migration

Patrawart K. Violence and Internal Displacement in Thailand’s Deep South Armed Conflict 2002-2008. 2010.Abstract
This paper explores the impact on internal displacement of an understudied armed conflict in Deep South provinces of Thailand. This paper uses a unique event-based dataset on armed conflict and an official migration record to identify patterns of violence that affect internal displacement between 2002-2008. The paper has, for the first time, consolidated the information of media-based daily records of violence, casualties, and its nature with migration records, creating monthly records for 303 sub-districts with GIS-coordinates in four Deep South Provinces between the border of Thailand and Malaysia. This new database contains 8,330 violent cases that resulted in 3,058 deaths and 4,677 injuries. On average, each month, sub-districts that had experienced violence recorded 5.72 net out-migrants while the sub-districts that did not experience violence recorded 5.69 net in-migrants. Using a panel data model with fixed effects, I show that high intensity and specific natures and targets of violence were associated with higher numbers of displacement in different ways. I illustrate this connection with visible trends and correlation in GIS maps. Moreover, I find that the mortality rate of the Thai-Buddhists is 3 times higher than that of the Thai-Muslims. Before the surge of violence in 2004, the Thai-Buddhist population comprised a quarter of population in this conflict area, that was once famously called the beacon of pluralism of Asia. This ethnic imbalance in the victimization needs action from policy makers or it will attenuate the peace-building process to reconcile ethnic tensions that Thailand had previously been able to avoid.