“Thai workers in the Jews’ land”/ Unknown

Left our hometown to pursue our dreams,

Work so hard every day in a foreign land far from home.
As a labor, make only enough to feed ourselves,
Yet still need to set aside the money for our mortgaged land.
Working in the Jews’ land makes us heroes
We have to tolerate hard work and harsh words.

The lover back home has been changing and it’s heavy on my heart.
It’s hard to make ends meet with the salary they pay
Is there anyone who sympathizes with us?
Working for other people means no comfort,
Some nights they fight, dangers surround us
The pay they promised, we’ve never got it
We don’t know who to turn to.
This is the truth about Thai labors in the Jews land
The money we make is merely over 30,000 Baht
Then come these bills for electricity, water, taxes, and food to pay

Only 10,000 Baht left to send home to Thailand
Is there any organization that can fix this?
If you can’t, you’d better not send more workers
Because we feel like we are being buried alive here.

This song was published on YouTube by Sombat Khaophuk in 2016, but the writer is unknown. The male singer’s voice is accompanied by a guitar alongside images filmed by a cell phone of Thai farmworkers performing different tasks in the fields in Israel. The song’s protagonist complains about the violations of his rights, the treatment of his employer and calls for solidarity. All those experiences, together with the violence of the conflict he became entangled in, causes him emotional and mental distress. 

This song is one out of a larger corpus of cultural productions created by Thai migrants around their experiences in Israel. These songs are part of a tradition of popular folk songs such as molam and lukthung, focusing on the migration experiences of the people of Isaan, the northeast region of Thailand. Most of the Thai migrants in Israel come from Isaan, where migration to different labor markets around the globe became a central phenomenon in the lives of many, often across multiple generations within one family. The people of Isaan are placed in the bottom of Thailand’s socio-economic hierarchies, following years of unequal treatment from the county’s central regimes, which led many to migrate internally and overseas destinations. Stereotypes around the people of Isaan became a common discourse by the urban elite in Thailand and in the media, discussed as problematic “backward” rural villagers who are not part of the Thai project of modernity and progress.

This song and many others were published online in social networks such as YouTube and Facebook. These virtual communal spaces created fertile infrastructures for Thai farmworkers in Israel to interact, complain, negotiate their subjectivities, relations with Israel and their home, and produce knowledge about their experiences. Those virtual spaces flourished in light of the Israeli migration regime and policies aiming to maintain the Jewish majority by preventing integration of non-Jewish workers through policies controlling migrant workers’ lives, exploitative employment structures, continuous rights violations and social and physical isolation.There are multiple ways to approach the songs written by Thai migrants in Israel. They can be analyzed through poetic literary perspectives, focusing on the metaphors, references and cultural spheres they emerge and engage in, such as vernacular Buddhism. In the following, I suggest four paths to approach the songs using an anthropological perspective to analyse the Thailand-Israel migration regime and the lived experiences of Thai workers in Israel. There are many other ways to encounter these cultural productions. This is an invitation for others to do so. 

Complaint songs

The theorist Sarah Ahmed (2021) asks us to listen to “biography of complaint” with a feminist ear in order to “hear who is not heard”. Adopting her approach, when engaging with the songs, reveals how migrants attempted to challenge their mistreatment and rights violations through a spectrum of acts of resistance. As part, some occasionally used their collective power to protest the treatment by their Israeli employers, organized strikes or used the assistance of human rights organisations.  

Yet, most of the migrants’ daily acts of resistance are made in the intimacy of the farms and within the intimacy of the labor relations between the workers and their employers. These “intimate complaints” are hardly heard and are mostly invisible, as they are not counted in the statistics of complaints made by migrants to NGOs, nor are they documented in the state’s official statistics. Often, even when migrants do complain about their mistreatment and rights violations, it results in a compromise on their behalf, settling on much less than they are entitled to by law, as it is “better than nothing”. 

However, the complaints made through songs written by Thai migrants take a public form for everyone to hear, or at least to those who wish to listen. As such, the songs can be read as “biographies of complaints”, a way for migrants to exercise their labour agency. What do Thai 

workers in Israel complain about? Songwriter Sanya Hitakun asks us to listen: 

Laotian Isaan Man/ Sanya Hitakun

I am a Laotian Isaan man who left home to work overseas.

Although Israel is far from Thailand, my heart is always close by.

Working hard in distance leaves me feeling lonely. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is extremely hot here and my face is burning.

Every day, I only hear commands, some of which are just annoyingly repetitive.

I have a huge debt because I sold buffalos and pawned my land to come here.

I don’t know when I will have enough money to redeem them.

My beautiful lady, please don’t give up on me. 

Your handsome man will work hard to earn money.

When we become a family, I promise to provide a wealthy life for our future.

For now, let me pay back the debt first, and when I have enough money, we can talk about our future.

Even though I am exhausted, I will not give up on our dream of living together in the future.

I work hard each day from 5 am until it gets dark. 

Some unlucky days, I must climb up the date tree and get injured by its thorns.

Although I am Laotian and look like a Laotian person, I never give up. 

As a son of my father, I work hard and hope to pay back the debt,

Be proud to be a debt-free person.

Songs as traces 

The songs also express a range of emotions. They express anger at the treatment from their employers, longing for home and their families, and a sense of physical and mental exhaustion. As they describe their daily reality, migrants’ songs also become documented testimonies, a repository of knowledge and experiences. As such, they leave traces of life lived under the burden of debts and the pressure to provide and to survive. The songs provide evidence of harsh living conditions, of rights violations, and feelings of isolation and marginalisation. Theorist Eyal Weizman (2017) suggests that following those traces not only provides information, but also transforms the audience who encounter them, as they bear witness to migrants’ experiences. Engaging with these cultural productions thus holds the potential to transform us to become witnesses, asking us to listen and to be active. 

The subject position of Thai migrants in Israel is further contextualized and localized by describing experiences of violence and war.. The recruitment of Thai migrant workers to the agriculture sector in the 90’s was part of Israel’s aim to replace, weaken and control the Palestinian workforce from the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Following October 2023, those measures have been used by Israel to inflict further violence on Palestinians by denying their access to the labor market. Parallel, Israel have been dramatically increasing the recruitment of migrant workers while legislating further harmful policies. In the songs, migrants describe the emotional stress and the fear of injuries and death and provide evidence for the lack of adequate protection. Such is the song by Pongpat Pasunjon from 2014:

A Laborer Veteran/ Pongpat Pasunjon 

I come from Issan to work in a war land.

Hearing the explosive bombings and missing my beautiful lady back in the rice field village.

There are sounds of bombings and gunfire in Gaza.

Oh, my dear, I miss our home terribly and wish to return, but I cannot.

We are in huge debt and so I must suffer in the bunker.

If I am unfortunate, it would not be worth the effort. 

So it’s better to rush to the bunker.  

The loud bombing sounds like a huge thunderstorm in our rice fields. 

When the bombing ends, a laborer veteran like me must return to work again.

I must endure for those who are waiting for me. 

Even the bombs cannot stop me from fighting for a better future.

Please wait for me, if I am still alive, in five years. 

A veteran laborer will return to hug those who are waiting at home 

Songs of longing and belonging 

The gravity of the migrants’ sending communities and their connection to their homes in Isaan are another central theme in the songs. Their home communities, the migrants are telling us, are important for them and are spaces worth fighting for. The songs are written in a dialogue with Isaan, as the space where the loved ones are, the responsibilities to provide are actualized and where the songs’ protagonists belong. Their absence is only temporal, and the motif of the anticipated return is dictating the temporalities of their lives in Israel, as they are counting the days until their contracts end. In reality, their return is temporary, as most migrants continue to engage in cycles of migration to sell their labor in multiple destinations during their lives.

Nevertheless, I suggest that the songs imagine the sending communities as a grounding space, a locality that is available for them in times of need, helping them deal with the present’s hardships, a place they can always return to. What will come after the work contract ends, the songs tell us, is for future worries, beyond the scope of the nostalgic sentiment ruling the description of homes. The relations of the writers to Isaan are reflected, for example, in the song: 

5 years and 3 months/ Titharachakon Chantem

I left my home with hope for a better future for my family.

Left my loved ones to live in a faraway land, a thousand kilometers away

Even though it is hard or extremely difficult, I will stand

For a better life for my family and to end our poverty.

I work diligently with sweat pouring down my face, earning money for my employer

Under the burning sun, I tell myself I can do it.

I am fine here, so Mom and Dad, don’t worry about me

Even though it is hard, I will not give up for my family

Mom and Dad, please wait for me. It will not be a long time

It is physically hard, but my heart will not give up

In 5 years and 3 months, I will return to dine with mom and dad.

Being a laborer is like trading our sweat for their money.

In 5 years and 3 months, I will return to dine with mom and dad.

For 5 years and 3 months, I must endure hard work for my family to be happy.

As the songs articulate, there is pain that is caused by the anxieties of being forgotten by loved ones back home, that is, I suggest, related to the fear of losing one’s place of belonging. The migrants are asking their loved ones to hold the space for them as participating subjects in their communities and homes while they are away. Holding this space has multiple functions in my reading of the songs, as it provides a purpose and meaning for the stressful physical and mental conditions they experience. However, there is another request voiced in the songs. That is to hold a space to be full subjects, in contrast to their erased and fragmented subjectivity in Israel. The songs can be read as a plea of the workers to their communities to help them to be more than “only workers” while in Israel, to move away from reduced subjectivity, to be full subjects who care, act and belong. 

The “migrant hero” figure  

To deal with the agony they are facing, the protagonists of many of the songs capture themselves as heroes, as a figure emerges from below as a self-constructed gaze of the migrants over themselves. The “migrant hero” emerging in the songs is a particular type of hero, who is fighting the hardships to provide for his family. Among the tools the hero uses in his multiple battles are tolerance, patience, and endurance. As in the song:

Superman College/ The Moshav Band

We sell labor and worker is our position
We sell labor and our assumed name is Thai worker
We are up for work early, it’s our Thai worker standard
We don’t mind hard or light work, we stay composed for our dreams
Exhausting work and a lonesome heart but we are persevering and ready to tackle
Because we are in a superman college, we learn and practice patience
We train our minds to overlook idleness, experience is our college degree

We sell labor and worker is our position
We sell labor and our assumed name is Thai worker
We are up for work early, it’s our Thai worker standard
Success comes with determination and consistency
So don’t give up, grab this opportunity with both hands and do your best
Because we are in a superman college, we learn and practice patience
We train our minds to overlook idleness, experience is our college degree
We sell labor and worker is our position
We sell labor and our assumed name is Thai worker.

The figure of the “migrant hero” in the songs is constructed in relation to another figure created around the Thai migrants in Israel, that is the “taylandi” figure. Through the years, the word taylandi (a Thai man in Hebrew) became synonymous in Israel with farmworker. The Israeli public and state discourse around the “taylandi” figure along the years attributed specific characteristics and behaviours to the Thai migrants, describing them as submissive, docile, easy to manage and fit to deal with exploitative labor conditions with not much resistance or complaining. The “taylandi” is characterized in Israel as a racialized gendered “other” to the Israeli Zionist “melting pot” ideology, who is willing to do the unbearable work that Israelis will not agree to perform. 

I suggest that the songs are capturing the tension of living between the “tailandi” figure and the “migrant hero” figure. It is the tension created by the reduction of subjects to workers and the need to develop survival techniques to live through and despite oppression and discipline. Thus, by emphasizing their Isaan identity and the gravity of their home communities, the songs resist both subject positions produced by the figures, as they wish not to be reduced to none of them. In my readings, they reject their identification as obedient ideal farmworkers, nor do they aim to engage in continuous heroic battles to survive the distress caused by the Israeli migration regime. Living in these tensions makes the migrants exhausted. The songs, thus, produce an imagination of the possibility of non-reduced subjectivity, of living beyond their position as workers and migrants.

Thai migration archive 

When former migrants who worked in Israel listen to one of these songs they may have the possibility to claim: I was there, I worked there, I lived there, I experienced there, what I lived through happened to me and others in my village, in my region, and is part of the collective realities of many around me. What opens if we think of the songs as part of a larger migration archive of Thai migrants in Israel? In what way can an imagined migration archive contribute to our understanding of the lives of Thai migrants in Israel? The culture theorist Arjun Appadurai (2003) argues that the possibilities of popular migration archives challenge the notion of what an archive is or could be. They provide spaces to imagine, as they build a capacity and reflect the aspirations of those who move, functioning as a link between what is desired and memory. Migration archives, thus, have agency as they are active actors in the localities they are part of.

To clarify, such an archive does not exist in the institutional sense, as there is no one location where those archival materials are stored, sorted and labelled. Imagining a Thai migration archive, emerging out of migrants’ lives and cultural production such as the songs, has an active role not only in gathering the traces, complaints, articulation of feelings and relations to home. Migration archives emerging from lives lived has the potential to activate their spectators and those who encounter them. They hold possibilities for  Isaan migrants as they create spaces to comment, negotiate, and engage with their concerns, identities and the translocal spatialities they are part of, for example, through the migrant hero figure. The archive also activates spectators by opening new fields of knowledge and access to lived experiences of Thai farmworkers in Israel. 

Yet, these archival encounters, as the one we engaged here through the songs, raise ethical questions to be considered. To name a few: How can we, as spectators of popular migration archives, engage with them through theory, practice, and political actions? Is visibility always helpful for the communities and individuals? What can be the costs and for whom when engaging in popular archival encounters? Is a Thai farmworkers migration archive asking to be defined, to be encountered, and by whom? Are anthropologists, artists and activists in danger of becoming the gatekeepers of archives through the knowledge they produce about them? And if so, what are our responsibilities towards the archive and its makers?

The text is based on Shahar Shoham PhD dissertation: “The Heroes from Isaan Working in Israel: The Production of Migrants in the Thailand-Israel Migration Regime” (Humboldt University of Berlin, 2024). 

Assisted with translation from Thai: Phaksornkan Thongkam, Siriwatchaya Naowong, Nootchanok Jitpakdee and Pichapon Robru. 

Dr. Shahar Shoham is an anthropologist specializing in labor and forced migration at the intersection of policy, lived experience, and migrant-centred research. She previously directed the migrants and refugees department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and researched Israel’s externalization policies toward refugees. Currently, she is developing a collaborative multimodal visual anthropology project that builds on her doctoral research with migrants from Isaan. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at “ChainGE Lab: Labor Law for a Global Value Chain Economy” and an Associated Member at The Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research at Humboldt University of Berlin..

References

Ahmed, S. (2021). Complaint!. Duke University Press.

Appadurai, A. (2003). “Archive and Aspiration.” In: Brouwer, K. & Mulder, A. (Ed.), Information is Alive (pp. 4–25). V2 /NAi Publishers.Weizman, E. (2017). Forensic architecture: Violence at the threshold of detectability. Zone Books.