The Shan are an ethnic group in Burma (Myanmar). As many as half a million Shan have crossed the eastern border into Thailand. While Shan people living in Thailand often have a higher quality of life than they would have at home, they face legal and economic disenfranchisement. Although official Thai policy guarantees Shan access to basic social services, real-life protections of these rights in some areas is spotty. The Thai government signed a migrant worker repatriation treaty with the Burmese government in 2002, and since Thailand never signed the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Thailand sometimes claims that the Shan are not refugees.

Many Shan people have work permits, but most earn just $1-$2 a day. By way of comparison, the minimum wage for the average Thai worker in the rural northwestern provinces is $5-6 a day. Nearly all of a Shan worker's earnings go toward food, with housing needs typically met by squatting on undeveloped or sharecropped land. In addition, the Thai government charges an annual fee of $100 for each work permit, which amounts to 3-4 months' wages.

Most of the refugees in the community's largest household cluster dig rocks from the local river and haul them, in bins, to a local storage area. At the end of the day, the refugees use their employer's pick-up truck to transport the rocks to a concrete-making facility. Because so much of the rock supply at the local river has been diminished, the refugees must walk further away for rocks each year.

In the community's second-largest household cluster, most of the refugees work as sharecroppers or as day laborers on farms. Because they do not receive adequate protective gear, these workers are constantly exposed to dangerous pesticides in their work. (Nearby households also smell the pesticides from inside their homes.) They also lack recourse if employers refuse to pay them their promised wages. At times, these employers threaten the refugees that employers will report them to the Thai police if they demand back wages.

Other medical issues, such as the "noncompliance" of mothers in getting their babies vaccinated, would also be resolved with more income and better transportation. (Usually, if parents do not bring newborns for vaccinations as the local hospital, the hospital workers go to the mother's house for vaccination visits. However, BRP community members live in impromptu huts, sometimes far from main roads, and can be hard to find.)

Along similar lines, some of the BRP children are deemed "delinquent" in their studies for two reasons. First, they do not always wear clean uniforms to school, and many of their clothes and shoes had been worn to tatters. Second, the children often drop out of classes during harvest season, to earn extra income for their families. Because almost none of their parents have attended even primary school, it is difficult for them to visualize future returns for schooling, or to envisage that missed classes inhibit cumulative learning.

The BRP helps children to buy uniforms, as these costs are equivalent to several months' income for some households. Some of the parents who once resisted sending their children to school also boast of their children's high grades.

Finally, to the extent that BRP community members exhibit "social pathologies," they are the same ones apparent in other marginalized communities--teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug dependence, and gambling. In recent years, some employers have distributed methamphetamines to workers to increase their productivity, unleashing a spiral of financial dependence and substance abuse.

How can refugees combat structural violence? The refugees in the BRP community are often too frightened to advocate for themselves, and local Thai officials sometimes ignore refugees' requests for protection from abusive employers, access to healthcare at hospitals, or equal treatment at schools. When BRP social workers attempted help refugee children born in Thailand to obtain birth certificates, one District Officer retorted, "Did you know it is illegal to help anyone you're not related to?"

Further, because refugees are fleeing conflict at home, the structural violence in Thailand can look almost rosy by comparison. We are heartened when more and more refugee children speak of the entitlements and rights afforded to others around them.

Celina Su is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College.