Every three years scholars meet for an International Conference on Thai Studies. The last three held in Thailand have moved from the centre to the edge — Bangkok, then Chiang Mai, then Nakhon Phanom. This last took place on the nation’s very rim, on the banks of the Mekhong facing across to the hills of Laos. The theme of the conference — Thai and Lao — was a conscious challenge to the invisible line drawn down the centre of the river a century ago. The great electricity cables bringing Laos-generated power to Thailand’s consumers passed almost directly over the conference hotel like an umbilical cord. The riverfront is being converted into a talat indochin (market for Indochina products). The brightest lights across the Mekhong belonged to a casino luring Thais for some fun.

Borders are complicated. Nations are all about unities — one people, one language, one citizenship, one government. But borders have two sides and many possibilities.

Take the northeastern region in which the conference was held. Bangkok took over the region in the nineteenth century and dubbed it Isan to distinguish it from the Lao-speaking region beyond the Mekhong. Researchers in Mahasarakam asked some residents how they now defined themselves. Some said Thai. Some Isan. Some Lao. And some tried mixtures like Thai-Isan, Tai-Isan and Thai-Lao. It’s difficult because they are Thai by citizenship but somehow Lao by background. They speak Lao inside the family but Thai in the outside world. One acharn emphatically rejected being Isan because it’s a fake Bangkok invention. He insisted he is Lao. But by background he is Chinese and on his identity card he is Thai. Towards the border, identity is part blood, part politics, and part choice.

And part history. The owner of the conference hotel is Vietnamese by origin. Many of the shop-owners in Nakhon Phanom are the same. Most came a century ago in flight from the French takeover. Siam welcomed them with citizenship to add population to the sparse northeast. They gradually shed their old customs and rituals and adopted the local ones because it made life easier. Then another wave arrived during the post-war disruptions of decolonisation and war. The Thai state was less welcoming and put qualifications on citizenship. The children were never fully integrated into the educational system and the economy. These families retained a dream they could return home and reclaim their lost property. The early migrants are Thai-Vietnamese with an emphasis on the Thai. The later ones remain Vietnamese nationalists.

For both the Lao-Isan and the Thai-Vietnamese, their identity is determined partly by where they live (Thailand), and partly by some historical relationship to another country (Vietnam, Laos). In the south of Isan, the complexity increases. By language the people are Khmer. To attract tourism, some attempts are being made to revive Khmer-ness. The Rajabhat College in Surin presents dances with the costumes and poses adapted from the carvings on local ancient Khmer temples. It’s pretty, but phoney. The local Khmer-speakers are uncertain about claiming any Khmer element in their identity because they want no association with the disastrous history of modern Cambodia. They say: “We are Thai but we happen to speak Khmer.” They switch constantly between the two languages. Using Khmer alone would be too backward, using Thai alone too pretentious. At school, the boys talk to one another in Khmer, while the girls use Thai. No-one is quite sure why.

Then there are the Kui. They were probably the first inhabitants of the area where Thailand, Laos and Cambodia now meet. Like many of these old communities, they gradually moved away as Thai, Khmer and Lao populated the region — away from the rivers, away from railways, away into the hills. The 300,000 now along the southern rim of Isan are Thai citizens. But they are also Kui, and they don’t think it’s right to link these two identities with a hyphen as Thai-Kui. Perhaps that is because the Kui don’t have a country. Thai and Kui seem to be different things which cannot be hyphenated together.

Right on the border, these identities become more flexible. On the southern border, Bangkok’s nineteenth-century expansion incorporated many Muslim Malays. For decades, some agitated for separatism. But separatism has withered over the past generation as chances of any border adjustment have declined. Some southern radicals who fled across to Malaysia to avoid arrest by the Thai authorities opened restaurants selling tom yam kung to Malay customers. They “claimed they made the best tom yam because they were Thai”. They began talking Thai to one another, rather than the Malay they had used in Thailand. In Thailand, they were rebel Malay. In Malaysia, they became Thai experts on Thai cuisine.

Borders have two sides. For people on the border, this ambiguity is part of their identity. They are people of the border.

Thailand has always been a melting pot. The myth of a single nation speaking a single language was superimposed over a patchwork of local communities and separate dialects. At the national centre, this variety could be imagined away. At the borders, the variety is difficult to disguise because of the concentration of captured peoples like the Lao and Khmer, communities which resist integration by flight like the Kui, political migrants like the Vietnamese, and border hybrids like the Thai-Malay.

Some people believe the nation is being dissolved by globalisation. But as one conference participant said, “the nation will outlast all of us here”. Yet the idea of a nation as a people is breaking loose from the structure of a nation as a geographical and political unit. Being Thai in the sense of a Thai citizen becomes something technical and taken for granted (except for those to which it is denied). Other identities emerge—from history, from economic opportunism, from politics, from fate, and from choice.

[With acknowledgement to Thongchai Winichakul, Peter Vail, Trinh Dieu Thinh, Mala Rajo Sathian, Saroja Dorairajoo, Somchai Phatharathananunth, Acharn Vilat]