The Work of Inscription: Antenatal Care, Birth Documents, and Shan Migrant Women in Chiang Mai

Abstract

For transnational migrant populations, securing birth documents of newly born children has crucial importance in avoiding statelessness for new generations. Drawing on discussions of sovereignty and political subjectivization, I ask how the fact of birth is constituted in the context of transnational migration. Based on ethnographic data collected from an antenatal clinic in Thailand, this article describes how Shan migrant women from Myanmar (also known as Burma) utilize reproductive health services as a way of assuring a safe birth while acquiring identification documents. Paying close attention to technologies of inscription adopted for maternal care and birth registration, I argue that enacting bureaucratic documents offers a chance for migrant women to bridge the interstice between human and citizen. Birth certificates for migrant children, while embodying legal ambiguity and uncertainty, epitomize non-citizen subjects' assertion of their political relationship with the state.

Addressing the Evidence Gap in the Economic and Social Benefits of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems: A Systematic Review

“…Another group of studies looked at the impact of vital registration on migrant populations. In Indonesia [ 22 ], Sierra Leone [ 19 ], and Thailand [ 23 ], authors concluded that birth registration is a pathway to access the education and obtain legal identity documents. As a consequence, it increases the likelihood for those individuals to access better economic opportunities.…”

“…As a consequence, it increases the likelihood for those individuals to access better economic opportunities. In Thailand, it was reported that having a birth certificate gives rights and citizenship to migrant children from Myanmar [ 23 ].…”

Choosing where to give birth: Factors influencing migrant women’s decision making in two regions of Thailand

“…Women described their lived experience being a migrant in Thailand without the proper documentation and wanted greater stability for their children. Another study with Shan migrants in Thailand reported safe birth and acquiring identification documents as motivations for attending antenatal care [15]. Thailand does not provide citizenship to children born in Thailand of migrant parents, but the country's policies to provide elementary education and low-cost healthcare coverage to migrant children may also incentivize birth registration.…”

“Who you are in these pieces of paper”: Imagining Future Kinship through Auto/Biographical Adoption Documents in the United States

“…Anthropologists have examined the power of documents within a range of contexts: as a material tool of bureaucratic ideology (Hull 2012b; Chelcea 2016), as a mediator of migration and citizenship (Chu 2010; Reeves 2013; Seo 2016; Abarca and Coutin 2018), as an instrument of state surveillance (Scott 1985; Torpey 2000), and as a mechanism linking the politics of historical archiving, memory, and lived experience (Tarlo 2003; Stoler 2009). Existing literature reveals a strong tendency to conceptualize documents and the practices that produce them within the analytic frames of bureaucracy and state control (Hull 2012a).…”