Itinerant livelihoods: Street vending‐scapes and the politics of mobility in upland socialist Vietnam

This paper explores the politics of mobility for a group of rural inhabitants attempting to diversify their livelihoods in an especially prescribed environment, namely ethnic minority street vendors living and working in upland socialist Vietnam. These Hmong, Yao and Giáy individuals face a political environment where access and trade rights shift on a near‐daily basis because of the impulses of state officials, and where ethnicity is central to determining who gets to be mobile and how. We analyse three groups of itinerant vendors—those vending on the streets of an upland tourist town, the mobile minority wholesalers who supply them and other traders, and vendors who trek with Western tourists—to reveal the nature of this trade environment, while also highlighting the ways in which ethnic minority vendors negotiate, work around and contest vending restrictions in numerous innovative ways. We find that this focus on the micro‐geographies and everyday politics of mobility is essential to understanding how rural Global South livelihoods are fashioned and diversified, in this case revealing specific relationships and negotiations regarding resource access, ethnicity, state authority and livelihood strategies.     

Imagining the borderlands: Contending stories of a resource frontier in Muang Sing

Muang Sing in Luang Namtha province, an administrative district of northern Laos bordering Myanmar and China, has been portrayed by the Lao government and international development agencies as a ‘poor’ rural region in need of development. To developers, Muang Sing's remoteness from major towns and the livelihoods of ethnic people such as the Akha in the uplands based on swidden agriculture and opium production characterized ‘poverty’. To address this rural poverty, state and development agencies devised land use zoning that would demarcate and regulate various land uses in line with a rural development plan for the district. This vision for regulated development began to go awry, however, as farmers and traders in Muang Sing launched their own rapid social and economic changes. In contrast to the official image of a backward rural district in need of outside assistance, this paper portrays farmers and local entrepreneurs of the Muang Sing borderlands as actively transforming their lives and agricultural landscapes. This paper challenges the official version of a remote, poor district untouched by regional trade through a focus on narratives of local people. Ethnographic research reveals the dynamic micro‐processes of agrarian transformation during recent decades to highlight the centrality of borderland people in reworking their lives and agricultural landscapes through cross‐border relationships in China.     

Managing migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Regulation,extra‐legal relation and extortion

One major aim of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) integration programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is to foster regional ‘community’ for sharing resources, people and financial flows. This ‘community’ is the target of both economic growth and poverty reduction. The emphasis on ‘community’ in the ADB's mushrooming quantity of documents raises important questions about what kinds of people are included, in what roles and with what kinds of support and protection. This paper explores these questions in relation to the political economy of regulating ethnic migrants from Myanmar working in Thailand. This paper argues that extra‐legal relations between migrants and state/para‐state agents constitute a crucial part of regulation. In transferring the regulation of migration to the national scale, the ADB inadvertently reinforces national differences between Thais and cross‐border people. Additionally, the complicated and fluctuating implementation of national regulations in both countries leaves migrants subject to violence and extortion from state and quasi‐state agents in Thailand. This paper shows that the dynamics of global capitalism require ‘deportable labour’ supplied by ethnic migrants who are included in the GMS community as the most invisible, vulnerable and exploited members.     

EXPRESSING “LOCAL CULTURE” IN HAWAI'I*

ABSTRACT. Detached from the mainland and with a distinct historical ethnic geography, the conquered kingdom of Hawai'i, now the fiftieth state, is the only U.S. state with an Asian and Pacific Islander majority as well as the highest percentage of racial and ethnic intermarriage. Hawai'i's population reflects the tensions between the culturally pluralistic “spirit of aloha” and the ethnic‐cum‐social stratification that has evolved from its historical economic geographies. In this article I focus on one of these strata—what is referred to as “local” culture—discussing its ethnogenesis and contemporary manifestations, and I apply Jonathan Okamura's 1981 model of situational ethnicity to examine how locals and new immigrants negotiate the ethnic dynamics and social expectations of their daily lives. I also discuss various ways in which “localness” is represented on O'ahu's economic landscape, with an analysis of the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, as a holistic expression of local culture.     

The price of spice: Ethnic minority livelihoods and cardamom commodity chains in upland northern Vietnam

The northern uplands of Vietnam are witness to rapidly developing commodity markets for a range of forest and agricultural products. Since the early 1990s the cultivation of black cardamom (Amomum aromaticum) has become a source of cash income for a growing number of ethnic minority households in these uplands. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, and utilizing a commodity chain and livelihoods approach, this article investigates the contemporary dynamics surrounding the cultivation, harvesting and trade of dried cardamom fruit from Hmong cultivators in Lao Cai province to consumers elsewhere in Vietnam and beyond to China and the global market. We analyse the spatial and social structures of these commodity chains, drawing attention to a range of mechanisms of access. We find that these mechanisms are reliant upon specific ethnic relations as well as different forms of capital that together sustain economic advantages for particular actors. While focusing on the ethnic minority cultivators active in these commodity chains, we also call for more nuanced understandings of how the trade in forest products fits within local agricultural systems and household livelihood decision making processes in the Vietnam uplands.     

流动性视角下边界的空间实践及其意义——以云南省河口县中越边境地区X村为例

边界是不同的社会与政治实体接触和交流的场所,跨边界的日常生活流动是历久和普遍的社会事实。边民与边境管理者丰富的跨界流动性实践,包括了自下而上到自上而下的双向互动,促进了边界意义的生产与再生产。透过流动性的研究视角,基于Newman对边境的地理学问题研究论调,从边境管理者和边民两个方面的日常空间实践进行了展现,选取云南省河口县中越边境地区的典型边寨为案例地,通过质性研究方法分析跨界流动的空间实践及其意义,进一步为解读边界的空间意义提供中国案例,以期更全面地看待边界问题。研究发现：边境草根群体自下而上的跨界流动,促进边界成为衡量经济、社会关系、文化意义以及政治权力形成和变迁过程的一个重要变量和维度。跨界流动实用主义色彩之上,也作用于边境社会关系网络的建构,对边民民族文化认同、国家认同等的建构产生积极作用。权力机关在边境生存法则基础上的流动性实践深化了国家意志,边界即成为权力“物化”的工具,流动性形成治理的手段和方法之一,边境地区同时被不断地规划和塑造。     

The experimental governing of mobility and trade on the China‐Laos frontier: The Tai Lue case

This paper discusses the governing of subjects and objects' mobility in the context of trans‐border rice and corn trade on the China‐Laos frontier. It traces the attempts by a group of ethnic Tai Lue traders from China to assert themselves as ‘flexible subjects’ and economically triumphant actors on the Upper Mekong market in the era of economic regionalization. It illustrates how, between 2005 and mid‐2006, the traders' economic success relied on a variety of ‘border strategies’. ‘Border strategies’ include a gender‐balanced organization of trade, the instrumental deployment of trans‐border ethnicity, the appropriation of a Han style of business, the opportunistic reliance on the Chinese administration's ‘regime of graduated mobility’, and the enactment of a ‘war‐machine’ against Lao state agents. Yet, in late 2006, a new wave of state authoritarianism, enmeshed in corporate accumulation processes, inhibited the traders' success. The paper suggests that, unlike what some defenders of globalization and transnational theories maintain, in the age of economic regionalization, the alleged flexibility and increased mobility of subjects and objects across the borders of the Greater Mekong Subregion remain conditional on an unpredictable mechanism of loosening and tightening. This is part of a long‐applied governing pattern of ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ on the Sino‐Lao frontier.     

Diversification of Livelihoods in a Society in Transition: A Case Study of Tibetan Communities in Southwest China

In recent years, large development and market integration programs have altered the socioeconomic structures and cultural identity of rural communities and ethnic minorities in Southwest China and influenced the management of natural resources. This article analyzes livelihood strategies in the Shuiluo Valley, a remote area of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Agricultural activities and the management of natural resources were studied in five villages of Muli Tibetan Autonomous County, Sichuan Province. Characteristic for rural societies in transition, livelihoods were found to be flexible, combining subsistence agriculture, off-farm employment, and the exploitation of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. Accessibility of villages did not influence household income and livelihood activities, and poorer households were not found to depend more on natural resources or on income from agriculture than wealthier households. The option of gold prospecting constitutes a major difference compared to more nontimber forest product-based livelihoods in adjacent areas of Southwest China.     

“Forever Hmong”: Ethnic Minority Livelihoods and Agrarian Transition in Upland Northern Vietnam

This article examines how ethnic minority Hmong farmers have adapted to, circumnavigated, or resisted state-sponsored agrarian change and other interventions in the northern Vietnam uplands over the past twenty years. Based on longitudinal research with Hmong informants, I examine to what extent their livelihood strategies have led to wealth creation or differentiation. The article highlights the most important transformations, as farmers conceive and voice them, to Hmong agrarian livelihoods over this period, the importance of longitudinal fieldwork to help unravel endogenous wealth definitions, and the complex impacts of state interventions on ethnic minority ways of making a living.     

Land grabs and labour: Vietnamese workers on rubber plantations in southern Laos

Since the early 2000s the Lao government has dramatically increased the number of large‐scale land concessions issued for agribusinesses. While studies have documented the social and environmental impacts of land dispossession, the role of Vietnamese labour on these Vietnamese‐owned rubber plantations has not previously been investigated. Taking a political ecology approach, we situate this study at the intersection between ‘land grabbing’ studies and work on ‘labour geographies’. Most of the remittances generated from Vietnamese working in Laos are used for non‐agricultural purposes, with people purposely choosing to not invest in agriculture in Vietnam. Vietnamese labour on Lao plantations still has significant spatial implications, both in Laos and in Vietnam, including through the norms, formal rules and practices introduced at rubber plantations by Vietnamese workers and management, but also through labour regime changes in Vietnam. In Laos, one of the most significant results has been to make certain spaces less welcoming to Lao labour. This study particularly points to the importance of geopolitics, as the close political relationship between Laos and Vietnam, and the fact that Vietnamese companies and managers are involved, is crucial for understanding the particular nature of the labour geographies associated with Vietnamese rubber plantations in Laos.     

An Investigation of the Role of Social Dynamics in Conversion to Sustainable Integrated Mangrove‐Shrimp Farming in Ben Tre Province,Vietnam

In the coastal area of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, much of the mangrove forest has been cut to make space for expansion of industry and aquaculture. Export‐oriented shrimp farming is a particularly fast‐growing business. Nonetheless, the importance of tropical mangrove forest ecosystems for coastal protection and marine biodiversity is widely recognized. The Vietnamese government, supported by non‐governmental organizations and donors, has sought to restore mangrove forest. To this end, the government has promoted mixed or integrated mangrove‐shrimp systems in which farmers maintain at least 40 per cent of their area under mangrove cover. Since 2012, mangrove reforestation, care and protection has benefited from local authority stimulus as well. Multiple studies have examined the condition of the mangrove forest in Ben Tre and other coastal provinces of the Mekong Delta. However, no research has investigated the role of social dynamics in farmers’ willingness to shift to, or maintain, integrated mangrove‐shrimp systems. Specifically, the influence of information, group dynamics and social learning on farmer decision‐making is poorly understood and, indeed, hardly investigated in Vietnam. This article reports on a study of social processes in three communes in Binh Dai District, Ben Tre Province, Vietnam. We conducted 42 semi‐structured interviews (with 34 farmers and eight local officials) and used secondary data. Our preliminary findings indicate that social dynamics in these communes were issue‐driven and played an important role in farmers’ decisions to adopt, or convert to, the integrated mangrove‐shrimp farming system. Television, radio, the internet, books, neighbours and training courses all had some influence in farmer decision‐making processes. However, our findings suggest that the accessibility, usefulness, relevance and approach of these communication methods must be improved if they are to adequately inform and support local farmers.     

Knowing into oblivion: Clearing wastelands and imagining emptiness in Vietnamese New Urban Zones

Lands cleared for Vietnamese New Urban Zones are commonly described as ‘wastelands’ (??t hoang) in need of development. But clearing these lands in Vietnam's densely populated urban areas requires evicting large numbers of urban residents. How is it possible to render populated spaces as empty wastelands? This paper juxtaposes new ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City against historical scholarship on Vietnamese concepts of ‘clearing the wasteland’ and colonial civilizing projects of mise en valeur. In doing so, the article describes these concepts as parallel legitimizing strategies that effectively enable developers and planners to render previously occupied and utilized lands as empty, uninhabited wastelands. The article shows that the same narrative structure used in these earlier contexts is used to justify current urban development projects.     

Governing through mobilities and the expansion of spatial capability of Vietnamese marriage migrant activist women in South Korea

This paper revisits the debate on marriage migration by highlighting the role of governing power and individual response in the process of migration decision‐making and post‐settlement of Vietnamese marriage migrant activist women in South Korea. It contributes to current marriage migration debates by employing the lens of ‘governmobility’ and ‘spatial capability’. The research looks at how female migrant activists maneuver coercion, resistance, and activism, both governed by nation‐state politics, but also actively deciding their fate amidst pressures of the global marriage market. Based on in‐depth interviews with 21 Vietnamese marriage migrant women who have worked in mentoring, counselling and translating for other Vietnamese migrants, our findings demonstrate that marriage migrants are positioned in between two nation‐states whose perspectival focus is on relieving the tensions of their own domestic job and marital markets. At the same time, these women have broken free from the inertia of socio‐familial status quo and state intervention to become self‐governing agents of mobility in various stages of their migration and adaptation. Fueled on by their position as activists, the marriage migrants then expand their spatial capability to place‐making—shifting the notion of freedom from simply taking part in mobility to reshaping their locale.     

Enclaves and ethnic ties: The local impacts of Singaporean cross‐border tourism in Malaysia and Indonesia

Cross‐border tourism is often proposed by governments as an incentive for economic growth, but critics have suggested that its impacts are, in fact, overplayed. This paper presents research in the Indonesia‐Malaysia‐Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS‐GT). It examines the broad economic impacts of Singaporean cross‐border tourism on local host communities in two locations: Kukup, a traditional Malaysian fishing village in Johor, southern Peninsular Malaysia, and Bintan in Riau Islands Province in western Indonesia. The study found that cross‐border tourism generated income, employment and some local economic linkages. In Kukup clear economic benefits with increased income and employment were unevenly distributed between ethnic groups. The Bintan enclave development had some linkages to the island economy but was reliant on immigrant labour. Cross‐border ethnic ties, particularly Chinese, also played an important role in the growth of tourism in the IMS‐GT. The paper shows that cross‐border tourism can be a useful addition to more conventional forms of international tourism within national tourism planning and could lead to significant economic benefits for local communities.     

Cross‐border Urban Governance in Hong Kong: The Role of State in a Globalizing City‐Region*

The rapid development in the Hong Kong‐Pearl River Delta (PRD) city‐region has taken place alongside complicated cross‐border governance. The framework of time‐space envelopes (TSEs) is adopted for a study of cross‐border governance in Hong Kong, especially in the role of the state, that is, the Hong Kong government, in cross‐border urban governance. This article argues that tension‐ free regional integration has never existed due to a complex governance network. The shift from “cross‐border protectionism” to “cross‐border free trade zone” in Hong Kong's cross‐border urban governance since 2001 is a result of the rearticulation of the state cutting through the geoeconomic and geopolitical TSEs.     

Ethno‐Territoriality and Ethnic Conflict

Ethno‐territoriality is an increasingly invoked term by those doing research on nationalism and ethnic conflict. Despite this, it has not been subject to detailed definitional and conceptual examination. This article develops a conceptual framework for thinking about ethno‐territoriality and ethnic conflict. It begins by briefly describing the relationship between territoriality, state sovereignty, and nationalist politics. I then provide a definition of ethno‐territoriality and outline a four‐part typology of the key elements of ethno‐territorial practice. Following this I discuss the role that ethno‐territoriality plays in the making of ethnic conflict.     

Co‐inhabiting public spaces: diversity and playful encounters in Darwin,Australia

When fear and anxiety circulate in public spaces of diverse western cities, heightened surveillance can provide a sense of safety and comfort. These measures of surveillance that target bodies that are ‘out of place’, however, are limited in animating public spaces. This paper focuses on Darwin, a small but rapidly growing north Australian city where the visibility of Aboriginal people from Greater Darwin/regional communities and migrant newcomers from countries in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East often circulates fear and anxiety and deadens public spaces. I argue that playful events or spontaneous multisensory encounters of humans, non‐humans and material things, however, have the potential to animate these public spaces. The paper focuses on these events in a Drop‐in open‐air café‐community garden‐Op shop in a culturally diverse northern suburb of Darwin. It suggests that the vibrancy of matter and the vitality of non‐human forms of life can inform how we co‐inhabit cities of difference and unsettle policies of social cohesion that focus on integration into a dominant white majority culture.     

The end of the Pacific? Effects of sea level rise on Pacific Island livelihoods

As in the past, most Pacific Island people live today along island coasts and subsist largely on foods available both onshore and offshore. On at least two occasions in the 3500 years that Pacific Islands have been settled, sea level changes affected coastal bioproductivity to the extent that island societies were transformed in consequence. Over the past 200 years, sea level has been rising along most Pacific Island coasts causing loss of productive land through direct inundation (flooding), shoreline erosion and groundwater salinization. Responses have been largely uninformed, many unsuccessful. By the year 2100, sea level may be 1.2 m higher than today. Together with other climate‐linked changes and unsustainable human pressures on coastal zones, this will pose huge challenges for livelihoods. There is an urgent need for effective and sustainable adaptation of livelihoods to prepare for future sea level rise in the Pacific Islands region. There are also lessons to be learned from past failures, including the need for adaptive solutions that are environmentally and culturally appropriate, and those which appropriate decision makers are empowered to design and implement. Around the middle of the twenty‐first century, traditional coastal livelihoods are likely to be difficult to sustain, so people in the region will need alternative food production systems. Within the next 20–30 years, it is likely that many coastal settlements will need to be relocated, partly or wholly. There are advantages in anticipating these needs and planning for them sooner rather than later. In many ways, the historical and modern Pacific will end within the next few decades. There will be fundamental irreversible changes in island geography, settlement patterns, subsistence systems, societies and economic development, forced by sea level rise and other factors.     

The Impact of U.S. Government Antiterrorism Policies on Canada‐U.S. Cross‐Border Commerce: An Exploratory Study from Western New York and Southern Ontario

This article examines the extant and potential impact of U.S. antiterrorism policies on Canada‐U.S. cross‐border commerce. Particular attention is focused on the cross‐border trade that takes place between southern Ontario (Canada) and western New York (United States). Evidence from a survey of Canadian and U.S. exporters suggests that U.S. antiterrorism measures have inflated the business costs of exporters on both sides of the border. These measures have also created shipment delays that ultimately imply lost revenues for producers, as well as higher prices for consumers. Security‐related initiatives motivated by a genuine concern for the well‐being of U.S. citizens may nevertheless act as nontariff barriers to bilateral trade. We argue that a potential long‐run consequence of these additional costs is trade diversion. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the empirical findings for the geography of Canada‐U.S. bilateral trade.     

Scales and Sales: Changing Social and Spatial Fish Trading Networks in the Siiphandone Fishery, Lao PDR

The Siiphandone wetland in Khong district, Champasak province, Lao PDR, is one of the most important fisheries in the Mekong River basin. The resource, situated along the Laos‐Cambodia border, supports the livelihoods of around 65,000 inhabitants, mainly semi‐subsistence rice farmers or fishers. In January 2000, the provincial authority was given a special dispensation by the Lao government to allow the importation of Cambodian fish through Khong district, for export to Thailand. Previously, in large part due to the government's policy of food self‐sufficiency, the export of Lao fish was illegal. This paper examines how the implementation of this law has influenced existing legal and illegal trade networks from the Siiphandone fishery by comparing the findings of two studies, one conducted before and the other after the change in the law. In doing so, the transition of the fishery from a local, food‐important resource to an increasingly regional, market‐oriented resource is examined. Conclusions are drawn as to the impact this change has had on the livelihoods of fishers and traders involved in the fishery.