Four years ago, Win Ko, 23, was working as a waiter in a restaurant in Rangoon, Burma’s then capital, earning a meagre 4,500 kyat (about $5.60) a month plus meals, when friends started talking about better opportunities in neighbouring Thailand. Despite the dangerous journey – and the risks of working illegally in Thailand, Win Ko, the eldest of three brothers, decided to take the chance. “I was afraid,” he recalls. “I wanted to stay in Burma but there was not enough money to help my family.”

Arriving in Thailand, he was employed as a construction worker in Phuket. Although the wage was about Bt300 (then about $7.50) a day plus food, his employers sometimes failed to pay, claiming he was eating too much. In 2003, the Thai authorities arrested him for working illegally, and held him in various police lock-ups for several weeks, before deporting him back to his military-ruled homeland.