Identity Paper/Work/s and the Unmaking of Legal Status in Mae Sot, Thailand

Abstract

Abstract Arguing for renewed attention to legal status as a problem of material forms and the practices around them, this paper builds, from an examination of documents in use, a theory of how competing notions of personhood shape legal status for Burmese people in Mae Sot, Thailand. It finds that there exist in Mae Sot two modes of documentary practice through which the legal status of Burmese people is apprehended. “Modes of documentary practice” refer not only to records, papers, certificates, cards, and forms, but to the patterns of filling in, wielding, explaining, and referencing a variety of print matter. The two modes identified in this paper exist in a feedback loop, with the result that Burmese people in Mae Sot are increasingly individuated as being part of a group for whom legal status is irrelevant and legal indistinctiveness is the norm.