To be Karen in the Thai-Burma borderlands: identity formation through the prism of a human rights discourse

Current debates on Karen identity have tended to focus on the development of a nationalist construct of a pan-Karen community. This article moves beyond this notion to explore a Karen identity that is being recast in the form of a human rights discourse where the Karen construct, adapt, and reify the social aspects of their political identity in order to establish a claim to a political self, where they protest the persecution and discrimination waged against them as well as larger claims around governance and political representation. This human rights discourse is framed by increased emphasis in the Thai-Burma borderlands on a human rights framework to address Burma's ongoing conflict. Such an argument has the potential to move current debates beyond the more militant ethno-nationalist discourses of the Karen identity and develop an adequate framework for the practices of identity, which occur among displaced Karen in the Thai-Burma borderlands.