Mai Mai Twe

Mai Mai Twe is a project officer at MAP Foundation, a grassroots NGO that seeks to empower migrant communities from Burma/Myanmar living and working in Thailand. She participated in the Breaking Out of Marginalisation (BOOM) Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) from 2015 to 2017.

APWLD interviewed Mai Mai in January 2021 and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist and human rights defender

After the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in 2004, my sister called me to come to Thailand and help the migrant people. I arrived in Thailand in 2007 from Myanmar/Burma and moved to Chiang Mai in 2009. Soon, I joined the Map Foundation. 

I am involved in the feminist movement in Thailand and became interested in women’s rights issues, which I cannot talk about when I lived in Myanmar/Burma. In the Map Foundation, my responsibility is to empower migrant women workers. I got to know many migrant women’s situations which motivated me to work with the women’s program. I understood more about Thai law, especially how to use it to protect migrant women, and I had chances to empower myself and build my own capacity. Now I can have more confidence to speak out and negotiate on women’s issues.

Over the years, I have seen the changes among migrant women in Thailand. Previously, migrant women lived separately in different areas. They didn’t have a chance to meet nor the opportunity to attend meetings or training, much less the right to speech or negotiation. We organised migrant women in different areas to join our activities. They became more aware and were able to speak about their rights, even becoming women leaders in their communities. Today, we build more networks in Thailand, not only with migrant women but also with Thai women, and we raise our voices and demand migrant women’s rights at local, national, and even international levels.

Migrant workers still face huge difficulties in Thailand. The legislative or document policy in Thailand is one of the many barriers they face, and it changes constantly. Migrant workers sometimes need to register or apply for a pink card for long-term stays, and sometimes they must change to another blue or red temporary pass. With the COVID-19 situation, they also have difficulties with health care issues and job loss. Many migrant workers don’t have the right to stay in Thailand and cannot travel back to their home country. They are stuck in the middle. On the other hand, they need money to extend their temporary passport visa and for when they suffer job loss or wage deduction.

Between migrant women and men, it is more difficult for women because they are always the first to become unemployed and have their wages deducted. During the COVID-19 period, we have also seen a rise in domestic violence and rapes against migrant women.

Growing together with APWLD

I had the chance to meet with APWLD around 2010 to celebrate International Women’s Day. We depend on APWLD to raise migrant women’s voices at the regional and global levels. It is the only regional organisation in Chiang Mai that we can work with closely. Almost every year, we work with APWLD to celebrate events; they also bring us to many activities at the international level.

But what we really got from APWLD are the many feminist perspectives and organising and bargaining skills. We practised these skills among migrant women communities on sexual reproductive health and family planning issues. Migrant women in different areas have more confidence and can negotiate and bargain now.

I joined the Breaking Out of Marginalisation (BOOM) Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) from 2015 to 2017. Back then, migrant workers, especially migrant women, didn’t receive enough wages to support their families or themselves. They didn’t know their rights to negotiate with their bosses. They even had to pay huge broker fees to find a job in Thailand. Some people had to sell their houses, animal, or farmland for broker fees and take on debt to come to Thailand. 

We wanted to raise awareness on the living wage to help migrant women see the big picture—their income and spending could be balanced, they deserve the living wage, and the state should protect women from domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace. We learned how to do surveys and advocacy and bring migrants to participate in the advocacy process. We have developed a magazine and documentation for advocacy.

After FPAR, we still advocate every year. We continually invite guest speakers from APWLD to the Women Exchange program to share and raise awareness on participatory methods, decision-making, and critical pathways.

Two years ago, we formed the Beehive network, which invites migrant women and ethnic women in Thailand to share their experiences of decision-making and power mapping. Beehive focuses on advocacy, especially to the origin and destination countries’ governments and at international levels.

Ways moving forward

Almost every year, we work with APWLD as a network to raise different issues on advocacy. Together, we celebrate International Women’s Day and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. These activities gather networks of diverse women, such as indigenous women, women living with HIV/AIDS, LGBTQIA+, women with disabilities, and migrant women, in Chiang Mai. We also met the young generation.

We found out about young women’s difficulties and problems like early marriage, dropping out of school to work earlier, and unsafe abortion in Thailand. We designed awareness-raising and empowerment programs for migrant youth. We also have a plan to develop young women leaders with a training of trainers for young women in the coming years so that they could become youth leaders and raise peer-to-peer awareness among themselves. During this pandemic, we created a space for them to work together and help them learn skills. We also have young women interns who helped us with research, including FPAR. It is another way of raising young leaders. 

In the current situation, the Thai government announced an emergency statement. We cannot travel. But the positive thing is that the women leaders under the women exchange program were able to help their communities and act as leaders in providing relief. They step up as community leaders among migrant women during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Lastly, we hope to raise the migration issue further. We hope APWLD will participate in advocacy to the governments of the origin and destination countries for migrant women to be able to assess all the services for the same migration issue. 

Migration is a cross-cutting issue related to everything from climate change to globalisation, forced migration, and militarism. APWLD can play a significant role in helping train our people on how to advocate against these big issues.