ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a contribution to scholarship in two important fields, such as—refugee studies and Karen studies. It focuses on the social and cultural life of Buddhist Karen as both refugees and religious followers. The chapter aims to investigate relations between Karen refugeehood and their practice of Theravada Buddhism. It explores specific features of the Buddhist tradition followed by Pwo Karen refugees and examines its importance in their lives as refugees and the ways they mobilise the religion in the context of displacement. The emergence of Muglaw monastery exemplifies the reconstitution of a Karen Buddhist community in the Thailand-Burma borderland. The chapter also examines the religious practices of the Karen practitioners of the Buddhist tradition and demonstrates how Karen refugees draw upon familiar cultural schema to create a sense of place, security and belonging in a new home. It argues that the displaced Karen's religious practices exemplify the (re)-production of locality' in a spatially extended mode.
