For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10 . 1163 / 9789004363106 _ 007 Chapter 6 “Development Missionaries” in the Slums of Bangkok: From the Thaification to the De-Thaification of Catholicism Giuseppe Bolotta Beginning from the 1970s, transnational ‘secular’ rhetoric on children’s rights and the global mediatized representation of ‘street children’ as ‘victims’ have led to the appearance of several Western and international ngo s in the most marginal urban areas of the Thai capital. Between 2011 and 2014 I undertook several periods of fieldwork research in the slums of Bangkok and had the op- portunity to engage with and analyze the work of these organizations.1 De- spite being officially secular, many of these ngo s were actually led by Catholic ‘development missionaries.’ In 2012, as part of my fieldwork, I volunteered at the Little Ones’ House, an ngo providing assistance to disabled children in the slums. The head of the ngo , Sister Serafina, is an Italian missionary of the Xaverian Missionary Society of Mary.2 In this chapter, I explore the shifting roles played by those missionaries who—like Sister Serafina—have been engaging in the field of ‘secular’ hu- manitarian development within Thai Catholicism. Indeed, ngo s like the Little Ones’ House constitute a relatively recent innovation in both the aid landscape addressing disadvantaged people in Thailand and in the geography of Catholic missionaries’ activities. Previously, Catholic and Christian proselytism efforts mainly targeted the mountainous and ethnically variegated northern regions of the country. Home of numerous ‘non-Thai’ ethnic groups,3 condescendingly 1 I owe special thanks to the editors of this volume Catherine Scheer, Michael Feener and Philip Fountain, and to my colleagues Eli Elinoff and Bernardo Brown, for their thoughtful suggestions and comments during the composition and revision of this chapter. 2 To protect the identity of my informants, all names of people throughout the article are pseudonyms. 3 Even though the term ‘Thai’ refers commonly to all the citizens of the modern nation state of Thailand (regardless of their ethno-linguistic background), I use the term primarily to refer to Central or Siamese Tai—the hegemonic group whose ethno-linguistic characterization was used as the main reference for ‘Thainess,’ the modern national identity. Accordingly, I use the term ‘non-Thai’ to refer to both non-Tai chao khaw (‘hill tribes’) and other minority Tai groups, like for example the Northeastern Tai Lao or the Northern Tai Lü.