Unattributable Displacement in Flood-Embankment Planning: Evidence from a Raft-House Community on the Sakae Krang River, Thailand

Much research on development-induced displacement begins after a project is classified as displacing people. However, displacement can occur without receiving such a classification. Harm can be documented and attributed to no particular decision because the conditions lie in administrative instruments, not in places. The evidence is a dwelling survey of a raft-house community on the Sakae Krang River, Thailand, conducted in 2009–2010 before a flood embankment was funded and repeated on the same form in 2023–2024, with interviews and documentary analysis. Of 100 households, 87 reported relocating, making at least 176 moves; the other 13 did not. No household was compensated, and no agency was answerable. The only figure held continuously about the community, a municipal ceiling of 100 house registrations, never changed and recorded no location. Harm was documented in complaints, a waterfront study, and an assistance file, but these records were not linked to decision-making, aggregated, or charged to any account. Four conditions produced this result: enumeration without location, unlisted classification, vertical dissociation, and no consequence account. These are properties of instruments, checkable in a jurisdiction’s own documents. One community is studied; prevalence is not estimated, and necessity or sufficiency is not established.