The narrative is a mixture of impressive academic engagement with debates about ‘Thainess’, belonging, subject positions and inequality, and sometimes quite touching insight into the lives, identities and behaviour of the sixty or so youngsters with whom Bolotta spent several years, sharing almost inseparably their everyday moments and experiences … This qualitative research … reveals slum children not as a uniform and singular category of passive victims of marginalisation, lacking agency, hope and prospects, but as social chameleons who are creatively adept at adjusting their lives and their projected identities to the multiple circumstances and settings in which they find themselves … This book makes a most valuable contribution to Thai Studies and our understanding of the lives and life prospects of marginalised children.
The narrative is a mixture of impressive academic engagement with debates about ‘Thainess’, belonging, subject positions and inequality, and sometimes quite touching insight into the lives, identities and behaviour of the sixty or so youngsters with whom Bolotta spent several years, sharing almost inseparably their everyday moments and experiences … This qualitative research … reveals slum children not as a uniform and singular category of passive victims of marginalisation, lacking agency, hope and prospects, but as social chameleons who are creatively adept at adjusting their lives and their projected identities to the multiple circumstances and settings in which they find themselves … This book makes a most valuable contribution to Thai Studies and our understanding of the lives and life prospects of marginalised children.
