A Thai Exodus

In some areas of North-Eastern Thailand approximately 1 out of every 3 families have a member that marries a foreigner and goes to live in the West. Based on the research of Thai anthropologist, Dr. Rattana Bunmattaya, there seems to be a pattern to how an Isarn village will experience such an exodus taking shape.

Some of the village women will be the trailblazers who have been forced to leave Isarn due to the drought-ridden and precarious nature of the local agriculture. These women may meet foreigners in Bangkok or other tourist areas and will move to the West to live with their Farang husband.

The second stage of the exodus begins once this trailblazer has established herself in her new adoptive country. Through hard work and financial clout she may have set up an independent business such as a Thai food outlet or restaurant. This will make it easier to attract family members to the West on temporary visit or work visas. These visas and flights will often be financed at great expense by the Thai expat.

According to Dr. Bunmattaya, the temporary visa lasting for up to 6 months will often be used by the visiting Thai (often another female family member) to establish a relationship with a Farang man and thus gain permanent residence in the West.

Apparently about 20% of Thai-Farang relationships are established in this way and if the dynamic goes on for decades you can see whole Isarn villages with distinct Farang “identities”, eg. you may have “Swiss”, “English” or “German” villages. I have witnessed this process myself in my wife’s village which can be deemed a “Norwegian” village as 2 of my wife’s cousins have already made the move there in the way described above. They even have a Norwegian house in the village where the traditional marriage ceremonies are normally conducted.

The economic and social consequences of this Thai exodus for the village are substantial. Although the Thai women now living abroad do their best to fit in with Western culture they never give up their basic creed that it is a daughter’s moral obligation to take care of her parents in their old age. This will mean that a large sum of money is continually transferred into the village. The families of the women with Farang husbands may eventually emerge as a new aristocracy of the village with better living standards, better houses etc.

This leads to even more Isarn women striving to obtain a Farang husband. This phenomenon is now so common that Dr. Bunmattaya has named it the “Cinderella” syndrome – the sometimes unrealistic belief that all financial hardship can be erased and economic security can be forever gained by an Isarn daughter meeting a rich Farang.

Isarn has mainly escaped from its former status of agrarian backwardness through its hard-working and optimistic peoples. Isarn people now constitute a very substantial part of Thailand’s working class. They have taken on a lot of jobs in industry and the service sector and it is this initiative that has mainly served to pull Isarn out of its economic backwardness.

The Isarn women with Farang husbands do, however, constitute a significant element in the region’s development as well. It seems that the families who have foreign relations are often the richest in the villages and may serve as models to other people. The Thai women now living abroad will not just bring economic benefits to the village but in time probably also more Western ideas about social issues, especially as many Thai-Farang couples sometimes choose to make Thailand their country of retirement.

The ideas that some Thai women bring to a Thai-Farang relationship will definitely include the strong moral belief in repaying the debts to your parents by taking care of them in their old age. This may mean that the Farang has to adjust to this sort of mindset. But on the other hand the ideas and material benefits that a Thai-Farang relationship can bring to an impoverished Isarn village are immense and almost revolutionary.

If a Thai enters the life of a Farang it probably implies subtle changes in ideas about responsibility and parent-child relationships, but the impact of the Farang way of life to both the Thai woman and her family/village has a different magnitude altogether.