Migration Disruption: Crisis and Continuity in the Cambodian Mass Returns

In 2014, Thailand experienced the mass exodus of 220,000 Cambodian migrant workers, an event precipitated by a military coup and rumors of an impending migrant crackdown. This movement was reportedly the largest in South-East Asia since the 1970s. Yet while the mass returns were outwardly articulated as a "crisis" moment, migrants largely understood the exodus as a more extreme version of the everyday. The most significant features of the exodus-financial loss, indebtedness, involuntary immobility, and fear of violence and deportation-have been and continue to be regular features of the Cambodian-Thai migration system. In light of these findings, I suggest that taking migration disruptions seriously requires (1) decentering the language and logic of "crisis" and (2) considering what migration disruptions reveal about ordinary times.