Geographies of Displacement: The Karenni and The Shan Across The Myanmar-Thailand Border

First, central to our analysis is the argument that human movement within and across borders fundamentally challenges the view of geopolitics based upon fixed territorial states, inter-state relations, national identities and citizenship; indeed the whole idea of "national geographic". Using the examples of the Karen and Shan peoples, we explore the processes and patterns of forced relocation, displacement and migration in the border regions of Myanmar and Thailand. Our main concern is with forced displacement as a result of political and ethnic conflict; specifically, how the Burmese military regime's desire for "national unity" within Myanmar's "national space" has influenced the militarily inspired displacements of hundreds of thousands of villagers and civilians within the border zones inhabited mostly by so-called "national minorities". We examine the particular problems of the so-called "internally displaced persons" within "national" boundaries compared with the "refugees" and "undocumented migrants" who make it across "international" space into Thailand. We illustrate the ways displaced people are represented by state agencies and the media as "threats" and "transgressors". We consider some of the "long term" aspects of the displacement problem along the Myanmar-Thai border and the vital contribution geographers can make to the study of displacement.     

Local co-operation, ethnic diversity and state territoriality – The case of Haparanda and Tornio on the Sweden – Finland border

The neighbouring towns of Haparanda and Tornio, separated only by a narrow strip of grass and wetland, are divided by the only inhabited land boundary between Finland and Sweden in the southern part of the Torne River. The population represents four different groups in relation to linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In the daily lives of the inhabitants, the state boundary is probably of less significance than linguistic, social and ‘ethnic’ differences. On the local government level there is a strong will to unite forces to make the total area a viable region in spite of its peripheral location, but state legislation makes co-ordination difficult. This may be seen as a necessity, but in the daily lives of the populations, the state boundary defines an area of unequal access, sometimes working in favour of and sometimes barring contacts and co-operation. The media consumption reflects a clear ‘national’ interest with a strong local bias. In their attitudes, Finnish speakers and bilinguals show a greater appreciation of ‘the other’ than unilingual Swedes. This may reflect the actual possibility space (reach) in the local area. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

OTHER ITEMS

Abstract

The recent publication of an expansive national dataset, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, allows for new analyses of the historical geography and settlement of various immigrant and ethnic groups in the United States. The present research explores the growth, development, and geographic dispersion of the ethnic Mexican population, and outlines some of the demographic and social characteristics within significant clusters of this population in the United States across the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis does not attempt to overturn other geographies and ethnographies in Mexican American history, but through its ability to elucidate broad, national patterns it is able to create a more dynamic view of settlement, demonstrating the role of immigrants and of women immigrants in particular. Results indicate that place matters: the geographical context of arrival and settlement were key factors in differentiating communities and the lives of those who lived in them.     

The Upper Adriatic borderland: From conflict to harmony

The paper presents an overview of the Upper Adriatic as a contact area between different cultural, social, economic and political entities, producing potential conflicts in the last century. The first part of the 20th century represented a classic example of geopolitical conflict through two World Wars and their related Peace Conferences that deeply impacted the region. Conflicts arising from the mid-century solution of the Trieste question transformed the Upper Adriatic into a laboratory of contemporary political geographic transformation. Changing geopolitical patterns have also modified the political, social and ethnic construction of the Upper Adriatic. The process of creating new international boundaries in the region ended in 1991 with the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Through these geopolitical transformations in the Upper Adriatic, new political geographic attitudes evolved. Early on, Ratzel's geopolitical principles of defining borders as power barometers between neighbors dominated. More recently, attitudes have reflected modern integrative ideas with a focus on looking for harmony and the elimination of international conflicts. Greater attention has thus been given to the political geography of `everyday life', inter-ethnic relations, and cross-border contacts. Hence, `new' borderlands of the Upper Adriatic are more receptive to integration because they seek to overcome conflicts caused by the division of traditionally homogeneous spaces as local level political and ideological hindrances disappear. The region divided among Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is becoming a new and special type of European borderland in the new century.     

Borderland urbanism: seeing between enclaves

Recent scholarship on the characteristics of Chinese urbanism engages with the practices and possible consequences of so-called enclave urbanism, said to generate cities as agglomerations of patchworked enclaves. Acknowledging that inequality becomes explicit in supposedly self-contained enclaves, in this paper, I seek to advance the initial debate by shifting the focus onto the spaces and processes in-between the enclaves. I draw on fieldwork in Shanghai to argue that perceptions of inequality, individual and group identities, everyday cultures and, ultimately, new ways of being in and making the city are shaped amidst the in-between spaces that essentiate emerging cities in China and elsewhere: urban borderlands. I outline a research agenda around the current and future urban condition and propose the exploration of borderland urbanism as a timely new direction in urban geography.     

Book Reviews

Book Reviewed:
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Hans-Dieter Evers and Rüdiger Korff, Southeast Asian Urbanism: The Meaning and Power of Social Space
Peter Boomgaard and Ian Brown (eds.), Weathering the Storm: The Economies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s Depression
Lisa Law, Sex Work in Southeast Asia: The Place of Desire in a Time of AIDS     

La Frontera and Beyond: Geography and Demography in Mexican American History*

The recent publication of an expansive national dataset, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, allows for new analyses of the historical geography and settlement of various immigrant and ethnic groups in the United States. The present research explores the growth, development, and geographic dispersion of the ethnic Mexican population, and outlines some of the demographic and social characteristics within significant clusters of this population in the United States across the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis does not attempt to overturn other geographies and ethnographies in Mexican American history, but through its ability to elucidate broad, national patterns it is able to create a more dynamic view of settlement, demonstrating the role of immigrants and of women immigrants in particular. Results indicate that place matters: the geographical context of arrival and settlement were key factors in differentiating communities and the lives of those who lived in them.     

REGIONAL IDEAS AND THE MONTANA-ALBERTA BORDERLANDS*

ABSTRACT. The borderland concept is not often applied to the U.S. West's northern boundary, but the northwestern Great Plains have been the subject of at least two border-straddling regional conceptions: Whoop-Up Country, based on a shared regional history; and Chinook Country, based on a shared natural environment. Both ideas can be found to varying degrees in northern Montana and southern Alberta, but as expressions of regional distinction, their significance and meaning differ sharply north and south of the international boundary. In borderlands such as these, nationalism and regionalism intersect.     

The Circle of Hydro-Hegemony between riparian states,development policies and borderlands: Evidence from the Talas waterscape (Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan)

Since the 1990s, transboundary water management has come to play a key role both in global environmental politics debates and in the shaping of international development policies, specifically in the Global South. As a consequence, a growing body of literature in the framework of critical hydropolitics has emerged reflecting on the role that power, discourses, and strategies play in shaping transboundary water policies and in influencing riparian relations. The focus on a state-centric perspective, however, often has led to neglect of the role of international development actors in shaping these policies. Through a critical application of the Circle of Hydro-Hegemony (CHH) and ethnographic qualitative field research in borderlands, this contribution aims to analyse how the establishment of a development initiative known as the Chu-Talas Commission, supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and other donors, has influenced and shaped transboundary water politics in the Talas waterscape, which is shared by Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The evidence shows that despite the international narration of the Chu-Talas Commission as a success story for water cooperation in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, through the deployment of both material and bargaining power strategies, has been able to shape UNECE development policies in its favour, impose its agenda on Kyrgyzstan, and emerge as the basin hydro-hegemon.     

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.