programming in all regions of the world, including areas such as: combating child sex tourism; legal reform; care and protection; preventing exploitation of children through the internet and information technology; anti-trafficking initiatives; and the promotion of child and youth participation. From 2011 to 2018, he took on the role of ECPAT’s global Head of Research and Policy.
