Nothing To Lose But Exploitation

Episode #483: “I particularly look from Marxist feminist perspectives,” says Ma Cheria, a Myanmar-born researcher now living in exile in Chiang Mai. Her work examines how capitalism and patriarchy combine to exploit Burmese migrant women in Thailand’s informal economy. Before the 2021 military coup, she was a social worker involved in peace and gender programs and helped lead anti-coup strikes. After comrades were arrested, she fled to Thailand, continuing the struggle through research and activism.

Cheria’s studies reveal that over five million Myanmar migrants now live in Thailand, nearly two million without documents. Many work in “3D jobs”—dirty, dangerous, and demeaning—that Thai citizens refuse to do. Though formal factories must pay the minimum wage, most women end up in unregistered home-based factories where they can bring children and work flexible hours, but earn half the legal rate and lack safety or legal protection. “Workers know it is very unfair, but they cannot complain because they are undocumented,” she explains.

Cheria traces these abuses to a malfunctioning migration system that forces workers to depend on brokers who extort money or seize passports. She links today’s exile economy to Myanmar’s crushed labor movement: once progressive and female-led, it was outlawed after the coup. In Thailand, migrants are legally allowed to join Thai-run unions but not to form their own—an empty right in border towns with no Thai workers.

Her Marxist-feminist analysis highlights women’s “double exploitation”: wage labor in factories and unpaid domestic labor at home. “In the revolution, we have to abolish both systems together,” she says of capitalism and patriarchy. From exile she teaches feminist and labor theory to ethnic women’s groups online, believing that change grows through shared reflection.

Despite repression and growing anti-migrant hostility, she documents quiet resilience in Burmese-run schools and clinics. Her message is clear: solidarity across borders is essential because “only a small group benefits, while the majority—the working class—remains unseen.