Understanding the Ethnic Inequality of the Thai Lao through Perspectives on Promoting Social Inclusion Policy in Thailand in Accordance with UN Sustainable Development Goal 10.2
- For policymakers
- Summary created: 2022
The research examines the differences between a primarily Bangkok Establishment sample and a middle class Thai Lao educator sample on the socioeconomic and political inclusion of the Thai Lao, who face unacknowledged structural inequalities. Furthermore, it prescribes policies to promote inclusion.
This summary, including its recommendations and ideas, was created by John Draper and is based on original research. The original research itself was conducted in collaboration with the following researchers.
It has been previously found that there exist large horizontal structural inequalities between different ethnic groups in Thailand, i.e., exclusion along socioeconomic and political lines, and this research tries to understand why these exist, in areas such as education outcomes, in the case of the Thai Lao.
The Thai Lao are the largest ethnic minority group in Thailand. However, the Thai Lao ethnic group are not recognised by the Thai state, which means their official inclusion is difficult.
As an example of social exclusion, the Thai Lao encounter daily racial prejudice due to their looks, accent, and culture, etc. Notably, Thai Lao women are regarded as the opposite of beautiful due to the Thai conceptualisation of beauty.
As an illustration of economic exclusion, the Thai Lao score poorly on indices like household income.
To exemplify their political exclusion, Thailand is one of the last remaining countries in the world which has centrally appointed provincial governors, and only the Central Thai possess a democratic governance structure, for the capital of the Central Thai region, Bangkok.
This was a case study which, for the first time, sought to obtain an Establishment viewpoint on the inclusion/exclusion of the Thai Lao, Thailand’s largest, if unrecognized, ethnic minority, as well as a viewpoint from a Thai Lao educator sample. While the number of contributors was low, the case study is nonetheless interesting for the breadth and depth of material collected via its survey instrument as well as the categorization of material according to the concepts of social, economic, and political inclusion.
Insights
While this was not a quantitative study, 69.5% of the ‘Establishment’ sampled disagreed with the need/desirability of practices to promote the inclusion of the Thai-Lao ethnic group, with the common themes being that the Thai Lao do not exist or that the Thai Lao do exist but are not excluded.
60.8% of the ‘Local government education administrators’ sample agreed with the need/desirability of practices to promote inclusion, with the most common theme being the need for greater decentralization.
What it means
In the case study, we asked two different samples about their opinion on the current state of inclusion of the Thai Lao. For instance, we examined what could be done, in terms of decentralisation (including greater fiscal decentralisation), whether a campaign against racial prejudice was needed, and whether is was perceived that the situation was improving for the Thai Lao ethnic group.
One sample was the ‘Establishment’, which included senior governmental officials. The other sample was the “Thai-Lao Local Education Administrators”, who worked in Khon Kaen Province, part of the Thai Lao heartland.
We hypothesised that both groups would have two different viewpoints as to why these structural inequalities existed, and we found that there was a remarkable difference as to how they perceived inclusion/exclusion outcomes for the ethnic group. The two different samples held very different ideas about the prima facie evidence of quantitative structural inequalities facing the Thai Lao.
The Establishment held a conservative, retrograde approach where they either stated the Thai Lao did not exist as an ethnic group, so racial prejudice could not exist, or they stated the Thai Lao group may have encountered ethnic penalties in the past, but that the situation had improved or that things were getting better, so no action was needed. Thus, they appeared to be unaware of, or ignore, the quantitative evidence for ethnic inequality.
On the other side, for the Thai Lao education administrators, the situation was very different. For the most part, they accepted that the Thai Lao did exist as an ethnic group and that they did encounter inequalities and social exclusion due to their looks, accent, and language, etc., as well as economic exclusion.
They perceived inequality and prejudice and largely agreed that the strategy for greater inclusion must include a decentralized government and a purposeful campaign against racial prejudice against the Thai Lao. There was a significant discourse that Thai the Lao people would like their own democratically elected provincial governors, not ones appointed by Bangkok.
Despite the different opinions regarding inclusion and whether discrimination against the Thai Lao was real, both the Establishment group and the local Thai Lao education administrators agreed on further decentralisation of the provinces. However, without concrete policies, t this is a mantra – where in the world do you hear people say “no we want greater centralisation”?
Thus, regarding what is meant by greater decentralisation, what the Thai Lao mean by decentralisation may not be what the Establishment mean. Everyone agrees there should be greater fiscal decentralisation – especially regarding greater budgets allocated to the Northeast, where the Thai Lao are the majority ethnic group.
But, then what this budget is used for is contentious – should it be used to promote cultural and ethnic identity in schools the region, including the Thai Lao language? Should it fund a campaign against racial prejudice? Should it be used to support democratically elected provincial governors’ offices or even the establishment of a political assembly for the Northeast to manage decentralization, as in the Welsh Assembly? Unfortunately, this goes against what the Establishment wants budgets to be decentralised for. They primarily want them to be decentralised for project management reasons, for instance to promote commercial development on a regional basis, rather that to promote socio-political inclusion.
Intriguingly, we asked both samples whether they would support the establishment of an assembly for the Northeast, and the Establishment response was a firm negative, whereas the Thai Lao response, corroborated by other similar research on a bus station poll of Thai lao, was mostly “Yes, our own assembly is something we would consider”. Given that the Thai Lao participants expressed their opinions during a military coup, at a time when sedition and treason along ethnic lines were being raised, two very different discourses existed.
Proposed action
The larger goal should be to attain democratically elected provincinal governors for each region who could guarantee more political inclusion of minority ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Thai Lao
While UN agencies promoting inclusion such as the UNDP and UNESCO cannot openly support Thai political parties in favour of political decentralization, they should openly support the principle of establishing democratically elected provincial governors, as in most other postcolonial societies worldwide
In order to reduce prejudice against the Thai Lao community, there needs to be active promotion of Thai Lao and Laos literature, culture, music and clothing, etc
Campaigns against racial prejudice against the Thai Lao (and other ethnic minorities) are also necessary
Thailand’s military-civil government could better accept inclusion if they are convinced of its economic advantages
The research is of interest for other medium high developed multi-ethnic societies promoting, or with the option of promoting, social, economic, and political inclusion along ethnic lines, in Southeast Asia and also globally
Acknowledgements
Thank you to ASEAN
These insights were made available thanks to the support of ASEAN, who are committed to the dissemination of knowledge for all.
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