Thai half-breeds - look kreung in the local vernacular - are a potential threat to foreign migrant labourers such as myself.
Thais born to foreign parents have a distinctive look. They also tend to have good English language skills.
Like most foreigners working in Thailand, I am employed for my native English skills. Some employers hire foreigners no matter what their background or experience, as long as they have English.
My company is guilty of that sin occasionally, but on the whole tries to hire people with relevant experience and qualifications, like me.
It is obliged to do so under the labour law, but that is almost beside the point. This is Thailand, after all.
Employing foreigners involves paperwork and expense. If my company could find fluent English speakers among Thais, it would not need me.
That is why I regard the presence of look kreung in the office as a potential threat. I don't want one to supplant my job one day because he happens to have been educated overseas.
I am not privy to this company's employment strategy. Beyond the small corner of the huge open-space office which I occupy, I know little of what is going on. But I have noticed more young Thai look kreung wandering into my ambit of vision.
I saw one just now, dressed in scruffy jeans and a dark patterned shirt. 'You know what's going to happen on Monday,' he said in a broad American-accented drawl.
He was talking to a Thai guy in his 20s who wears a telephone earpiece all day. At any moment, he can start talking to himself, as he sits in front of his computer. That's what it looks like, anyway.
This young man gets many visits from look kreung staff, perhaps because they work in the same specialist area.
They do creative, design-oriented tasks. As a mere migrant labourer, I just fix people's English.
No look kreung have yet penetrated my department, perhaps because fixing English is not seen as glamorous enough.
Some look kreung have lousy Thai, maybe because they spent too long overseas, or lost interest in their language while they were there. They insert so many English words into their Thai that they may as well make the change to talking wholly in English.
Do employers consider this lack of Thai fluency a drawback among look kreung? I have no idea.
If they work together, and have limited contact with Thai-speaking staff, then possibly not.
If they work together, and have limited contact with Thai-speaking staff, then possibly not.
I suspect they are paid more than ordinary Thais without their English language skills, but less than foreign workers for whom English is their native tongue.
If the company could find more of them to hire, I am sure it would. I cannot assume that my skills will be needed forever.
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