ASEAN Community and Community Security: A Study of Thailand Pairuch Borvornsompong, Ph. D Paper presented at the 12 th International Conference on Thai Studies 22-24 April 2014 University of Sydney
ABSTRACT Being ASEAN Community is an opportunity and challenge for Thai society to change from single state to joint regional community. The aim of ASEAN community is to create cohesion of economy, politic, civil society and culture of members in order to be unity. Also, ASEAN identity is formed and society of generosity is developed in order to enhance people s quality of life and welfare, especially civil society and culture which can solve problem of poverty, supporting equality and shifting quality of life. In case of Thailand, there is lack of preparation, for example, economy which has no support of labour skill enhancement, political stability which disputes with some members of ASEAN community. Moreover, people have low perception and understanding or misconception of being ASEAN Community. Awareness of social impact in Thailand is also inadequate. A guideline of community stability is to empower rural communities. Therefore, people should be expedited to know and understand about being ASEAN community and the aim of ASEAN community. Also, there should be an understanding of differences of race, language and culture. The promotion of community stability needs to be performed by government, local government and local areas. People should realize and participate in the process of ASEAN community forming. There should be cohesion between private sector, government and civil society to design strategies of community development. Guidelines to develop Thailand should be emphasized on local wisdom, capital and community. Also, programs of performance enhancement, social reformer creation and community action research investment are needed. Keywords : ASEAN Community / Community Security
1. Introduction Development and change of economic system to advanced-liberal capitalism under the concept of Neo-Liberalism, which emphasized on free competition, government must minimally intervene market system for progress and equivalent competition which brought about New World Order in the forms of union, economic trade partner, investment, politics and social cohesion. However, the appearance of this capitalist economy pointed that the results of development brought about social gap, poverty and unfair or unequal development. This reflected weakness of social structural system that market system could not effectively distribute income or create opportunities to people in society. The integration of countries in ASEAN region, which led to the establishment of ASEAN Community, was a result of change under advanced-liberal capitalism. For supporting changes and results of the development, ASEAN region had cooperated in economy, trade, politics and social security in order to be equal with other regions. ASEAN Community with 3 pillars, political-security community, economic community and socio-cultural community, aimed all countries in the region to be stable, peaceful, coordinate to solve transnational problems, raise the ability of negotiation and cope with the challenges of social welfare promotion and prevention in order to bring about social security and quality of life. ASEAN Community had cohesion in politics, trade, investment and social relation, however, the results of Mid-Term Review of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint pointed that there were still obstacles in society and recommendations which needed urgent actions to enhance life security, such as awareness creation of the aims of ASEAN Community establishment and ASEAN culture, which was people-centered society, caring and sharing society, quality way of life, shifting people s quality way of life, promoting sustainable natural resource use and enhancing ASEAN identity. Social welfare improvement, social welfare distribution, disaster management, rights and freedom protection for marginalized people and immigrants, poverty eradication and human resource development were also needed. These issues should be promoted to create cohesion between national organizations and regional organizations. As for preparation for being ASEAN Community of Thailand, there was lack of good preparation, especially economy which had no promotion of skill development. In case of political security, there were still disputes and conflicts with neighboring countries in ASEAN region. Moreover, people had low level of perception and understanding on ASEAN Community and misunderstood the aims of ASEAN Community because Thai people had not perceived ASEAN Citizen. Moreover, Thai people did not aware effects of being ASEAN Community toward Thai community. There also was inadequate research on cultural effects caused by immigration from neighboring countries or from rural areas to the city, foreign workers replacement and cultural dissolving. Conversely, foreign workers would replace their own culture in rural community of Thailand. Challenges for making changes of being ASEAN Community of Thailand were community security enhancement in order to support changes of economy, society and culture and coexistence of people with various different cultures when Thai society had stepped to multicultural society. This article presented the effects of being ASEAN Community underneath points of views of key informants of community development and guidelines for
community security enhancement in order to be recommendations for community preparation to cope with changes of being ASEAN Community. The author would like to thank you Nation Research Council of Thai for budget supporting to do this research. 2. Objectives of the Research 2.1 To study impact of being ASEAN Community on community security 2.2 To study guidelines for strengthening Thai society 3. Research Design and Methodology 3.1 Research Design This research was a survey research by using methods of qualitative research; Focus Group Discussion, In-Depth Interview and Critical Desk Review, to be guidelines for collecting data. 3.2 Key Informants Key informants were community leaders who were committee on social development and human security in the name of Representative of Role Model Community. The list of key informants was as follows: - Local government representatives including members of Subdistrict Administrative Organization / municipality - Representatives of groups of social development activities in subdistrict, such as cooperative women groups and cooperative occupational groups - Representatives of government agencies within subdistrict, such as, Agricultural Extension and The Community Development Department - Community leaders, such as subdistrict headman and village headman - Representatives of groups of disabled persons, elderly persons, women and social problem victims - Representatives of Subdistrict Youth Council - Representatives of Community Organization Council, Subdistrict Civil Society, Non Government Organizations, Community Welfare Organization, Private sectors, associations and foundations within subdistrict - People in community / local wisdom intellectuals 3.3 Methods and Data Management 3.3.1 The researcher studied related documents and researches in order to create theoretical framework, working hypothesis and questions for collecting data. The theoretical framework was applied from the concepts of ASEAN Community, civil society and culture, human security and community security. This theoretical framework was used to set questions to collect data. 3.3.2 The researcher developed questionnaires to survey and collect data by using structured questions. 3.3.3 The researcher liaised with concerned organizations and key informants for research cooperation, clarify research objectives and requesting cooperation in data collection. 3.3.4 The researcher collected and studied concerned important documents.
3.3.5 The research conducted field study by collecting data from representatives who worked to promote social and community development in role model communities of Technical Promotion Support Office (TPSO) 1-12 of Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. 3.3.6 The researcher collected qualitative data by key informants interview and group interview. 3.3.7 The researcher managed and analyzed the collected data by using data typology in order to find data patterns. Data comparison and content analysis were also used to analyze the data in order to be consistent with research objectives and research questions. 4. Finding 4.1 Impact of being ASEAN Community on community security The results of local community survey and key informant interview found that although being ASEAN community was formally defined in 2015, migration by population of neighboring countries into Thailand and the population movement throughout all regions of Thailand was still continuing (Mirdal & Karjalainen 2004). This population was diaspora, some of them were status-less persons or nationalityless who settled in Thailand (Achiron 2005). This was affecting their quality of life and human security of their own lives while distrust, xenophobia, alienation and problems of coexistence were continuously occurring (Rydgren 2004, p. 126). Although the agreement and aims of being ASEAN Community were to enhance security of economy, politics, society and culture, these affected and changed communities positively and negatively as follows: Being ASEAN Community led to international cooperation. This could enhance understanding and good relations with neighboring countries under the cohesion framework. People of each country could communicate and travel to other countries easier. These could enhance friendly atmosphere in ASEAN Community (eds Alonso & Oiarzabal 2010). Moreover, these brought about exchange of culture and technology which could enhance attitudes, good relations and understanding within ASEAN Community. This could also lead to solutions of border issues and enhance the atmosphere of peaceful coexistence. Being ASEAN Community promoted international investment. Because the ASEAN Community framework promoted investment in the Community, this brought about trade promotion, employment, higher income, communication network and convenient transportation. Therefore, education and skill development were very important and urgent to enhance human resource in the ASEAN Community (Bauder 2006) in order to better quality of life (Brown 2004). As the above reasons, it was essential to promote education development coupled with economic development. Being ASEAN Community enhanced access to quality health service. Because being ASEAN Community promoted health service which was quality, adequate and equitable, this was people s opportunity to access various health services. However, medical personnel could freely move (Borvornsompong 2011; Robert 2010), this might cause a problem if they moved to the private sectors for higher income, rural people might be more difficult to access health services.
Therefore, encouraging and promoting people to take care of their health by reducing reliance on medical personnel were more important than health service access or treatment. There should also be a measure to spread medical personnel in order to cover people in rural areas. Being ASEAN Community could promote food security. ASEAN was a region which exported the highest amount of food and agricultural products in the world. Being ASEAN Community could lead to cooperation of food production and export which promoted ASEAN region with food security. Therefore, ASEAN people could equally access quality and safety food. Being ASEAN Community helped to enhance cohesion of internal security threats management. Therefore, international cohesion enhanced effective management of various threats, such as, terrorism, transnational crime or drug trafficking, including disaster. This could reduce risk and loss which might be occurred to people in the region. In case of effects of being ASEAN Community which might occur with communities or community security, there were positive effects and concerns as follows: Positive Effects were a part occurred with communities when Thailand had joined ASEAN Community. This raised communities awareness and encouraged people in communities to enhance their potential to catch up with changes by skill and knowledge development, especially language and communication skill. Learning and understanding of various cultures were also needed. These could better quality of life in community and community existence. Being ASEAN Community positively affected communities 4 issues as follows: 1. To support economic development and promote career and income Communities were encouraged to enhance potential and develop communities products to be more quality and various in order to compete with mass market. This affected to people s income level and quality of life because being ASEAN Community brought about investment in Thai communities, including manufacturing base, import and export. Also, manufacturing technology development could shift quality of products and services. Therefore, these positively affected communities by promoting and developing economy in communities. 2. To bring about learning and understanding different cultures, languages and ways of life People movement or migration could cause learning and exchange of culture, language and way of life. Learning promotion, which led people to understand and accept various different cultures, languages and ways of life in ASEAN Community, was necessary. Also, communities must learn and adjust themselves to catch up with changes. 3. To expand educational opportunity and increase learning opportunity Key informants perceived that preparation for being ASEAN Community could increase educational opportunity, especially using English or other languages for communication. This could encourage people in communities to learn and enhance their potential in order to compete with neighboring countries.
4. To increase opportunity of transportation and communication Because being ASEAN Community brought about free labor migration and international investment, infrastructure of transportation and communication would be developed. Therefore, people could travel or communicate easier and faster. Concerns Key informants analyzed negative effects and concerns of being ASEAN Community that it could affect to community security and people s way of life if there was no preparation for change. Also, this could affect competitive capacity of agriculturist and price of agricultural product because of lower product price from neighboring countries. Manufacturing base expansion increased use of natural resource which negatively affected to environment. Moreover, free migration could cause problems of criminal or narcotic. Therefore, government and communities must learn, adjust and have measures of prevention and problem solution. Human trafficking was also an important effect because manufacturing sector needed cheap labor in order to reduce production cost. Human trafficking in the form of prostitution was a negative effect of Thai society and community security. There were negative effects or concerns as follows: 1. Concern about agricultural product export and competition Several countries in southeast area were agricultural plantations and their market was the same with Thailand s market. Free trade after being ASEAN Community directly affected Thai agriculturist because competitive prices of neighbor countries might be cheaper than Thailand, including trade competition and investment. If Thai agriculturists could not reduce manufacturing cost, Thai agricultural products would not be able to compete with neighboring countries. 2. Concern about problems of natural resources and environment Investment promotion and free labor movement could bring about higher use of natural resources. This inevitable demand affected to environment, such as waste, polluted water and pollution. 3. Concern about security, criminal and narcotic An effect of being ASEAN Community was more convenient and faster movement to countries in the Community. Various people without controlling might cause different types of crimes, especially transnational crime and drug trafficking. 4. Concern about expansion of human trafficking problem and violence against children and women One of main changes of being ASEAN Community was labor migration. Economic competition, trade and investment affected society and community directly. Manufacturing sectors needed cheap labor to reduce cost. This could cause a problem of trafficking in person in the forms of illegal labor or labor smuggling (eds Ebbe & Das 2008). As the above speculated changes and effects, they were concerns which might bring about changes of way of life and insecurity which affected people in communities. It was necessary to enhance community security in order to be strategic guidelines to strengthen communities and lead them to self-reliance. Community potential development should be emphasized because communities would be able to manage and solve their problems consistently with their own ways of life. Also,
Communities members had opportunities to participate in development activities. From the research results, there were recommendations for guidelines of community security enhancement as follows: 4.2 Guidelines of community security enhancement The results of document review and meeting with community representatives, who played the key role in the community developers and recommended guidelines of community security enhancement, could be summarized to principle-based concept and strategic guidelines for spatial work as follows: Principle-based concept for community security enhancement 1. Community security enhancement must be based on creating cohesion in working together (Work with not work for) of key stakeholders both of strategic partner and end user to manage root of social insecurity problem by emphasizing on solving causes and structures of problem in order to make change rather than temporarily relieve the problem. 2. Community security enhancement was empowering process for people in communities in order to develop learning process, problem awareness and sense of belonging. 3. Community security enhancement emphasized on activity development to respond to the real needs of communities by finding needs, analyzing problems, ordering solutions and designing activities. 4. Community security enhancement needed internal collaboration (Bonding) and external collaboration (Bridging) by emphasizing on network which brought about learning and knowledge exchanging between communities and networks. Guidelines of strategic work for community security enhancement 1. Strategies for the restoration of self-management ability of communities to support changes were as follows: Policy development to promote community welfare To meet development needs of community Development of community potential and community learning to selfmanagement 2. Strategies for community empowerment was to enhance communities to be able to respond to changes occurred from being ASEAN Community. The strategies were as follows: To promote learning process of community in order to enhance potential to support changes, including to understand identities, cultures and languages of countries in ASEAN Community To hasten creation of knowledge and understanding on being ASEAN Community, analytical thinking in the aim of being ASEAN Community, change literacy, language learning and history in order to understand and accept differences of race, language and culture.
3. Strategies for creation of social cohesion in community level were important strategies for promoting community security. The process was as follows: To promote the process of community master plan development and drive it together To promote participation and cohesion of private sectors and communities in order to jointly determine the direction of development, especially labor, poverty reduction and skill promotion to respond needs of people and private sectors 5. Synopsis Being ASEAN Community was an important opportunity to develop and make change in trade, investment, education and other issues which helped to better quality of life. However, there were social risks which affected community security because Thai community did not have adequate preparation of knowledge and understanding, exchange and learning of ASEAN Community, understanding of cultural and race diversity and guidelines of being together in multicultural society (Borvornsompong 2012; Irwin & Manly 2008). These were concerns occurred from the research results. Therefore, community security was the result of social movement or a drive to create social action for social change by participation of people in communities to learn and manage problems together. This implementation might need temporary external support, not permanent support, including cooperation with internal network and learning between communities (Acharya 2001). Community security enhancement needed community preparations as follows: - Preparation of giving knowledge and making an understanding of ASEAN Community which would be important basis to help communities find guidelines and opportunities of being ASEAN Community, including to analyze situations and the results of changes - Preparation of information management and analytical planning by surveying community s needs in order to plan and manage community welfare when being ASEAN Community, this guideline might be development which was connected, integrated and consistent with other communities, including development guidelines integrated with government agencies and private sectors. - Preparation of learning and human resource development which encouraged people in communities to learn and enhance their potential of language, cultural understanding and technology - Preparation of community management, although community management or implementation, such as elder welfare, disabled welfare, occupational promotion for women, activity promotion for child and youth or narcotic problem solving, could be normally implemented by cohesion of people and community leaders, there were several issues which had no clearly guidelines, for example, guidelines to manage foreign workers/ migrant worker or status-less persons and design various welfares to meet needs of target group (Yakushko 2009). Therefore, preparation of community management was an important issue that people in communities needed to learn and adjust. Also, preparation of information management and community planning must be consistent with community management, so that diverse people could live together peacefully. Moreover, concerned external organizations, such as government agencies, private sectors, Non-Profit Organization, civil society and academic sector, were
needed as mechanism to promote and support people to correctly develop their communities and manage occurred changes. There might be effective policy determination or clear supporting measures. People in communities should be shifted their knowledge level and prepared to face changes of being ASEAN Community. Moreover, there should be budget support for communities to drive and prepare them for being ASEAN Community. Acknowledgement This article is a partial of a research Quality of Life and Community Security Promoting for ASEAN Community in the research program Preparation of Quality of Life to ASEAN Community which was funded by National Research Council of Thailand References Acharya, A 2001, Constructing a Security Community in Soitheast Asia: ASEAN and the problem of regional order, Routledge, London. Achiron, M 2005, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees. Alonso, A & Oiarzabal, PJ 2010 (eds) Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community, University of Nevada Press, Las Vegas. Bauder, 2006, Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Borvornsompong, P 2011, Evaluation Report of Man-power Decade Strategic Plan of National Health 2007-2016 พ.ศ. 2550-2559 (1 Decade of Health Man-Power Strategic Plan, Half Plan Evaluation Report) Borvornsompong, P 2012, A Study of Knowledge Preparation and Effects of Being ASEAN Community towards Local Community Brown, A 2004, Labour, Politics and the State in Industrializaing Thailand, RouteledgeCurzon, London Ebbe, N.I. & Das K (eds) 2008, Global Trafficking in Women and Children, CRC Press, London. Irwin, E & Manly, M (eds.) 2008, Statelessness: An Analytical Framework for Prevention, Reduction and Protection, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees. {18 November 2013}. Mirdal, GM & Karjalainen, LR 2004, Migration and Transcultural Identities: An ESF Standing Committee for the Humanities forward Look Report. Available from: www.esf.org Robert, C 2010, ASEAN s Myanmar Crisis: Challenge to the Pursuit of a Security Community, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Singapore, http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg [4 January 2014] Rydgren, J 2004, The Logic of Xenophobia in Rationality and Society, Sage Publication. Vol. 16(2) pp. 123-148. Available from: www.sage publications.com [25 October 2013]. Yakushko, O 2009, Xenophobia: Understanding the Roots and Consequences of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigrants, The Couseling Psychologist 37:1 (January 2009), pp. 36-66. [15 April 2008]. ***********************************************