Networks of Resilience: Legal Precarity and Transborder Citizenship among the Karen from Myanmar in Thailand Indrė Balc ̌ aite ̇ 1 Abstract This study probes the relationship between legal precarity and transborder cit- izenship through the case of the Karen from Myanmar in Thailand. Collected through ethnographic multi-sited fieldwork between 2012 and 2016, intercon- nected individual life stories evolving across the Myanmar-Thailand border allow the critical interrogation of the political and legal categories of ‘migrancy’, ‘refugeeness’, and ‘citizenship’, teasing out their blurry boundaries in migrants’ experience. Following the recent critical research in legal ethnography, this study demonstrates that legal precarity is not simply an antithesis to citizenship. The social and legal dimensions of citizenship may diverge, creating in-between areas of not-yet-full-citizenship with varying levels of heft (Macklin 2007). The article consists of three parts. First, it offers a theoretical framework to reconcile the Karen legal precarity (even de facto statelessness) and citizenship, even on both sides of the border (legally impossible). Second, it presents the three groups of Karen in Thailand, produced by the interaction of three major waves of Karen eastward migration and tightening Thai citizenship and migra- tion regulations: Thai Karen, refugees, and migrant workers. All three face varying levels of legal precarity of temporary status without full citizenship. However, the last part demonstrates the intertwined nature of those groups. A grassroots transborder perspective reveals the resilience of the Karen networks when pooling together resources of the hubs established on Thai soil by the three waves. Even the most recent arrivals in Thailand use those resources to move from one precarious legal status to another and even to clandestinely obtain citizenship. KEYWORDS: precarious migrants, citizenship, resilience, Karen people, Myanmar-Thailand borderland M ANEE 2 IS A THAI citizen of Karen ethnicity living in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. Her Burmese colleague introduced her as ‘Thai Karen’,a member of Thailand’ s upland ethnic minority. Our 2016 conversation revealed 1 Independent scholar; indre.balcaite@gmail.com 2 I have changed the names of interlocutors and mixed up some of the details of their stories to ensure anonymity. TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia page 1 of 27, 2019. © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2019 doi:10.1017/trn.2018.12 at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2018.12 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 81.101.224.248, on 10 Jan 2019 at 19:23:28, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available