边界管控中的跨境社会建构:深圳中英街的案例

在社会建构视角下,边界并非固化的界线,各种社会力量亦在持续塑造着边界的功能与特性。采用深度访谈、实地调查和文本分析研究方法,从社会建构的视角,探讨了不同主体基于日常跨境实践对中英街边界的社会建构,以及在此基础上的边境空间管控应对策略。结果发现,在20世纪80年代改革开放背景下,中英街的边贸旅游经济发展为居民参与跨境小额贸易提供了契机,中英街居民的身份与水客的身份由此实现了高度的融合;而在20世纪90年代内地实行市场经济及香港回归的背景下,中英街边贸旅游经济衰落,中英街地区居民的身份与水客的身份逐渐分离。在此过程中,各主体响应边界管控政策变化,塑造了不同的边界生活空间。未来边界管控政策的制定与实施,需要以理解边界空间的历史和现状为前提。

Construction of Transbodering Social Community Beyond the Border Control System of Hong Kong-Shenzhen: A Case Study of Chung Ying Street

From a social constructionist perspective, borders should not be simply stabilized into fixed lines. Instead, borders are socially constructed. The functions, meanings and features of borders can be continuously (re)constructed through the interactions between political authorities and social subjects. Besides, social subjects are far from a unitary and homogenous group. People of different social identities have accorded abundant and unique meanings to borders. After reform and opening up, the tourism commercialization process of Chung Ying Street between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, occupies important positions in the daily border-crossing practices of different social subjects in Chung Ying Street area. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation and textual analysis, this paper chooses the case of Chung Ying Street area. Based on the theoretical insights of social construction, this paper explores both the complex interactions between different social subjects during their everyday border-crossing practices and the control mechanism of the border space. This paper finds out that under the context of institutional transition and social transformation in the 1980s, the tourism commercialization process of Chung Ying Street offered extra chances for residents to participate in cross-border small-scale trading. In this way, the identities of both residents and cross-border small-scale traders in Chung Ying Street were highly integrated. Reasons for such a high degree of syncretism can be summarized as follows: on the one hand, the identity change from residents to formal traders was stopped by interference. On the other hand, it was a simple and practical approach for the residents to become small-scale traders. Furthermore, with a background of the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong as well as the set-up of market economy system in the mainland during 1990s, the declining economy of Chung Ying Street precipitated the separate identity of residents and small-scale traders. However, the latter were still able to take advantage of the residents’ cross-border passes to conduct informal economic practices. To sum up, the innovative contributions of this paper lie in two aspects. On the theoretical level, this paper suggests that the identity integration and separation of social subjects implies their agency in response to the changes of border landscapes. During such responses, each individual tends to make every possible use of the border rights embedded in the ‘potential disparity structure’ of identity. The utilization of identity discrepancy becomes a common character shared by different social subjects. On the empirical level, this paper points out that the enactment and implementation of Hong Kong-Shenzhen border control policy should be premised on the understanding of the status quo and evolution process of the ‘potential disparity structure’ of identity in the border space.