JohnsonK-Imagined Futures

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Imagined Futures: Education and Nation-building in Karen-dominated Refugee Camps along the
Thailand-Burma Border
By Kim Johnson
 
 
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Educational Policy Studies)
at
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN‐MADISON
2016
Date of final oral examination: 05/06/2016
Dissertation is approved by the members of the Final Oral Committee
Nancy Kendall, Professor, Education Policy Studies
Lesley Bartlett, Professor, Education Policy Studies
Erica Turner, Professor, Education Policy Studies
Mary McCoy, Professor, Southeast Asian Studies
Simone Schweber, Professor, Curriculum and Instruction

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been possible without the help, encouragement, and
support of my advisor, Nancy Kendall. I greatly appreciate her questions and suggestions that
pushed me to deepen and clarify my thinking. Additionally, I would like to thank my committee
members, Lesley Bartlett, Erica Turner, Mary McCoy, and Simone Schweber, for their support
and suggestions.
I would also like to thank the people with whom I worked, played, and lived while in
Thailand. In particular, I would like to thank Dorcus Moo, Paw Moo, Catherine Daly, and Katie
Julien for facilitating the logistics of this research and for helping me gain insight into what I was
seeing and experiencing. I am grateful to the teachers and administrators in the camps who
hosted me and took the time to talk with me. Additionally, I would like to thank the
organization with whom I worked and volunteered for their hospitality and their insights into
many different aspects of education for displaced people from Burma.
Finally, I would not have been able to finish this dissertation without the love and
encouragement the two most important people in my life. My mom, Kathleen Sernak, was with
me and encouraging me from the very beginning of this project. Her faith in me never wavered,
even when I questioned myself. And my partner, David, whose boundless patience, kindness,
and thoughtfulness enabled me to continue even when I thought it was impossible. Thanks, D.

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ABBREVIATIONS
CCSDPT Committee for Coordination of Services to Displaced Persons
CESR Comprehensive Education Sector Review
EBP Education Border Project
EDA Education Development Associations
EFA Education for All
FTI Fast Track Initiative
GRUM Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar
INEE Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies
KED Karen Education Department
KNU Karen National Union
KREG Karen Refugee Education Group
MDG Millennium Development Goals
MOE Ministry of Education
MOI Ministry of Interior
MSEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies
NNER National Network for Education Reform
PAB Provincial Administration Board
PKU Parliament for the Karen Union
PSES Post Secondary Education System
RTG Royal Thai Government
WCEFA World Conference on Education for All

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INDEX OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Adverts for senior level positions with NGOs 57
Figure 2. Contents from “Teaching Skills” 189
Figure 3. Options for graduates of KREG schools 208
Figure 4. Graphic from EBP website depicting participation processes 253
Figure 5. Course map from “General English Pre-Intermediate” 267
Figure 6. Table of Contents from “Environment Issues” module 269
Figure 7. Notes from teacher training session in camp 321

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations 1
Index of Figures 2
Expanded Table of Contents 4
Chapter 1: Introduction 9
Chapter 2: Education in Colonial Burma 86
Chapter 3: The Thailand-Burma Border 1980s-2010 126
Chapter 4: Establishing K-10 Education in the Camps 159
Chapter 5: Post-Secondary Education in the Camp 205
Chapter 6: PSES curricula development 236
Chapter 7: Durable Solutions 275
Chapter 8: Education System Convergence 305
Chapter 9: Conclusion 349
Appendix A 356
Bibliography 357

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EXPANDED TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................ 3
INDEX OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................ 5
EXPANDED TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................. 11
Place, Home, and Education..................................................................................................... 14
Policy in practice................................................................................................................... 18
Background............................................................................................................................... 19
Refugee camp creation.......................................................................................................... 19
Repatriation........................................................................................................................... 21
Education. ............................................................................................................................. 22
Education Policy Agendas............................................................................................................ 26
Three Purposes of Education .................................................................................................... 27
Nation-building..................................................................................................................... 29
Economic development......................................................................................................... 36
Fulfillment of human rights. ................................................................................................. 40
Policy and the purposes of education........................................................................................ 43
Conceptual Framework................................................................................................................. 45
Neo-institutional Theory........................................................................................................... 47
Political Economy Framework ................................................................................................. 50
ID Ideology............................................................................................................................... 52
ID organizations and education in aid and development settings......................................... 54
Organizations and experts..................................................................................................... 57
Local experts......................................................................................................................... 61
Participation.............................................................................................................................. 65
Dimensions of Participation.................................................................................................. 67
Friction Among Different Levels of Socio-Political Actors..................................................... 72
Methods......................................................................................................................................... 74
Data Analysis................................................................................................................................ 80

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Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................................... 82
CHAPTER 2: EDUCATION IN COLONIAL BURMA.............................................................. 88
Precolonial Burma: Traditional Burmese Social Structure....................................................... 89
Organization of the kingdom ................................................................................................ 90
Social roles in the village...................................................................................................... 92
Monastic Education. ............................................................................................................. 93
The Formation of British-Burma .............................................................................................. 94
Burma, Thailand, and the international landscape................................................................ 94
British administration of Burma. .......................................................................................... 99
Education under British rule (1890s-1940s)....................................................................... 100
Education in British-Burma.................................................................................................... 103
Education in the highlands.................................................................................................. 103
Education in the lowlands................................................................................................... 107
Education administration. ................................................................................................... 112
Negotiating and implementing education reform. .............................................................. 113
Changing purposes of education......................................................................................... 117
Higher education................................................................................................................. 118
Postcolonial Burma: The Thailand and Burma Border........................................................... 121
Burma’s military government............................................................................................. 121
Armed conflict in Burma. ................................................................................................... 124
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 127
CHAPTER 3: THE THAILAND-BURMA BORDER 1980s-2010........................................... 128
Refugee Camps on the Thailand-Burma Border (1984-1994)................................................ 130
Initiation of development services in the camps................................................................. 134
Structure of the refugee camps ........................................................................................... 136
Protracted refugee situation .................................................................................................... 138
International policies for refugee situations........................................................................ 141
Why Focus on Education? ...................................................................................................... 147
The role of education in the development of Thailand....................................................... 147
The ID community’s perception of the role of education in development......................... 149
Millennium Summit................................................................................................................ 150
World Education Forum ......................................................................................................... 154
Resources and accountability.............................................................................................. 155
International influence on domestic education policies...................................................... 156

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Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 158
CHAPTER 4: ESTABLISHING K-10 EDUCATION IN CAMP ............................................. 161
Education and the Transition from Emergency to a Chronic Refugee Situation.................... 162
Camp-based education........................................................................................................ 163
Creating agreement and action among stakeholders........................................................... 165
Creating compromises ........................................................................................................ 174
Forms of Participation and How They Shape Interactions ..................................................... 176
Who participates: democracy and dominance .................................................................... 177
Education System Governance by the Ethnic Majority in Camp ........................................... 180
Karen Refugee Education Group rationale......................................................................... 181
Structure of KREG.............................................................................................................. 183
Camp-Based Education System.............................................................................................. 184
Primary and post-primary curricula development .............................................................. 186
Teacher training .................................................................................................................. 188
Divergence of the Camp-Based and Burma-based Karen ...................................................... 192
Place and culture................................................................................................................. 192
Self-determination of camp-based Karen culture ............................................................... 197
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 201
CHAPTER 5: POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE CAMPS..................................... 205
Graduates of K-10 Camp-Based Education............................................................................ 207
The Post-Secondary Education System .................................................................................. 210
The Physical and Social Environment of a Junior College..................................................... 212
The physical structure of the junior colleges ...................................................................... 212
Student life at a junior college ............................................................................................ 213
The Academic Policies of the PSES schools.......................................................................... 215
PSES credentials................................................................................................................. 216
Purpose of Education at PSES................................................................................................ 218
Students............................................................................................................................... 218
Teachers.............................................................................................................................. 221
Education, Culture, and ID ideology ...................................................................................... 224
International recognition of the Karen................................................................................ 224
Languages used (and not used) in the junior colleges ............................................................ 226
The changing meaning of Burmese language..................................................................... 227
Language as a tool rather than an identity .......................................................................... 227

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Language policies and practices in the junior colleges....................................................... 230
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 232
CHAPTER 6: POST SECONDARY EDUCATION SYSTEM CURRICULA DEVELOPMENT
AND USE ................................................................................................................................... 236
Administrative Structure of the PSES..................................................................................... 237
Decision-making processes used by KREG ....................................................................... 239
The decision-making processes used by the PSES board of directors................................ 241
The effects of decision-making processes .......................................................................... 244
Teaching and Learning Materials in the PSES Schools.......................................................... 245
The Education Border Project............................................................................................. 247
Processes Used to Develop Materials..................................................................................... 252
Participation and the curricular development process ........................................................ 252
Drafting the modules............................................................................................................... 264
The Final Product: EBP Modules ........................................................................................... 268
EBP modules in practice..................................................................................................... 269
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 272
CHAPTER 7: DURABLE SOLUTIONS ................................................................................... 275
Third Country Resettlement.................................................................................................... 279
Burma re-enters the international community ........................................................................ 282
Repatriation............................................................................................................................. 284
What Repatriation means to the GRUM................................................................................. 285
What Repatriation Means to the International Community.................................................... 287
Regularizing relations ......................................................................................................... 287
Re-establishing trade and diplomatic relationships ............................................................ 288
Repatriation and the RTG....................................................................................................... 291
Military coup in Thailand ................................................................................................... 291
Refugees and Repatriation...................................................................................................... 292
Ethnic minorities and ceasefires ......................................................................................... 294
Repatriation and Fractures within Groups.............................................................................. 300
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 303
CHAPTER 8: EDUCATION SYSTEM CONVERGENCE ...................................................... 305
Educational Contexts and Refugee Repatriation .................................................................... 306
International involvement in Burma’s education system.................................................... 307
CESR Phase 2 ......................................................................................................................... 310
The National Network for Education Reform .................................................................... 314

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Participation and Ethnic Minority Peoples ............................................................................. 317
Convergence (Sept. 2013-May 2014)..................................................................................... 320
Annual KREG Teacher Training ............................................................................................ 323
Creating meanings for convergence.................................................................................... 334
Convergence Meetings in Myo Sai......................................................................................... 337
Heterogeneity...................................................................................................................... 343
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 347
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 350
APPENDIX 1:............................................................................................................................. 358
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................... 359

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
After working as a teacher-trainer in a development setting (Papua New Guinea) and in
an emergency setting (Thailand), I went to work in a post-conflict setting (Liberia). It was in
Liberia where I first suspected there was more to education in development and emergency
settings than I had realized. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, I learned that my specific
assignment was to do exactly what I had done in Thailand: train teacher trainers to use learner-
centered pedagogy to enhance literacy and numeracy. It was while I was working in rural
Liberia that I began to wonder if learner-centered pedagogy and other “international
development best practices” truly could be best for Liberian refugees returning home, for
Burmese refugees in a protracted refugee setting in Thailand, and for financially impoverished
Papua New Guineans living in rural areas. These three cultures and settings are very different,
yet international best practices claimed there was one best way to teach all of these children.
This dissertation examines how and why education policies in the refugee camps along
the Thailand-Burma border were created and implemented. Current discussions about what
drives education policy tend to assume an emergency or a development setting. In this
dichotomy, refugees and refugee camps represent an emergency setting, however, in this
study, which examines a protracted refugee situation, it is a refugee education system that
raises questions about the international development approach.
Using a vertical case study model, this dissertation examines these education policies
across the historical, socio-political, and geographic axes to address the research question:
“How do international organizations and the experts they employ, work with state and local-

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level participants to (re)design a national education system for Myanmar that is responsive to
and inclusive of ethnic minorities?”. Drawing on Anderson-Levitt’s (2003) work, this
dissertation provides another example of the impact the level of abstraction has on
convergence versus divergence of educational policy.
How are international best practices and policy recommendations understood and
addressed in state-level education systems? How are global policies modified in practice to
make sense in local contexts? This dissertation builds on this line of inquiry in the fields of
comparative and international education and the anthropology of education (e.g., Stambach
(2003), Steiner-Khamsi (2006), Kendall (2007), and Vavrus and Bartlett (2013)) by examining the
processes of and tensions surrounding the introduction of international policies and education
organizations in the context of an ethnic minority group involved in a protracted refugee
setting. The refugees in this story are attempting to create an education system that meets
their needs, international norms, and host country demands, and that can play a key role in
their gaining political representation in the international community. After almost 20 years of
system formation, changes in the political situation have resulted in the Government of the
Republic of the Union of Myanmar (GRUM) and international experts shifting focus from
forming and maintaining the system to incorporate the camp-based education system into the
re-forming Myanmar education system.
By examining both the camp-based education system and the process undertaken to
attempt to integrating it into the GRUM state-level education system, this dissertation
scrutinizes the processes through which international experts first support local participants in
creating camp-based education systems that fuel Karen nationalism, and then shift their

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attention to shaping a national education system in Myanmar, as it emerges from more than 60
years of civil conflict. The dissertation thus scrutinizes the consequences of current
international development education processes of education system-building, which do not
acknowledge or address divergent claims of nationhood or human rights, or definitions of
socio-cultural success that are based on diverging criteria for the main actors involved in the
refugee and GRUM education systems. These current international development education
processes, which are based on “world society” norms and understandings, severely limit the
membership potential of the Karen in the international community. When the GRUM was not
conforming to world society norms, the international community embraced the Karen and
empowered them to create their own education system. However, despite the Karen’s
relationships with international actors (and perhaps because, in part, of their deeply limited
mobility), when the GRUM began to conform to world society norms, the international
community withdrew much of its support of the Karen and began to back the GRUM, an
established member of the international community.
To this end, the dissertation research focused data collection and analysis on Karen
understandings of and desires for refugee camp-based education, the technical assistance
offered (and the challenges left unaddressed) by the INGO experts at different points in the
history of the Karen education system, Karen responses to these different forms of
development “partnerships” and processes, and the consequences of these interactions on the
shape and purpose of camp-based education.
Education in the refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma1 border is shaped by and
1
For years, there has been controversy over whether to call the country Burma or Myanmar. In this dissertation, I

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reflects the different visions of schooling held by actors in diverse political positions in the
region. While Karen (an ethnic minority in Burma) actors are fully focused on creating an
education system that will build the Karen nation, all other actors, including international
organizations (donors, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and international
development experts), the Royal Thai Government, and the Burmese government do not share
this goal, and in some cases, actively oppose it. Indeed, these other actors’ goals for refugee
education in the camps are quite different, from creating an education system that will enhance
individual refugees’ employability and economic status, to fulfilling individuals’ rights to
education as per international agreements signed. I will argue in this dissertation that
international actors generally focus on the role of state-provided education in enhancing the
capacities and rights of the individual, whereas the Karen focus on the role of community-
provided education in the evolution of group culture and identity, and the potential role of
Karen education in supporting group nationalist claims on the international stage. These
different foci have unintended consequences on the potential for peace, reconciliation, and
repatriation.
Place, Home, and Education
Researchers including Escobar (2001), Pinedo-Vasquez (1996), and Duncan (2013) have
examined the links between culture and place. They argue that place is a multidimensional
use the

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concept that includes social, political, temporal, and spatial aspects, and the linking of culture
and place “. . . must be understood as complex and contingent results of ongoing historical and
political processes” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997 p. 4; see also Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001; Orr
2013). By this definition of place, culture and place are linked; when place changes, so does
culture, and vice versa.
Place refers to all of the external circumstances and experiences that shape a
personality. In contrast, home refers to internal factors such as feelings of belonging and
identity that are based on external factors including culture, language, and experiences shared
by the members of a bounded, sovereign group. Home includes the physical, political, and
social facets of a geographically-specific place, and one’s feelings about her relationship to this
place and its people; in other words, home is created by combining place and identity.
Research has shown the importance of understanding refugees’ conceptions of home in
relation to the analytic dimensions associated with place described previously. As Black (2001)
pointed out, the loss of one’s home leads to a decrease in security and confidence in one’s
identity. As the time of displacement increases, the conception of home, and therefore identity,
changes. Malkki (1995) examined these changes and the effect of the political and spatial
context of displacement on the re-creation of Burundian refugees’ identities. She noted the role
of formal and informal education in the refugees’ production and reproduction of their own
spatial, temporal, political, and social history, and how this reconstructed history impacted the
way in which refugees identified themselves relative to others. She argued that the Hutu
refugees in the camp extracted meaning from their situation, and that the camp became
physically and politically symbolic for imagining the community; “the Hutu refugees in the camp

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located their identities within their very displacement” (p. 16).
Similarly, these (re)created identities served as the impetus for claims by the Karen in
the Thai refugee camps to be recognized as an ethnic and political group completely separate
from Burma. These claims were, as I will show, largely embodied in and through the education
system that the Karen established in the refugee camps. The refugee camp schools would both
assure the appropriate transmission of Karen identity—as it was (re)constituted in the refugee
camps—and provide the refugee community with a small group of educated Karen who could
serve as go-betweens on the international stage, as the Karen tried to convince the
international community of their right to nationhood, if not statehood.
Despite the importance of understanding how refugees conceptualize home and
identity, and despite evidence of how this conceptualization changes over time, particularly in
places like refugee camps, the nation-building aspects of refugee education, which in this case
were determined by the refugees themselves and based on refugee conceptions of home, are
for the most part wholly ignored in refugee education programming, largely in favor of an
approach that reifies globalized, depoliticized “best practices” focused on “technical” issues
such as learner-centered pedagogy, curricular layout, and infrastructure. I argue that by
ignoring the nation-building aspects of education, international organizations working in
diverse emergency and development settings create an environment in which refugee
populations can imagine alternative—in this case nationalist—visions of home that lie in direct
conflict with the state system around which the international community is organized. This
creates an environment that may foster civil unrest upon refugees’ return, as the refugees’
vision of home is not in complete conformity with the state government’s (and thus the

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international community’s) vision for post-conflict countries.
This dissertation examines relationships and interactions across sociopolitical levels to
elucidate the origins and consequences of changes to educational policies and practices over
time and space. Specifically, this dissertation examines the construction, functioning, and
consequences of an educational system in which multiple groups worked together to create an
educational system that reflected and supported multiple goals and purposes. Using
participation as a lens through which to examine interactions between local, state, and
international levels of education policy and practice, this dissertation examines the effects of
the resulting camp-based education system on refugee discourses, imaginaries, and practices
related to nation-building; and then the consequences of this on current international refugee
repatriation efforts.
One of my goals in the dissertation is to bring research to bear on a question that is
currently paramount in international development efforts in the region: “How do international
organizations and the experts they employ, work with state and local-level participants to
(re)design a national education system for Myanmar that is responsive to and inclusive of
ethnic minorities?”. To address this question, I ask the following subquestions of the current
education system: “How and why does the form of participation change as the purpose of
education changes?” and “How does the camp-based education system, which was shaped in a
political context that recognized camp residents and their claims of oppression as legitimate,
affect or influence repatriation, which is based on international recognition of Myanmar as a
legitimate member of the world community and the refugees as citizens of Myanmar who are
obligated to return?”. Analysis of the data gathered from the examination of these questions

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provides insights into the complexities of critical development along the Thailand-Burma border
and potential strategies for dealing with these complexities.
Policy in practice. The relationships that I examine among international, state-level, and
local stakeholders involved in the constitution of education in the refugee camps are largely
enacted through the development and implementation of international development education
policies and their associated development programs. As policies move across these levels,
various interpretations of policy are proposed and implemented; the results of policy in
practice (Sutton & Levinson, 2001) both influence and reflect the relationships among the
different policy stakeholders. Interpretation and implementation of policy in the refugee camps
reflects a process that distills stories, concerns, and concepts provided by locals into technical
jargon and best practices at the international level; international discourse is in turn evident at
the local level in the form of policies and implementation recommendations that are once again
reinterpreted and implemented by local groups (Klees, et al., 2012; Samoff, 2006; Steiner-
Khamsi, 2006).
The process of translating development discourse, policy, and programming into local
speech and actions, and vice versa, is being researched and documented by scholars examining
processes of participation in the development arena (e.g., Wilkinson, 2009; Kapoor, 2004; G.
Anderson, 1998). However, relatively few studies examine the epistemological assumptions
made during these translations and how these assumptions may or may not then be
incorporated into international development education programming. As Samoff indicated,
“the problem here . . . is the internalization of relationships and understandings of the larger
environment, the internationalization of ways of knowing, that has largely been excluded from

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the analytic and policy agenda” (2006, p. 58). It is the assumptions, often based on the
international system privileging recognized states, made by ID actors and assumptions made by
minority groups with limited experience with the ID actors and the international community
they represent, that cause problems in the translational process.
Background
Northeastern Burma is one of the most linguistically and ethnically diverse areas in the
world and is home to one of the world’s longest-running civil conflicts. This conflict began
shortly after Burma’s independence from Britain in 1947 and continues today. In 1886, British
colonialists annexed ethnic minority groups and their territory into the state they called
“Burma”, in reference to the ethnic majority Bama people. After Burma gained its
independence, the British handed over control of the country to the Bama people, who used
the borders drawn by the British to define their country. The Bama people understood the
ethnic minority people and their territories to be part of their state. However, the ethnic
minority groups, including the Shan, Karen, Kayah, Mon, Kachin, Wa, and others who lived in
the territory now claimed as Burma did not consider themselves part of the new Burma; rather,
they considered the territory in which they lived to be under the control of ethnic minority
governing bodies, as was the case prior to British colonization. The Bama and the ethnic
governing bodies claimed authority over the same territory and people, which resulted in civil
conflict.
Refugee camp creation. Civil conflicts between the tatmadaw (the Bama military) and
the ethnic minority groups began after Burma’s independence and continue today; as a result
of these conflicts, camps for displaced ethnic minority people from Burma were established on

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both sides of the Thailand-Burma border (see Appendix 1). A protracted refugee situation
resulted, and the camps have been in place for more than 30 years. A collaboration between
the refugees and international humanitarian aid providers resulted in the development of a
camp-based education system, the Karen Education Project, over twenty years ago, before
education in refugee camps was a well-established aspect of international humanitarian aid.
The Karen Education Project was ostensibly established for all ethnic minorities,
however as the name suggests, it favored the Karen ethnic group. It was established to add
structure to camp life and to ensure that children born and raised in the camps would have a
sense of their ethnic identity and would be able and willing to direct the evolution of Karen
culture when a durable solution to the refugee camps was found and the displaced people were
able to leave the camps.
In 2010, after more than 60 years of conflict and almost 30 years of international
isolation, the Burmese government initiated reforms that were heralded by the international
community as steps toward democracy and development. This resulted in increased political
and economic interactions between Burma (now internationally recognized as “Myanmar”) and
the rest of the international community. Economic development and compliance with
international norms for domestic governance quickly became the central issues in these
relationships. The Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (GRUM) began
working with international experts in 2011 to increase Myanmar’s economic and political
influence on the international stage. These efforts included restructuring the previously-
neglected state education system (Lall & South, 2012).
The political changes in Myanmar have ignited advocacy for refugee repatriation. This

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advocacy comes from three sources: foreign governments, which seek to increase economic
and political ties with Myanmar by decreasing economic obligations to the refugee camps and
augmenting international perceptions of the GRUM’s legitimacy; the refugee camps’ host
government, Thailand, which aims to remove the refugees from within its borders; and the
GRUM, which is working toward the foreign perception of compliance with international
conventions, including the Human Rights Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the
Child. Foreign perceptions of the GRUM’s stability and democratic transformation would be
greatly enhanced by the repatriation of refugees from Thailand. Conversations with multiple
refugees, however, indicate that they are deeply skeptical of repatriation. As a result, in 2014,
discussions of involuntary repatriation were becoming regular fare along the border (UNHCR,
2012; Saw Yan Naing, 2014).
Repatriation. Discussions of forced repatriation are politically possible because the
notion of “voluntariness” is not mentioned in the 1951 Refugee Convention. The convention
calls for the receiving state to provide a safe return, which scholars such as Goodwin-Gill (1996)
and Chimni (2004) understand as an objective determination of safety that does not take into
account the subjectivity of the refugees affected. “Once the receiving State determines that
protection in the country of origin is viable, it is entitled to withdraw refugee status”
(Hathaway, 1997; cited in Chimni, 2004, p. 60).
A key component of the argument for forced repatriation is an understanding of “home”
as being the same as the borders of established states, as opposed to a specific geographical,
socio-cultural, religious, familial and/or political economic ecology. This is important, because it
allows “objective determinations” of safety to not examine too carefully the situations existing

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on the ground, in the exact areas from which refugees originally came. Thus, key issues such as
land ownership, significant changes in local socio-political structures, social services, economic
opportunities, or localized violence for returnees do not need to be examined carefully in
international determinations.
This issue is widespread in many areas of longstanding conflict that the international
community would like to see resolved. For example, services and funding to Somali refugees in
the Dadaab camp in Kenya are being reduced as services inside Somalia are increasing;
humanitarian aid (and its withdrawal) is being used as a tool to facilitate repatriation and/or
displacement. This is problematic for multiple reasons. First, in a protracted situation such as
this, there is no clear answer as to where a family could or should return. Some people were
born in the camp and have never been to Somalia. Additionally, as Horst & Nur (2016) note,
lived experience in a region that is experiencing ongoing “violence and conflict that are neither
war nor peace, neither criminal violence nor political violence” is not reflected in official
ceasefires or treaties. While there are officially “liberated areas” and “safe” parts of the
country, low-grade conflict continues. Unfortunately, official documents and government
reports that downplay these realities for political purposes are often used by funders and
organizations, particularly those that manage their operations remotely, to determine the
location and focus of aid and to call for repatriation even in the face of refugee concerns about
safety.
Education. An integral component of the discussions surrounding repatriation to Burma
was the need to “blend” the education systems in the camps with the Myanmar national
education system. The Myanmar education system has been devastated by decades of neglect,

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and the GRUM welcomed INGOs to assist in reforming the national education system by
“modernizing” it and ensuring that it conformed to international norms of education system
characteristics, including content areas, pedagogy, and student assessment of learning. In
response, in 2011, education experts from around the globe flocked to Myanmar to assist the
GRUM in (re)building Myanmar’s education system. In addition to providing technical support
for revising the national curriculum, international organizations also offered technical support
to the GRUM for planning how to incorporate the camp education systems that had been
designed for and by ethnic minority groups, including the Karen Education Project, into the
GRUM’s national education system.
In 2011, the international community and the elected Burmese government began to
map out a new education plan for Myanmar. As I describe below, the “blended” educational
plan agreed upon by all actors involved in this activity is actually a nationalist plan, which
argues for Burmese language of instruction, codifies the importance of credentials recognized
by the GRUM for accessing primary and secondary education, and provides for the majority of
the curricula to be state-determined and nonnegotiable (GRUM, 2014; fieldnotes, May 1, 2014).
Notably absent from these negotiations and agreements are ethnic minority stakeholders,
including the Karen.
Meanwhile, back in the camps, the Karen were standing in opposition to the idea of
repatriation for reasons described in greater detail below. The Karen did, however, engage with
international actors in discussions about what the blending of the camp-based education
system and the newly-(re)forming Myanmar national education system might look like. The
Karen advocated for the camp-based educational approach to Karen nation-building to be

24
legitimated in the new GRUM education system, whereas international actors that had been
supporting the camp-based education in the past were now politically aligned with the GRUM,
and therefore supported the proposed Burmese nationalist form of education.
The Karen understood this reversal of policy as an inconsistency and possibly as a
betrayal. However, many of the international actors understood their policies as being tied to
educational best practices and politically neutral curricula, and saw their support of
internationally-recognized governing bodies (i.e., the GRUM and the Thai government) as
consistent, logical, and following the historical pattern of interactions among international
development aid organizations and the states in which they work.
Education and international development. After World War II, decolonization took
place around the world, with many countries, including Burma, receiving independence. The
international community recognized education as a vehicle for state-level economic
development, as a fundamental human right to be facilitated by state governments, and as a
mechanism for instilling a national identity among citizens that inspires loyalty to, and thus
maintenance of, the state.
During and after decolonization, international development education assistance often
promoted the use of the dominant elite language in the primary and secondary schools, with an
international (usually the colonial) language (e.g., English) added in secondary and highlighted
in post-secondary schools. Education projects for international development aimed to
strengthen the role of schooling in nationalist citizenship projects; this led them to rarely
acknowledge or take into account the variety of ethnic groups within the territory claimed by
the state, focusing instead on internationally recognized governing bodies (usually centralized

25
state governments). From the 1960s, international development organizations considered the
political state to be the cornerstone of the natural order, and in doing so, they often conflated
the notions of nation-building and state-building, leading to the dominance of one ethnic group
over others. In most cases, the post-colonial dominant group was the group that had originally
been favored during the colonial era—in Burma’s case, the Bama. These assumptions, and
international development organizations’ comfort with conflating nationalist and statist goals,
has had significant impacts on the rights and experiences of ethnic minorities in many
postcolonial states.
Over time, as the Cold War heated up, bilateral funders increasingly saw education as a
way to promote their political ideology through development aid to newly independent
countries. Promoting certain political ideologies via national education systems could be done
by tying aid to curricular, administrative, and teaching practices that promoted communism or
democracy and identified various political states as either friends or foes. These educational
tactics were put in place to foster students’ political belief systems and (thus) encourage the
appropriate kind (e.g., capitalist or communist) of economic growth. Thus, bilateral
organizations involved in the Cold War provided funding to developing countries to assist them
in aligning their political and economic systems, and thus citizens’ daily market interactions,
with either the Soviet or the Western bloc (Escobar, 1995; Goldman, 2005; Tikly, 2004; Truman,
1947).
If international and state actors construct an education system that produces elites
and a socio-economic structure that privileges current state powerholders (often themselves
those empowered through the process of colonization), or that cut out portions of the

26
country’s citizens, this implicates the development organization(s) in fostering and/or
exacerbating ethnic tensions within the state. Such steps were often taken, however, in the
name of nation-building, and more particularly, in the name of building particular kinds of
nation-states that aligned with donors’ interests.
This brief background of the camp-based education system intimates the differences in
how actors understand the various purposes of education. The Karen refugees, the state
governments (RTG and GRUM), and the international actors have different stances and
understandings of how the blended education system should reshape the cultural reproduction
and aspirations for political self-determination of the Karen. In many ways, these varying
understandings mirror the significant differences of opinion that exist between international,
GRUM, Thai, and refugee actors’ sense of what repatriation should mean and do to the Karen.
The following section takes a deeper look at three purposes of education (economic
development, human rights fulfillment, and nation-building) that play greater or lesser roles in
these different actors’ discourses, policies, and practices at different times. Examining each
actors’ stances through these lenses helps explicate the similarities and differences among their
stances that we will later observe arising across different historical periods, and helps explicate
the power or tenuousness of different educational purposes on the international stage—where,
currently, economic development, human rights fulfillment, and nation-building are all
legitimated in statist terms that leave groups like the Karen in a deeply uncomfortable position.
Education Policy Agendas
Educational policies reflect competing agendas related to the purpose and desired
outcomes of education. These agendas include education for the purpose of economic

27
development, nation-building, state-building, human rights fulfillment, and the intellectual and
moral development of children (Serpell, 2010; Robeyns, 2006; Ansell & Lindvall, 2013). These
competing agendas are connected, and they work together; however, highlighting one and
backgrounding the others leads to significant variations in policy recommendations.
Based on the dissertation research, discourses and practices related to three purposes
of education—human capital development for the purpose of economic development, human
rights fulfillment for the purpose of encouraging a particular notion of social justice, and nation-
building for the purpose of perpetuating the nation-state system—form the foundation for
analyzing the stances of the key actors in the Thai-Burma education arena. All three of these
purposes are, in practice, statist in their orientation, because of the international communities’,
and the GRUM and Thai government’s, investment in the maintenance of the current
international state system. Using these agendas as a loose framework through which to engage
and analyze action, this dissertation examines how participants and experts at various policy
levels understand and enact their roles in informing education policy in the border area and in
the new Burmese state.
Three Purposes of Education
The purposes of education in emergency and development settings are context
dependent, and official purposes change over time, particularly if and as the balance between a
focus on emergency aid and development aid shifts (Chabbott, 2015). Education in emergency
settings focuses on the immediate health and well-being of individual students and their
families. Education provides students with immediate physical protection, short-term life-
saving information (e.g., how to recognize and avoid landmines), and medium-term life skills

28
(e.g., why boiling drinking water is important) during the initial stages of a complex emergency
(Price, 2013). In the later stages of an emergency and in development settings, education
serves purposes that include economic development at the population level, fulfillment of
individual-level human rights, and nation-building to (re)enforce the political state. Education in
development settings thus focuses on both individual and community/national-level
development, and is often tied to models of educational outcomes that assume (or attempt to
support) functioning labor markets and individual earning opportunities.
Protracted refugee situations are unstable situations with characteristics that move
between those of emergency settings and development settings, depending on the political
situation. The following section examines three educational purposes that are often activated
in post-conflict and development settings, but that are made tenuous in refugee settings
exactly because of the statist claims upon which each rests: economic development at the
individual and societal levels (which assumes functional labor markets and some level of
freedom of movement for trade—denied refugees), fulfillment of individual human rights
(which assumes an international actor like the UNHCR fulfills these claims in the short-term
absence of a state; this was not the case in the Thai refugee camps, where the UN had no
jurisdiction), and nation-building (which conflates nation- and state-building in ways that the
very nature of refugee camps disentangles or composes in new ways) (see Anderson-Levitt,
2003).
An underlying rationale and explanation for how each of these models of educational
purpose will be utilized throughout this dissertation is provided. Each of these educational goals
are present in almost all current education systems; however, various actors highlight certain

29
goals and background others. I argue that when the purposes valued by different groups
leading educational planning and implementation diverge, or when the conflation of statism
and the purposes vary across groups, there are intended and unintended consequences that
are shaped in part by the power and authority held by the disparate groups.
Nation-building. The adherence to the idea of the political state as the primary unit of
international (educational) analysis reflects a key pillar of the United Nations Charter, which
indicates that “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its
Members” (United Nations Charter, Article 2). The land and people inside the border and the
body that governs them make up a state. The state’s territory and its political leader(s) are
recognized by other states and have the capacity to engage in diplomatic relations. To be
recognized internationally, the state must be able to carry out diplomatic relationships with
others. Some have argued that the state must be able to show a form of government that is
stable and acceptable to other states (Philpott, 2010). Others, however, have disputed this,
arguing that international recognition may depend less on the quality or characteristics of the
state, and more on the capacity of more powerful states to utilize the existing government
structures toward their own ends (e.g., a state that regularly violates the rights of its
minoritized citizens may be recognized internationally if other states are content with their
capacity to engage in natural resource extraction) (Ferguson, 2006).
In contrast to a state, a nation can be defined by its people and their cultural, ancestral,
historical, or linguistic similarities. As a cultural entity, a nation does not require external
recognition or the capacity to have diplomatic relationships with others (B. Anderson, 2006;
Gellner, 1983; Global Policy Forum, 2014). Education for nationhood, within a nation, entails

30
focusing the curricula (and pedagogy) on aspects of culture, such as language, shared culture,
and tradition, that unify members of the nation and separate them from others with whom
they may share a state border.
Ideally in the current world order, a nation and a state will overlap geographically, which
increases the chances of the citizens of a state having a shared culture and vision for the future
and the political capacity to engage with other states to promote this vision. A nation-state is
both a politico-economic system and a cultural project that creates “a system of cultural
signification” (Bhabha, 1997, in Blommaert, 1999), “a powerful regime of order and knowledge
that is at once politico-economic, historical, cultural, aesthetic, and cosmological” (Malkki,
1995, p. 5). In a nation-state, education for nationhood entails highlighting aspects of culture,
such as language and the meaning of citizenship, that unify the people living (legally) within the
borders of the nation/state. When these perfectly overlap, there is no differentiation between
state and national citizenship, language, culture, or cosmology.
There are many more instances in the world, however, where the overlap between
nation and state is far from absolute. States often house more than one nation, and nations are
often housed in more than one state. In these cases, state authorities often draw on
governmental interventions to re-enforce the behavior of the dominant culture/nation. The
ideologies and social norms taught in the schools reflect the state’s dominant culture and
require minority citizens to adopt, or at least become conversant in, the dominant culture’s way
of life. These interventions include “methods of examination and evaluation, pedagogic,
therapeutic, and punitive techniques of reformation and cure; architectural forms in which
interventions take place (e.g., classrooms and prisons); and professional vocabularies” (Inda,

31
2005, p. 9). These interventions re-enforce the concept of the nation-state, theoretically
containing a homogenous people. The governing bodies of the state define chaos and order
within its territory and develop laws to enforce these behaviors in spaces as diverse as family
homes, classrooms, prisons, and workplaces. In doing so, the state decides and normalizes who
is included and who is excluded, who is legitimate and who is not. As Bauman (2004) indicated,
the concept of “a people” makes sense only within the confines of citizenship, and despite the
historical and contemporary strength of national projects, the world’s current primary mode of
internationally-legitimized citizenship is state-based.
While nations have existed for a long time, the political state is a relatively new
invention. The world was organized into states after WWI and states became the primary unit
of analysis after WWII and decolonization. States generally don’t map onto nations in ex-
colonies, so many postcolonial states adopt particularly robust nation-building approaches. The
goal of nation-building by state actors is to foster in the collective the belief in a shared vision of
belonging and the future and to build the collective capacity to achieve it. These approaches
aim to create, from the state, a nation-state that nurtures a robust notion of
citizenship/belonging. To do so, states often impose one national culture on the entire state
(Paris, 2002). In imposing a single national culture, states often enact policies to hinder would-
be challengers, such as allowing voting and other political engagement to take place only in the
dominant language, restricting economic opportunities for certain segments of the population,
and reorganizing resources to limit access. As Povinelli (2011) noted, the state demands much
greater sacrifices from those who can never fully belong/be right in this (nationalized) state-
building effort.

32
International development organizations focus on the state as the only legitimate
structure in the international governance order. Thus, though the relationship between
neoliberal undertakings and support for the state is complex, international organizations focus
almost exclusively on state-building (or reforming). Indeed, international conceptions of the
state constitute as well the social structures that make up the non-state: not nations, but “civil
society” and its organizations. Paris (2002) and Ottaway (2002) argue that state-building
assistance provided by international development organizations perpetuates a particular vision
of a functioning state that is based on liberal democracy (itself a particular nationalist model)
and market-oriented economics.
To create and maintain internal stability, the governing bodies of 21st century states are
encouraged to strategically use “institutions, procedures, actions, and reflections” to foster
self-governance in individuals and collectives, thereby protecting the welfare of the individuals
and the group (Fassin, 2011, p. 214; Hippler, 2006). Authorities of the political state often use
nation-building strategies, in addition to state-building strategies, to create a cultural and
political border that works to prevent members from leaving and “others” from entering (B.
Anderson, 2006; see also Hyun, 2014).
Despite these efforts to merge nation- and state-building, scholars such as Walker
(1994) point out that state-building and nation-building can be at odds with each other. In the
true sense of the word, nation-building is the process of supporting the growth and strength of
cultural identity. However, the term “nation-building” is very commonly used to refer to a
process of cultural homogenization within a state (that is, “state-building”). De facto, then,
when international organizations talk about nation-building, they are almost always referring to

33
the process of using state power and authority via institutions such as education to create a
cultural identity that relates to the particular territory of the state. This is particularly evident in
examples such as international support for “nation-building” in Iraq and Turkey, which have
been directly oppositional to the nation-building efforts of the Kurds. “Nationalism”, in
common international parlance, is thus expected to be a feeling of loyalty to the political state
rather than to the socio-cultural nation, and nation-building is a process of cultural assimilation
rather than strengthening loyalty to a particular nation within a state (Scott, 2007; Hippler,
2004).
Walker argued that increased access to and efficiency of communications and
transportation have enhanced awareness of individuals, both of their difference from their
immediate community and their affinity with a diaspora. For example, as access to media and
travel increases the awareness of among ethnic minority members who formerly were
relatively isolated, so does their awareness of people belonging to the same ethnicity who live
in other places. This results in an increased feeling of loyalty to one’s ethic group and one’s
nation, as opposed to the political, geographically bordered state. This may be particularly true
for groups that are minorities in the state, and whose culture is therefore not the majoritized
culture of the state. As most states, including Burma, contain multiple nations, and “[S]ince the
transfer of primary allegiance from these nations to the state is generally considered the sine
qua non of successful integration, the true goal [of state-building] is not ‘nation-building’ but
‘nation destroying’” (Walker, 1994, p. 42).
In states, then, there is often a distinct tension between education for nation-building
and education for state-building. A state-level education program highlights the dominant

34
culture, often meeting international best practices related to “nation-building” and economic
development by doing so. It aims to provide the various groups inside the state borders with
common ideologies and social norms. These ideologies and social norms may not directly align
with those of the various nations within the state. As such, tensions are often produced when
nations within a state attempt to create an education system for nation-building.
Education for nation- and state-building. The role of state-building versus nation-
building in education have deeply different and sometimes oppositional meanings for the
various groups along the Thailand-Burma border. Three of the competing and overlapping goals
surrounding the governance of the territory along the border are: 1. The goal of the Karen
people in the camps to build their own nation-state; 2. The GRUM’s goal of a Myanmar unified
culturally and territorially, which includes the Karen territory; and 3. The Thai government’s
goal to maintain its territory and unify its people via Thai culture, despite Karen claims to part
of the territory under Thai control. The Thai and the Myanmar governments understand a
nation to be defined and represented by the political state, whereas the Karen understand the
political state to be defined and represented by the nation.
Layered into the various goals regarding territory, governance and recognition, are the
assumptions made by multilateral organizations and INGOs about peace, reconciliation, and the
meaning of (education) development. These assumptions are based on the conception of the
state as “geographic containers for ‘societies’-that is coherent, holistic entities in which all
individuals were located” (Wallerstein, 2004, p. 4; see also Wallerstein, 2004b). Many INGOs
understand the state as the primary political unit that is responsible for fulfilling citizens’
human rights, developing markets and economic opportunity, and maintaining peace within its

35
borders. Since the 1990’s many INGOs have operated under the assumption that refugees are
citizens of the country from which they fled and have taken a “homeland oriented approach” to
repatriation2 (Black, 2001; cf. Rahman, 2010). INGOs rarely address nation-building per se;
rather they concentrate on features they perceive to be common around the world, including
the role of the state in the epistemic community, the state’s responsibility to its citizens, and
the desire for an absence of armed conflict within state borders.
The state-level education system in Burma promotes Bama culture, including Burmese
language and social norms, which are largely based on Buddhism. The newly-forming education
system in Burma also embraces international development principles (see below), including
recommended content and pedagogy. Given the involvement of international organizations in
the (re)formation of the Burmese education system (see Ch. 8), there is little doubt that a
primary purpose of the education system is to lend credibility to the Burmese government on
the international stage, while promoting Bama culture as a unifying culture for all of Burma.
In contrast, the Karen education system works to foster Karen culture, including Karen
language and social norms, which are based on traditional Karen culture and, to some extent,
Christianity. The camp-based education system also embraces international development
principles, including recommended content and pedagogy; however, the teachers and
administrators indicate that the primary purpose of the Karen education system is to foster
self-determination for the Karen people, a necessary part of which is gaining legitimacy in the
world community (see Keohane, 1971; Spivak, 1999).
2
The Rohingya refugee crisis has tested the homeland approach, and multilateral organizations are beginning to
perceive a problem with their assumption of citizenship. For more information, see Rahman (2010).

36
Economic development. Economic growth fueled by human capital development, or the
increase of market productivity at the individual level that results in an increase of the gross
domestic product (GDP), is one part of development economics. The World Bank claims that
“Economic growth is a central part of economic development. When national income grows,
real people benefit” (World Bank, 2016).
In 1983 and 1988, Sen agreed that economic growth is a part of economic development;
however, he added an important caveat: examining development economics through two
concurrent lenses, aggregate supply (e.g., GNP) coupled with wealth distribution, was an
inadequate method of determining the standard of living experienced by a country’s poorest
people. The concept of development includes factors such as “the achievement of a better life”;
thus, Sen argued that the analysis of development must include the nature of the life led by
people in a development setting (Sen, 1988 p. 15). As such, he argued that there was need to
take into account the political policies and systems in place that determined an individual’s
access to commodities (e.g., roads, education, healthcare) that would enhance their standard
of living. He noted that development economics involve both quantitative and qualitative
changes in the economy, including areas such as development of human capital, critical
infrastructure, regional competitiveness, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, health,
safety, literacy, and other initiatives.
Sen (1983, 1988) reminded us that an equitable distribution of wealth coupled with
political policies and systems that facilitate access to public and private goods is necessary for
citizens to benefit and states to “develop” beyond a simple increase in national income. Sen’s
important correction has been useful both in its effort to reshape global definitions and

37
measures of development, and in the framework it provides for looking beyond a simplistic
model of growth that assumes state economic growth is the same as state-wide (equitable)
development.
One way to foster economic development that focuses on an overall increase of supply
at the aggregate level, equitable distribution of wealth within the population, and political
policies and systems that ensure equitable access to public and private goods, is assurance that
all individuals have an opportunity for a quality education (Dreze & Sen, 2002).
Education for economic development involves a variety of approaches.3 This
dissertation focuses on one of the most common approaches, human capital development
(HCD), which aims specifically at linking individual education to national economic growth. The
HCD approach posits that an increase in individuals’ human capital will lead to the state’s
increased economic well-being. To enhance well-being at all levels, HCD recommends investing
capital (including state capital) in the education of individuals, with the expectation that the
public cost of education (at least at the primary level) will be offset by an increase in an
individual’s productivity and subsequently larger production for the state (one important aspect
of the “public returns” to education). The HCD approach calculates that, in most countries,
investments in primary education and post-primary education are both cost-beneficial for
states; however, they have different rates of return and social benefits, and these also differ for
girls and boys (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos 2004).
Investment in primary education has implications for both the individual and for society
3
For more information about variations of the human capital approach (e.g., the innovation approach, knowledge
transfer approach), see Earle, D. (2010).

38
in general. Researchers such as Thomas & Carl (2001), Mustaph & Abdullah (2004), and Brand
(2005) claim that a society with a higher literacy rate is better positioned to make the transition
from an agricultural economy to a knowledge economy as the global economy changes. This
transition leads to both private and public gains from educationally-enhanced worker
productivity. Post-primary education produces more gains for the individual and fewer gains for
society; thus, a number of international policies and recommendations (e.g., Global Partnership
for Education; Millennium Development Goals) promote states’ subsidizing primary education,
but not post-primary education (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004; cf. Robyens, 2006; Bartlett,
2007; Labaree, 1997; Heyneman, 2003; Klees et. al, 2012).
Both the mastery of skills and content and the evidence of this mastery are important
facets of human capacity development and economic growth, as employers rely on this
evidence to signal mastery (Castro, 2014; Bills, 2003). Credentials are symbols of the mastery of
content that are designed and implemented by an organization that meets a standard set by
the government or other accreditation body. To earn a credential, a student must meet
administrative requirements (e.g., attendance requirements) and content-mastery
requirements (e.g., exam scores). Nationally recognized credentials allow individuals who earn
a credential in one location to prove their competence to employers throughout the country or
the world, thereby giving the holder of the credential a competitive advantage in hiring and
employment situations.
Theoretically, the HCD approach values both formal and informal training that increases
an individual’s human capital; however, in practice, the HCD approach places greater
importance on formal training that results in a recognized credentialing system. Earning a

39
recognized certificate is often an important step toward improving one’s economic situation,
because the certificate is meaningful to employers.
The HCD approach to education is grounded in ideals of capitalism and individualism,
principles that are at the core of statism as understood by states that sponsor international
development. While individuals are expected to “invest” in their education so as to benefit
from the subsequent increase in their own human capital (the private returns to education), as
noted above, the state is also expected to invest in its human capital—its citizens. This
investment will grow the economy (as each individual’s increased productivity is harnessed by
the state through taxes, etc.), but it will also improve the quality (e.g., health, nutritional status,
fertility rates, etc.) of the state’s citizenry. The HCD approach is therefore, at least currently,
also a statist approach to education. However, the rationale for state investment in people is
not to form citizens or to fulfill a basic right of people living within a certain area: it is to invest,
with the return on investments used to bolster the state’s standing in the international
community, as well as its citizens’ wellbeing.
As one might expect, the notion of equal investment in all people is one that does not
hold up internally to the HCD logic. For example, as noted previously, HCD analysts have argued
that the state should invest more in girls than in boys, and should invest more in younger
children than older children. States utilizing a largely HCD approach have, over the years,
disinvested in minority students, rural students, students with disabilities, and many other
subgroups of students that the state does not necessarily perceive as providing a reasonable
return on investment. Thus, it is important to note that the logic of education for HCD is not, at
its root, a universalizing logic, and as such, the HCD logic has the potential to contribute to the

40
opening of a space in alternative education contexts for nationalist decision making.
Fulfillment of human rights. A human rights perspective on the purpose of education
focuses on the legal and moral right that all people have to access a quality basic education.
United Nations’ documents that lay out these rights include the Declaration of Human Rights,
Article 26, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28. In these declarations,
individual citizens are the rights-holder, and the state is the duty-bearer. As UNICEF explains in
Tadros (2009):
Assumed in the rights-based approach, every human being is inherently a right
holder who should enjoy universal human rights that must be guaranteed. By ratifying
the different United Nations human rights treaties, states automatically assume the
principal roles of guaranteeing these rights, or, according to the RBA language, the
“principal duty bearers” (Ljungman, 2004).
Many human rights activists see education not only as an end in itself but also as a
vehicle that enables students to advocate for further fulfillment of rights (Robeyns, 2006;
Tomasevski, 2003). These activists use a human rights framework to judge educational
progress, often examining enrollment (and, increasingly, literacy) rates to determine success.
The human rights framework has faced a number of critiques. This framework does not
directly attend to environmental, cultural, or economic issues that may be confounders to the
human rights logic; it does not always in practice recognize calls for differentiation of
educational experience; nor does it address the processes and outcomes of educational
credentialing. Rather, the human rights approach is grounded in the belief that access to the
process of a formal or recognized education—usually one provided by the state for its
citizens—is a right; access to credentials, employment, or other economic results of education,
however, are not.

41
While it is incumbent upon governments to acknowledge the universal human rights
spelled out by the United Nations, the international community has limited influence on how
governments address the provision of those rights to those who reside inside its borders. In
Thailand, for example, residents are divided into three categories: citizens and documented
residents, documented refugees, and undocumented immigrants. While the people in these
three categories are entitled to the fulfillment of their human rights, how this is done can be
differentiated, depending on their category. For citizens and documented residents, the taxes
they pay support the educational opportunities afforded to them by the state. For documented
refugees, multilaterals organizations and INGOs ensure the fulfillment of their right to
education. Undocumented immigrants are considered to be in the country illegally and as a
result, according to the Thai government, they have forfeited their right to an education. The
division of responsibility for providing education for people in Thailand derives from
international definitions of states and citizenship and the way in which universal human rights
frameworks assume that when things are operating appropriately, states are duty-bearers.
Divisions of responsibility are also shaped by the resources available from different actors to
support the education of the different person-categories that are differentially defined within
state and international frameworks.
Human rights approaches are theoretically entirely universalist (every person would
have the right to the same quality/type of education); in practice, they are universalist only
within citizen categories, since states, not the international community, are duty bearers, and
citizens, not people, are rights-holder within a state. For stateless people or for people residing
outside of their official state of citizenship, the question of what rights they have and who is

42
responsible for fulfilling those rights, rapidly becomes tricky. To a greater or lesser extent, state
nation-building efforts can also, in practice, constrain the rights of minority ethnic groups to an
educational experience that highlight the dominant culture and, at best, background ethnic
minority cultures.
Another criticism of the human rights approach is that it can be interpreted legalistically
without consideration of moral rights. A legalistic interpretation defines human rights as a set
of measurable goals, e.g., everyone has the legal right to attend primary school, without taking
into account social context and moral rights. As a result, some argue that there is a tendency
for the international community to be overly prescriptive when recommending strategies and
measurements of rights fulfillment (Brown, 1997; Robeyns, 2006).
The United Nations interprets the human rights documents as meaning that every child
has the right to schooling, or formal education, including the right to a social and possibly
physical structure that places an individual in the role of teacher and multiple people in the role
of students. UNESCO’s Global Partnership and the Millennium Development Goals consider the
right to quality schooling to be fulfilled when a child has access to literacy and numeracy
content, taught with a learner-centered pedagogy (UNESCO, 2000; cf. Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012,
2013; Schweisfurth, 2011, 2013; Tabulawa, 2003).
From this perspective, the content considered essential for basic education is basic
literacy and numeracy. This content is viewed as necessary to achieve the goals of both the
human rights and HCD approaches. According to the human rights approach, a successful
education is indicated by an individual’s ability to know how to embody and to claim one’s own
human rights. In the present global society, basic literacy and numeracy are essential skills for

43
claiming rights. On the other hand, the HCD approach assesses the effectiveness of education
by examining the employability of individuals who complete a basic education. Presently,
employment in formal labor systems almost anywhere requires basic literacy and numeracy.
Learner-centered education (LCE) is also championed by both the human rights and the
HCD approaches. The LCE approach is amenable to measurable results (e.g., increased literacy
scores), using the cognitive narrative to prove its effectiveness in terms of the HCD model. It
also aligns with the human rights approach because it has the potential to fulfill an individual
learner’s rights to education in a more substantive and less legalistic manner (Robeyns, 2006;
Schweisfurth, 2013).
However, limited research has been done regarding the epistemology embedded in LCE
(Vavrus & Bartlett, 2013; Tikly, 2004; Tabulawa, 2003; Samoff, 1993). Tabulawa argued that,
“The pedagogy is an ideological outlook, a worldview intended to develop a preferred kind of
society and people. It is in this sense that it should be seen as representing a process of
Westernisation disguised as quality and effective teaching” (2003, p. 7).
Westernization, or international development culture more generally, requires both a
particular canon of content and a specific way of knowing, affecting a society’s “mindset and
fundamental cultural structures” (Thong, 2012, p. 893). It is these fundamental cultural
structures that form the basis of the ideology used by many international development
professionals (described below).
Policy and the purposes of education
The three purposes of education noted above, human capital development, human
rights fulfillment, and nation-building, are variously highlighted and backgrounded by the

44
Karen, INGOs, and the Royal Thai Government in their construction of a camp-based education
system that each considered acceptable. Each group strongly emphasized one of these
purposes of education, giving little analysis to the positions held by the other actors. Each
stakeholder analyzed other stakeholders’ purposes only to ensure that their requests and
requirements for the education system did not clash.
To ensure an acceptable system, it was necessary for the stakeholders to communicate
and negotiate using a variety of different methods. These methods included passing rules and
laws to be interpreted and enforced at the local level, holding high-level meetings, and a variety
of public participation formats. The negotiations focused on ensuring that the logistics of the
education system supported the stakeholders’ desired purposes of education, or at least did
not undermine them.
I argue in the dissertation that building an education system that relied on silent
agreement among stakeholders (i.e., no major epistemological clashes in the immediate
situation) without looking at the longer-term outcomes that would be fostered by the particular
education system that arose led to particular decisions (e.g., language of instruction, adoption
of curricula and the associated teaching and learning materials, and the inclusion of policies
that recommend LCE pedagogies) that have extensive political consequences as these actors
now move toward a “durable solution” likely based on forced return. Additionally, I argue that
specific decisions, particularly those around contested areas (such as student certification, and
recognition of teacher trainings received in the camps) have important political consequences
in this next stage.

45
Conceptual Framework
Education is widely accepted as a necessary part of global, national, and individual
development, and debates about what education looks like, how it is perceived, and what it
does continue. Anderson-Levitt (2003) demonstrates that the level of abstraction at which the
education system is examined impacts the perception of sameness or differentness at any given
time. This means that examining education at the provincial or state level may show more
similarities, whereas examining different schools and classrooms may point to more
differences. However, how policies and practices change in relation to each other is certainly
important in helping us to determine if, how, and why both formal policies and school cultures
around the globe are converging or diverging.
Anthropologists present evidence of resistance to world culture and adaptation of
global policies to argue that internationally, “cultures of schooling” are diverging (e.g.,
Anderson-Levitt, 2003, p. 1; Madjidi & Restoule, 2008). Institutionalists point to development
policies and education system evaluations to argue that education policies are converging (e.g.,
Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Akiba & LeTendre, 2009). This dissertation focuses on the creation and
evolution of an education system in refugee camps, a setting that straddles the line between
emergency and development and thus oscillates between a means of addressing temporary
emergency situations and concerns for a more permanent/sustainable means of addressing
student identity. In such settings, it is particularly common to observe educational policies
being recommended by experts, adopted by those international actors who often serve as
middle figures in refugee settings, and then interpreted and modified by refugees. The situation
in Thai refugee camps is distinct, in that Thailand is not a signatory to refugee conventions, and

46
the UNHCR is therefore not in charge of the camps. Without these middle figures, one might
imagine much greater flexibility, resistance, and adoption of policies and practices that lie
outside of international best practices.
While I see ample evidence of resistance and modification of recommended policies,
overall, the policies that shape the camp-based education system have moved toward
international policies, rather than away from them. Leaders have adopted these convergent
policies, I argue, to promote legitimacy in the international community. Thus, the reasons for
this convergence are shot through with distinct nation-building rationales that complexify many
of the arguments made by neo-institutionalists for why convergence is occurring. To examine
these rationales, I draw on Anderson-Levitt’s work to propose that the practices associated
with international education policies at the camp-based education system level differ—in some
cases significantly—from those that are expected or intended by the policies. Thus, educational
practices in the camps ultimately diverge in important ways from the “world society” reflected
in the international education policies. As such, neo-institutional theory is useful in
understanding the official policy framework of the camps, but limited (beyond the notion of
disarticulation) in its usefulness when examining daily educational practices in the refugee
camp schools.
To examine the similarities and differences at the local level, I use a political economy
framework that recognizes that actors representing different levels (international, state, and
local) have very different access to resources and social, political, and economic power (Brieger,
2012; Rondinelli et al., 1989). I use both the neo-institutionalist framework and the political
economy framework to analyze the role of experts hired by INGOs. By and large, these experts

47
share a similar ideology (described below, and very much associated with neo-institutionalist
descriptions of world society norms), which is reflected in international best practices, including
participatory methods, that international development education experts use to engage with
local actors. Using the concept of “participation” as a lens, this dissertation examines the ways
in which these experts interact with camp residents to bring international policies to the local
level and to bring local concerns to the international level.
The following sections describe the ways in which neo-institutionalist and political
economy frameworks are used in this dissertation. This is followed by the ideology of
international development (here called ID ideology) organizations and professionals. The final
section of the conceptual framework examines experts, their connections to the shared
ideology, and their roles in both neo-institutional and political economy theories in this vertical
case study.
Neo-institutional Theory
Neo-institutional theories are useful in understanding where convergent international
norms and policies come from, the techno-rationalized argumentation on which they draw, and
the actors and institutions that promulgate them. To understand how policies are formed and
modified, I examine policy recommendations made by ID experts who are hired by INGOs
working along the Thailand-Burma border. Along the border, a large percentage of the experts
are employed by nongovernmental organizations in part because Thailand is not a signatory to
the Refugee Convention, thus limiting the role of multilateral organizations and because, until
recently, Burma did not have many relationships with bilateral or multilateral organizations. For
that reason, this dissertation will focus on experts employed by INGOs, realizing that many of

48
them likely were or will be employed by other international development organizations.
Based on my research, it is my contention that INGOs and other organizations promote
specific policies for multiple reasons, such as funder approval, political access to the camps,
name recognition, and prestige, in addition to an ethical belief in their mission. It is also my
contention that the individual ID experts who work with the refugees have the opportunity to
interpret these policies in multiple ways; however, the majority of the experts interpret them in
similar ways, which are shaped by these actors’ socialization into ID ideology and membership
in the ID epistemic community (Chabbott, 2003). As I will show in the coming chapters, it is this
singular interpretation, the personal relationships that occur in and around the camps, and the
ways that these interact with the goals of Karen leaders that have led the education system in
the Karen camps to move toward global norms and policies, rather than away from them.
The international community includes organizations created by core powers, many
argue to promote their interests and ensure their domination over smaller powers and the
world-economy. These organizations include development banks and funds; UN organizations;
bilateral donor organizations; research, training and professional organizations; for-profit firms
with government contracts; and nonprofit INGOs based in high-income countries. These
organizations are managed by development experts who include elites from high-income
countries such as Germany, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. After WWII, the number of INGOs
working to assist these new states in becoming legitimate members of the international
community also increased (Boli & Thomas, 1997, 1999).
More Marxist and critical theoretical perspectives have long argued that the origination
of many of these organizations as extensions of powerful “developed” states shapes their

49
engagement with “developing” countries in ways designed to maintain existing relations of
power and authority (Samoff, 2006; Samoff & Stromquist, 2001). In contrast, neo-
institutionalists argue that “developing” states adopt policies that seem illogical if examined
from the developing state perspective, but make much more sense if examined from a neo-
institutional perspective, where it is argued that states are generally worried about how they
look to each other, and they are concerned about appearing to be the “right kind” of state. In
order to look like the right kind of state, they adopt policies and practices that may seem utterly
out of step with the individual state’s needs from a “rational” perspective.
Boli & Thomas (1997, 1999) analyzed the role of INGOs in shaping the policies and
processes used by states and multilateral organizations. This social analysis of the structures
and goals of INGOs indicated that the central elements of the recommended policies became
components of world society, even as they also reflected central components of existing world
society ideologies. States and multilateral organizations then promulgate these policies because
they are the “right” policies for all members of the world society. World society includes the
following principles: universality, individualism, rationalism, and global citizenship, which form
the basis of ID ideology and reflects European Enlightenment ideals. INGOs, working with states
and other social groups, weave these principles together to form a dynamic world society
ideology that in turn impacts how INGOs are formed, how they work, and their desired
outcomes.
This research offers some expansions and contrasts to world society approaches to
understanding ID ideologies and outcomes. As will be described in greater detail below, world
society theory may be quite useful in understanding the actions of INGOs, the Royal Thai

50
Government, and the GRUM. They are less useful, however, in understanding why and how
refugee groups adopt and engage with these same policies. I will argue in this dissertation that
the Karen are attempting, in part through their education policies and practices, to position
their nationalist movement as an internationally-recognized demand for recognition as a
political body. This is a twist on the neo-institutionalist argument that states adopt policies to
look like a good member of world society. Here, a group of non-state actors appear to be
adopting these policies to forward their own claims for recognition as a legitimate political
body, even as their movement is inherently nationalist and in important ways does not map
easily onto statist claims.
Political Economy Framework
A political economy framework is based on the belief that resources are allocated
according to political power, thus resource allocation can only be understood in terms of power
and class differentials within a social system. Political economy frameworks recognize that
access to power and the ability to influence policy and its interpretation are different at the
local, state, and international levels, and that these three levels continuously interact and
therefore influence with one another (Brieger, 2006; Gilpin, 2016). As Gilpin (2016, p. 11)
noted, “The conflict between the evolving economic and technical interdependence of the
globe and the continuing compartmentalization of the world political system composed of
sovereign states is a dominant motif of contemporary . . . international political economy
[frameworks]”.
This dissertation uses a political economy framework grounded in Marxist and critical
theory to examine the social, political, and economic power at the various levels (see Webb &

51
Gulson, 2015). It understands reality as dynamic and without intrinsic social harmony; it builds
on the belief that economic activities are central to changes that occur through class struggles;
and it is grounded in the dialectic between the political and economic contradictions inherent
in capitalism (Gilpin, 2016; see also Appadurai, 1990 & 1996, and Carney, 2009)
In order to use a political economy framework, I draw on Rondinelli et al. (1989)’s
integrated political economy framework, which includes the analysis of the political, economic,
and social dimensions of policy creation and interpretation that allows for an interdisciplinary
approach to policy analysis. To do so, I examine the characteristics of the camp-based
education system, its students and teachers, and the institutional norms in the camps as they
interface with the funders and world society via INGOs. To examine these characteristics, I
consider the camp a pseudo-state led by the refugee governing body; as a result, the camp-
based education system can be considered a public education system that serves the camp
community. It is financially dependent on funders who use INGOs as organizations to distribute
funds in an internationally-validated manner.
These INGOs and the experts they employ bring international policies into the camps
and facilitate convergence of the camp-based system with the international policies. However,
the interactions between the INGO experts and local leaders and educators result in a
reinterpretation and reworking of the policies to produce divergent practices in the classroom.
Because of the formal interactions (e.g., ID participatory exercises) and informal, daily
conversations, it is necessary to combine a political economy framework with a neo-
institutional framework to understand how the camp-based education system came to be
structured to reflect convergence of policies yet implemented in a way that resulted in

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