ABSTRACT The space of the ‘transit country’ is increasingly depicted in policy and NGO rhetoric as a taken-for-granted space where migrants pass through on their way to seek protection in the Global North. Yet I argue that the ‘transit country’ is a contested space, a space where ‘temporariness’ may be produced purposefully in order to limit opportunities for protection. In this paper, I argue that Thailand produces itself as a transit country in order to manage and control refugee and asylum seeker populations. Through several discursive and material tactics, including security spectacles, legal maneuvering, and migrant destitution, Thailand maintains and exploits the status of a ‘transit country.’ The purposeful construction of a place where ‘no one will stay’ challenges depictions of migration as linear movements defined by sources and destinations, where transit spaces become only more distance to traverse. While the production of transit countries has always been political, the case of Thailand suggests that the politics involved need not center the migration deterrence efforts of traditional destination countries of the Global North, but have implications within states and regions of the Global South as well.

中文翻译：

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生产泰国为过境国：边界，拥护和破坏

摘要在政策和非政府组织的言论中，越来越多地将“过境国”的空间描述为一种理所当然的空间，移民在此途中会在全球北部寻求保护。但是我认为，“过境国”是一个有争议的空间，在该空间中可能有目的地产生“临时性”，以限制保护的机会。在本文中，我认为泰国将自己生产为过境国，以管理和控制难民和寻求庇护者。泰国通过多种话语和实质性策略，包括安全眼镜，法律手段和移民流离失所，维持并利用了“过境国”的地位。“有目的地建造一个“没人会留下”的地方，对将迁移描述为由源和目的地定义的线性运动提出了挑战，在这里过境空间只能越过越远的距离。虽然过境国的生产一直是政治性的，但泰国的案例表明，所涉及的政治不必集中在全球北部传统目的地国的移民威慑努力上，而在全球南部各州和地区中也具有影响。