BUILDING A NATION, BREAKING A NATION: DISPARITY IN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL LOYALTY AMONG THE MUSLIM-MALAYS OF THAILAND

This dissertation examines which of the competing theories of nationalism—namely, primordialism, modernism, instrumentalism, and socialized narratives—best explains why some Muslim-Malays in Thailand’s secessionist violence-prone southern border provinces adopt a state-promoted national identity and pledge their political loyalty to the state while others do not. The study employs a mixed research methodology combining quantitative and qualitative data collection and data analysis. The quantitative analysis draws on 6,097 respondents from the Peace Survey dataset, a series of large-scale public opinion surveys conducted across the southern border provinces since 2016, and 300 respondents from a smaller-scale questionnaire survey designed by the author. The qualitative data was produced from a series of in-person interviews with 60 Muslim-Malay general population and Malay nationalists identified by the snowball sampling method.

This dissertation finds that the primordialist native language and religion have a powerful effect on national identity when combined with socialized constitutive stories shaped by the first school generation and perpetuated by families. The experience of state oppression further strongly influences national identity among people of Malay descent in Thailand’s southern border provinces. Those who are subject to state violence, regardless of prior socialization and background, are less likely to identify with the Thai state. These findings challenge the extensive literature by revealing that the Muslim population in Thailand’s southern border provinces is diverse in their national consciousness and their political loyalty toward the Thai state. This dissertation also presents some policy implications: the state’s interference in traditional educational institutions and indiscriminate violence against Muslim-Malays only deepens the animosity between the state and the Muslim-Malay community. Most importantly, given that the construction of Malay national identity began long ago with the first-schooled generation of the family and the state’s attempt to assimilation is met only with strong resistance, the only alternative left for the Thai state is to adopt accommodation as its nation-building strategy and accept the way of life of the Muslim-Malays as it is.