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Hegemonic Distortions: The Securitisation of the Insurgency in Thailand's Deep South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2019

Nicole Jenne  and
Jun Yan Chang Open the ORCID record for Jun Yan Chang [Opens in a new window]
Nicole Jenne
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Jun Yan Chang
Affiliation:
RSIS-Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia, isjychang@ntu.edu.sg.
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Abstract

The conflict between the Thai state and the Malay-Muslim insurgency in the country's Deep South is one of Southeast Asia's most persistent internal security challenges. The start of the current period of violence dates back to the early 2000s, and since then, a significant number of studies exploring the renewed escalation have been published. In this study, we argue that existing scholarship has not adequately accounted for the external environment in which political decisions were taken on how to deal with the southern insurgency. We seek to show how the internationally dominant, hegemonic security agenda of so-called non-traditional security (NTS) influenced the Thai government's approach to the conflict. Building upon the Copenhagen School's securitisation theory, we show how the insurgency became securitised under the dominant NTS narrative, leading to the adoption of harsh measures and alienating discourses that triggered the escalation of violence that continues today. The specific NTS frameworks that ‘distorted’ the Thai state's approach of one that had been informed solely by local facts and conditions were those of anti-narcotics and Islamist terrorism, albeit in different ways. Based on the findings from the case study, the article concludes with a reflection on the role of the hegemonic NTS agenda and its implications for Southeast Asian politics and scholarship.

Keywords

ThailandDeep Southnon-traditional securitysecuritisation
Type
Article
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 2019 , pp. 209 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2019 

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