The Importance of Ancestry — Thailand

Continuing the investigation into attitudes about local-ancestry and citizenship…

Thais were asked “How important for citizenship — in your opinion — is having ancestors from this country?”

The pattern seen with China and South-Korea holds up:

#1 — “Voelkisch” attitudes have noticeably softened among lower-class Thai youth.

#2 — An across-the-board softening trend is seen for 30-50s when compared to Over-50s. This is dramatically reversed among the middle and especially upper class Under-30s.

#3 — “Voelkisch” attitudes among Thai youth skew weakly upper-class. Nothing as strong as Germany‘s completely lopsidedresult (the other way), but still there.

Among 100 Thai youth answering “Yes”:
– 33 are Upper-Class (30% overall)
– 42 are Middle-Class (43.5% overall)
– 25 are Lower-Class (26.5% overall)

What I don’t understand:

How could 19-in-20 of the Young/Upper cohort say “Yes”, when ethnic-Chinese [whose ancestors were not there 500 years ago(?)] are probably over one-third of that group. (They are 14% overall, but quite wealthy).