Cross‐border rubber cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai rubber farmers

This paper is a multi‐sited ethnography of cross‐border rubber cultivation between China and Laos. Smallholder minority rubber farmers from Xishuangbanna (China) have forged successful informal share‐cropping arrangements to grow rubber trees on the land of relatives and friends in neighbouring Laos. By becoming rich and entrepreneurial rural citizens, Akha and Tai farmers have also, in their own eyes, raised their own ‘quality’ (suzhi) and see themselves as ‘modern’. By examining various meanings of ‘modern’ in China, and contrasting the rubber farmers' experience with Jacob Eyferth's notion of rural ‘deskilling’, this paper shows how through learning to plant, cultivate and tap rubber, these farmers have taken on the discipline and technical knowledge of ‘modern’ workers and become ‘skilled’. By rising in ‘quality’, minority farmers on China's periphery challenge the entrenched binaries of urban/rural, modern/backward, prosperous/poor and Han/minority nationality. Xishuangbanna minority farmers acknowledge that they are also ‘backward’ in the Chinese social hierarchy, but their extension of rubber cultivation to kin and others in Laos has confirmed their modernity as dispensers of development, technical know‐how and ‘superior’ Chinese culture to Lao farmers who are ‘backward and poor’. In contrast to large state rubber farms that have failed to establish rubber plantations in northern Laos, minority farmers have created regionalization.     

Social Networks as Livelihood Strategies for Small-scale Traders on the Thai–Lao Border

ABSTRACT

Small scale cross-border trade on the Thai–Lao border has come under increasing pressure with the construction of a new Mekong bridge that has expanded formal trade between the two countries. Most small-scale traders are women who, with assistance from family and friends, have developed small businesses from childhood, and created social networks across the border with other traders, and relevant actors such as drivers and government officials. Such networks, trust, experience and familiarity enabled superior access to information and trading concessions that have enabled the continued success of small-scale trade, the maintenance of complex cross-border livelihoods, and the ability of traders across an increasingly regulated border to deal with constraints and risks. A few established traders have developed trade networks and social relationships involving supply chains across several countries.     

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.     

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.     

Under the state's gaze: Upland trading‐scapes on the Sino‐Vietnamese border

Within the politically‐defined Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), the borderlands of southeast Yunnan, China and Lào Cai province, northern Vietnam, have been categorized as being part of the GMS North‐South Economic Corridor. I argue that the creation of this subregion and corridor have been an opportunity for the governments in these locales to extend their territorialization and create new state spaces. For centuries, relatively isolated and ignored by lowland rulers, ethnic minority residents in these borderlands maintained their own culturally appropriate livelihoods, trade networks and societies. Nowadays, an increasing state presence in the uplands presents both challenges and opportunities for local populations on either side of the border, be they ethnic minorities, or Kinh (lowland Vietnamese) and Han Chinese. Contemporary border narratives gathered from local traders managing important upland commodities shed light on the means by which these borderland spaces are shaping both attractive prospects as well as restrictive constraints. Local residents fashion new trading‐scapes by drawing on kin ties, historical linkages, local indigenous knowledges and transnational societies that reach deep inside each country. As inhabitants carefully avoid or manipulate the state's gaze, I conclude that those living in the Sino‐Vietnamese borderlands possess the agency to ‘do things differently’ from hegemonic development approaches supported by GMS sponsors, and can create, maintain, support and refashion culturally appropriate trade livelihoods.     

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.     

The Asian Development Bank and the production of poverty: Neoliberalism,technocratic modernization and land dispossession in the Greater Mekong Subregion

In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty remains widespread. This article provides a critical analysis of the Asian Development Bank and its approach to development and poverty alleviation within the Greater Mekong Subregion. It suggests that the institution's technocratic neoliberal development ideology provides a discursive legitimation to processes of displacement and dispossession that has seen the production of new forms of poverty. To make this argument, the article draws on an ethnographic study of the local‐scale implications of forced resettlement at the Luang Prabang Airport. It conducts an analysis of how the Asian Development Bank defines and measures poverty, and critiques the institution's resettlement guidelines for the airport project.     

The border as an engine for mobility and spatial integration: A study of commuting in a Swedish–Norwegian context

The purpose of the study was to analyse how cross-border commuting differed from intranational commuting in Sweden, and how cross-border mobilities affected spatial integration. The authors analysed patterns and spatial flows of cross-border commuting by comparing them with characteristics of intranational commuting. In the article, they explore the assumption that the border constitutes an ‘engine’ for work-related mobility, which affects processes of spatial integration in cross-border areas. The empirical material comprised data from surveys of commuting from the Swedish county of Värmland to Norway and commuting within Värmland. The findings showed that cross-border commuting shared common features with intranational commuting, including how the frequency of commuting was dependent on distance. The motives for commuting differed, and the reasons for working in Norway were economic rather than professional. In terms of spatial integration, cross-border commuting was mainly one-directional, from Sweden to Norway, while leisure mobility and migration tended to be in the opposite direction. The authors conclude that the border region is characterised by integration through specialisation, which involves a permanent state of ‘transient’ mobility. Thus, a win-win situation can be distinguished, in which the border serves as a resource and an ‘engine’ for cross-border integration, mobility and economic activities.     

‘Here,we don't just trade goods,we also “sell” people's lives’: Sari‐sari stores as nodes of partial surveillance in a Philippine fishing community

Home‐based neighbourhood stores (locally known in the Philippines as sari‐sari stores) are a ubiquitous feature of most Philippine communities. They are small to medium‐size trade stores not unlike convenience stores in the West where people buy goods in small quantities. In the Philippines, these stores play a vital role in providing everyday economic sustenance to low‐income communities. But more than an economic hub, sari‐sari stores also function as a social hub that connects people and acts as eyes and ears of the community through the people who make use of their services. In a sense, sari‐sari stores are the community's ‘myopticon’ where people's day‐to‐day dealings with everyone in the community and its environs are reported and discursively brought under the gaze of the ‘entire community’. Being myopticon as opposed to Foucault's panopticon, surveillance in sari‐sari stores is partial, non‐hierarchicalized and could be resisted by people in the community. Nonetheless, regardless of the ‘myoptic’ features of sari‐sari stores, their presence in the community ‘interpellates’ everyone's daily existence and instantiates a discursive space from which a structure of informal social control is enacted among community members. Sari‐sari stores then are an important reminder of how our built environment is also about contestation and negotiation of everyday life as we make use of space and as the architectonics of space both constrain and empower our manoeuvring in places.     

经贸视角下中国台湾“新南向政策”分析——基于SNA和VAR方法

中国台湾“新南向政策”倍受社会关注。基于经贸视角及2001~2015年贸易数据,在分析经济依赖度及国际竞争力基础上,通过社会网络分析（SNA）方法探讨中国大陆在贸易网络中的地位及其对中国台湾的影响,利用VAR脉冲响应函数对比分析中国台湾与中国大陆、新南向国家的对外贸易对中国台湾经济发展的影响。研究结果表明：新南向国家对中国大陆的经济依赖度远高于其对中国台湾的经济依赖度,中国大陆对其的贸易地位是中国台湾难以替代的;中国台湾对中国大陆的经济依赖度明显高于其对新南向国家的经济依赖度,中国大陆对其的贸易地位是新南向国家难以替代的;中国大陆在贸易网络格局中处于核心地位,对于提升中国台湾贸易网络地位起着重要促进作用;中国大陆与中国台湾的对外贸易对中国台湾经济发展的正向效应明显高于新南向国家。中国台湾当局应秉承“九二共识”,抓住机遇,积极推进“新南向政策”与“一带一路”倡议融合,加强同中国大陆的经贸合作与交流,促进其经济稳定持续发展。     

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.     

The political economy and geopolitical context of India's economic crisis, 1990–91

The Indian economy suffered a balance of payment crisis in 1991, which provided the context for the rolling out of neoliberal policies, also referred to as the New Economic Policy in India. This paper examines the national and global causes and context of India's economic crisis and adoption of neoliberal policies. While grounding my analysis in historical‐geographical materialism, I argue that India's economic crisis was a product of certain contingent conditions. I draw attention to India's pre‐neoliberal economic regime and analyse how the earlier‐established relationship between revenue generation and expenditure ran into trouble; what changes occurred in the organization and management of revenues and capital; nature of interventions of the state in the circulation of capital; changes in the physical aspects of circulation of commodities, together with foreign trade and the formation of the ‘world market’; and the rise of the United States as the only global superpower. I conclude that India's economic crisis of 1990–91, and the neoliberal policies that followed, are products of contingent historical and geographical conditions. A teleological approach towards examining global capitalism and production of economic crisis often neglect such contingencies and provide a set of causalities that may, at best, be classified as incomplete.     

2000年来中国边境城市对外贸易位序-规模分布及其影响因素

全球化背景下对外贸易活动是特定地域外向联系强度的重要表现,是边境城市区域功能的重要组成部分。运用位序-规模法则、分形理论及核密度等方法,以中国边境各城市的进出口贸易额为主要指标,剖析了中国边境地区对外贸易的规模分布特征及其影响因素。结果发现：①不同阶段的中国边境对外贸易位序-规模特征明显,位序结构内部城市次序变化较大;②位序-规模分布的无标度区变化显著,在18年内出现了4段分形表现,外贸活动的规模波动性、区域化特征明显;③影响因素表现为经济地理禀赋约束下核心城市支配效应明显、邻接地缘环境影响显著、政策导向与口岸推动、内部竞争反推空间结构协调演化四个方面;④不平衡性、集聚性在中国边境地区外贸活动中凸显,空间分布呈现为“核心-边缘”结构,当前国家层级应重点支持对外贸易优势城市,省级尺度协调域内城市对外贸易层次组织与区间联系。     

Doors and fences: Controlling Indonesia's porous borders and policing asylum seekers

Although the partial outsourcing of state border control to non‐state actors is not a new phenomenon, Indonesia is an interesting case study. Border control in an archipelago consisting of more than 17 000 islands is particularly challenging for state authorities. In addition to contending with the exceptional geography, Indonesia's state authorities are also challenged by the political constellation with Australia in regard to irregular cross‐border movements of asylum seekers that has become a controversial issue in recent history. As an important transit country for asylum seekers and refugees en route to Australia, Indonesia's porous borders have rendered it possible to enter and exit the country relatively easily. Given Australia's political pressure and the financial incentives offered to Indonesia to act as a ‘final bulwark’ and control irregular migration flows more effectively, border control nowadays has gained more significance in Indonesia than in the past. Yet, financial constraints and, more importantly, a lack of political will to host asylum seekers in its own territories for the long term remain as obstacles. Fieldwork observations show that due to ongoing funding restrictions for state‐led border control, state‐society cooperation for border surveillance has increased. Civilians in many hotspots for irregular border crossings have been encouraged to report on ‘suspicious foreigners’. State‐society cooperation for border control, however, offers new opportunities for people smugglers to pay off civilian spies or corrupt border authorities.     

Constructing Risk: multi-scale change,livelihoods and vulnerability in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Change has been at the heart of the livelihoods concept since its inception, allowing for a clear focus on how people perceive, respond to and experience risk. The ardent focus on ‘the local’ within livelihoods work, both in research and programmatic terms, has to some extent overshadowed attention on the role of wider-scale political economic and environmental processes in generating change and determining responses to change. Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta have never been ‘local’, having long been historically embedded in international, regional and national economic, political and environmental transformations. Drivers of change at these wider scales have intensified, complicating local responses to change, whether through economic, social or political means. A more nuanced appreciation of how scaled relations can be supported is required to better anticipate and respond to the political ecology of risk.     

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.     

珲春原图们江地区边境口岸物流体系建设研究

珲春-图们江地区处于东北亚经济区的几何中心,是吉林省向外开放的门户,也是东北地区向外发展物流的主要节点地区。借助珲春-图们江地区边境口岸通道优势,发展边境口岸物流业对于促进区域经济发展有着意义非常大。本文阐述了珲春-图们江地区边境口岸、对外通道、陆海联通航线的物流运输载体的建设情况,指出该地区边境口岸物流体系存在的问题,边境外贸量小,东西向物流量少,对外通道“通而不畅”,物流企业基础薄弱等问题,这些问题是制约物流体系建设的主要因素,最后有针对性地提出珲春-图们江地区物流体系建设的对策与建议。     

Globalisation and Border Dynamics: impacts on the urban development of Darwin,Australia

National boundaries and border cities have been transformed globally. This is partly due to neoliberal globalisation, the continuous formation of a ‘borderless world’ and partly to the global ‘war on terror’. Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory (NT), is on the northern coast of Australia, bordering its overseas Asian neighbours. Far away from the main Australian population centres in the south, the city grows slowly, relying mainly on Australian government investments, infrastructure, and the incorporation of defence programs in the north. The rise of Asia, as well as Australia's increasing economic reliance on Asia, has created new opportunities for Darwin's growth. The development of Asian economies has resulted in growing global investment in resource extraction in NT. Asia, though, has been seen as a key threat in the modern history of Australia. This national sensitivity is underpinned by the global ‘war on terror’ in which Australia is deeply involved. Australia has tight border control regimes and a growing military presence on the northern border area. This paper examines how these co-existing but contradictory dynamics have reshaped the urban development of Darwin City. The consequential social and spatial patterns are identified and discussed.     

State‐led talent return migration programme and the doubly neglected ‘Malaysian diaspora’: Whose diaspora,what citizenship,whose development?

This paper questions the assumptions of ‘diaspora’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘development’ underlying diaspora strategies targeting a specific pool of overseas Malaysian ‘talent’ migrants. I examine the Malaysian state's discursive attempts to construct a carefully contained economic ‘diaspora'—the ‘Malaysian diaspora'—through its talent return migration programme. In this process, there is a portion of the ‘Malaysian diaspora’, especially non‐bumiputeras (sons of soil), who are doubly neglected and excluded: first, from access to full and equal citizenship (which arguably contributed to their emigration in the first place); and second, from eligibility and recognition to participate in Malaysia's talent return migration programme. However, recent political activism calling for electoral reform and overseas voting rights challenges state‐constructed visions of the ‘diaspora’ and their expected roles in advancing ‘development’. This paper concludes by highlighting questions raised by the Malaysian case, linking these explicitly to how diaspora strategies—as they have been conceived, practised and contested—challenge the broader Migration and Development paradigm.     

跨境经济合作区建设的“尺度困境”——以中老磨憨-磨丁经济合作区为例

20世纪70年代以来,随着经济全球化和区域经济一体化的快速发展,跨境经济合作区作为次区域经济合作的一种组织模式开始不断发展并得到学术界的重视。“一带一路”倡议提出后,边境地区越来越成为对外开放的前沿,而跨境经济合作区成为促进中国与沿线国家经贸合作的重要载体。由于涉及国家主权让渡及各种要素跨越国界流动,跨境经济合作区具有高度的复杂性和不确定性,其建设进展相对较慢。通过中老磨憨-磨丁经济合作区的案例分析,深入探讨跨境经济合作区的建设难题、形成机制及突破路径。研究认为,跨境经济合作区建设面临典型的“尺度困境”,其困境大小主要取决于区域经济一体化程度,国内多尺度治理协调程度及边境双边治理结构匹配程度等3个维度。跨境经济合作区作为多尺度汇聚的边境地区,区域经济一体化是降低跨境合作边界屏蔽效应的关键,而其治理需要从国家到地方多尺度的紧密合作以及边境双边的制度对接。打破跨境经济合作区的“尺度困境”需要边境双边协同治理,国家尺度较完善的制度安排,或给予地方较大的自主权限,同时要加强跨境基础设施建设。