Micah Morton
Micah Morton is a second year graduate student at Madison. His research interests are in the areas of transnational and border studies, the politics of citizenship, ethnic minorities, migrant communities, religion and religious conversion, human rights, collaborative ethnography, and applied anthropology in the context of northern Thailand and the eastern Shan state of Myanmar (Burma). He is developing a research project that involves a comparison between two communities of a particular ethnic minority group (referred to as the Akha) that are located within the context of the northern Thai provinces of Chiangmai and Chiangrai respectively. One of these communities has been fairly well integrated into the modern-nation state of Thailand, having been formally founded roughly fifty years ago. The other community is a newly established community of economic migrants from the eastern Shan state of Myanmar. Micah will be comparing individuals from these two communities in relation to the following questions and issues: 1) the politics of citizenship (both cultural and legal), identity, and ethnicity 2) the historical founding of each particular community as well as any existing stories and/or strategies relating to earlier or current migrations to and from Myanmar, 3) the role of religion and particularly religious conversion in relation to the expression of ethnicity and identity.
