"This paper examines the resettlement of refugees from Burma/Myanmar to the United States, by focusing on the refugee experience. The ethnographic description of the resettlement process reveals how refugees, by establishing a transnational ?Myanmar” community in the United States, manifested a nationalism that was hitherto believed to be impossible. Building a nation-state in Burma/Myanmar has been a controversial issue since the nation?s independence from the British in 1948. Callahan argues that the process of state building in Burma has focused on warfare and violence by the state. After independence, the national army or Tatmadaw regarded citizens as potential enemies, and conducted various anti-insurgency campaigns. Her argument richly elucidates the state-building process in Burma/Myanmar. However, though the Nation and the State are inseparable, her arguments exclude the nation-building process. This paper explores one aspect of belonging to the nation of ?Myanmar.” While state building is one of the most important tasks for a country following ethnic conflict, it is often analyzed only within the context of resistance movements, such as ?Burmanization” by the government or resistance movements against it. Hence, the possibilities for actual nation building have not yet been explored. The experiences of refugees outside the country offer a new and useful perspective for such a discussion. Refugees may no longer legally belong to their country of origin, yet their existence expresses the core essence of the nation they come from. The case study dealt with in this paper focuses on Karenni refugees from the Kayah State, which is the smallest state in Burma. In the Kayah State, the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) has been resisting the Burmese ruling military junta for more than 60 years, seeking either autonomy or independence from the state. The KNPP strategically have used the word ?Karenni” as an umbrella term that includes all ethnic groups in Kayah State, in order to resist the Burma-centric state. The ex-chairman of the KNPP, namely Khu Hte Bu Pe, invented a ?Karenni” script for the sake of the core spirit of his nation. Two refugee camps in Thailand were centers of KNPP politics in order to construct the ?Karenni”, and ?Karenni” has been an anti-state term, with its use being prohibited inside Burma by the junta. The category of ?Karenni” or ?Karenni” identity was constructed as a refugee concept in Thailand. This paper discusses the further transnational spread of ?Karenni” through the resettlement of refugees to a third country, while also considering the meaning of Burma and Myanmar for those resettled refugees..."