Hunting and transnational socio-ecological relations among Myanmar refugees in upstate New York

Abstract

This paper examines how hunting experiences, practices, and identities are shaped through transnational migration. Focusing on Myanmar refugees resettled in Upstate New York, we draw on in-depth, life-history interviews tracing participants’ hunting experiences from rural Myanmar to their resettlement landscapes in the United States to understand how relationships to environmental resources shift across transnational contexts. We show that hunting, embedded in agrarian livelihoods, intergenerational traditions, and everyday food systems in Myanmar, offers cultural continuity and new forms of engagement with outdoor recreation, rural identity, and local ecologies after resettlement. At the same time, Myanmar refugees encounter barriers to hunting participation, including language differences, unfamiliar resource management systems, and limited access to private land, which position them as marginal resource users in relation to broader US hunting publics. By analyzing these dynamics through the lens of communities of practice, or the ways in which hunters are socially differentiated from one another, we illustrate how migration reshapes hunters’ identities and social positioning while also revealing shared experiences of hunting across contexts. We conclude by highlighting hunting as an overlooked site of rural migrant adaptation to novel socio-ecological landscapes and outline pathways for natural resource managers to enhance accessibility and support meaningful participation among migrant communities.