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doi:10.1111/sjtg.12009

Introduction – Regionalization at the margins:

Ethnic minority cross-border dynamics in the
Greater Mekong Subregion
Janet C. Sturgeon
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Correspondence: Janet C. Sturgeon (email: sturgeon@sfu.ca)

This special section explores cross-border dynamics for ethnic minorities on the margins
of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Our aim is to make a significant contribution
to the understanding of the GMS and regionalization more broadly. We are among the
first researchers allowed to do fieldwork in borderlands that governments until recently
deemed ‘sensitive’ and out-of-bounds. Our contributions bring to light the variability of
conditions for minorities, complicating understandings of ‘peripheries’ and ‘centres’, as
well as the notion of a singular ‘region’.
The GMS was the brainchild of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In the late
1980s, ADB planners saw an opportunity to forge stronger trade links among countries
along the Mekong River, including China (Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces), Myanmar,
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Members came from East and Southeast Asia as
well as from countries with socialist and capitalist economies, posing daunting chal-
lenges to smooth regional economic ‘integration’. But the socialist and self-contained
regimes of China, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam were opening up to inter-
national advisers and investment and experimenting internally with market-based
economies. In 1992, the ADB, in tandem with national governments from participating
countries, launched the GMS to increase and integrate regional economic growth and to
alleviate poverty, especially in rural areas (ADB, 2004). ADB projects concentrated on
‘transport, energy, telecommunications, environment, human resource development,
tourism, trade, private sector investment, and agriculture,’ funded by the ADB, national
governments and private investors (ADB, 2005). The ADB claimed that these projects
would enable GMS countries to provide ‘sustainable development opportunities for all
their citizens’ and enable them to ‘compete in a globalized world’ (ADB, 2004). The
five-year plan launched in 2004 envisioned improving the lives of the ‘255 million
people in the Subregion’, three-fourths of them rural residents with ‘subsistence or
semi-subsistence livelihoods’. For rural people, the goal was ‘more diversified econo-
mies’ leading to ‘cross-border trade, investment, and labor mobility’ (ADB, 2005). This
vision suggested an even spread of ‘development’ to all peoples and spaces in the GMS.
However improbable a ‘region’ encompassing these countries may have seemed at
the start, the ADB has been successful in making it ‘real’. A region is a metaphor, or
social construct, whose discursive power gradually makes the region seem ‘natural’. The
ADB has emphasized that the GMS is a ‘natural region’ for development and that GMS
projects are following a ‘natural process of economic integration’ (ADB, 1999, cited in
Glassman, 2010: 5–6). Recent ADB rhetoric depicts an ecological image of the GMS as
a ‘natural economic region bound together by the Mekong River’ (ADB, 2012). But
what does this metaphor of a ‘natural region’ obscure?
The ADB approach is based on economics, without reference to politics, culture, or
history. ADB texts leave out that until quite recently; areas that are now in the GMS

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (2013) 3–8

© 2013 The Author
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography © 2013 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and
Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
4 Janet C. Sturgeon

were parts of a ‘region’ whose recent history is fraught with countries on opposite sides
in the Cold War (Thailand versus the rest), international conflicts (China versus
Vietnam, the Vietnam War), civil wars (Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam), ethnic rebel
armies, and opium and heroin production centred in the infamous Golden Triangle.
Political ideologies, contested sovereignty and violence are not part of ADB rhetoric.
ADB reports refer to ethnic minorities, totalling about 75 million people, who live in
‘remote mountain areas, mostly along shared national borders’, subsisting on hunting,
shifting cultivation and limited trade in forest products (ADB, 2005). This stereotype
bears a striking resemblance to descriptions of ‘backward’ minorities heard in Beijing,
Kunming, Vientiane, Yangon, Hanoi and Bangkok – minorities whose alleged igno-
rance, poverty and stagnation have made them targets for projects to connect them to
markets and transform them into ‘modern’ (or at least modernizing) people. These
portrayals assume a lack of agency among minority peoples and a remarkable isolation
from recent histories. In fact, wars, political movements, development projects and
environmental enclosures have already transformed their lives and livelihoods, whether
as participants or victims (Sturgeon et al., forthcoming).
It is almost too easy to critique ADB documents from the vantage point of Ferguson’s
anti-politics machine, in which ‘development’ agencies produce country descriptions
and development interventions that leave out power relations and omit turbulent
long-term histories (Ferguson, 1994: 25–73). For Lesotho, Ferguson’s example, the
World Bank ‘made up’ a history that allowed the development machine to ‘plug in’ and
‘solve’ manufactured problems. In a like manner, the ADB describes economic problems
to be overcome by economic growth. Ferguson also draws a distinction between ‘eco-
nomic growth’ and ‘poverty alleviation’, pointing out that these are not identical and
may indeed be contradictory activities, but that development workers often conflate the
two (Ferguson, 1994: 15). In proclaiming that through poverty alleviation, GMS citizens
will be enabled to deal with a globalized economy, the ADB suggests that poverty
alleviation and economic growth are part of a singular process.
ADB texts ignore power relations at national and local scales, including the fact that
China, Thailand and increasingly Vietnam have much more robust economies than other
GMS countries, and that powerful political and corporate actors are likely to benefit most
from projects favouring infrastructure. Fundamental ADB (2004) goals, such as the ‘three
Cs’ – connectivity among states, competitiveness as an economic bloc and a sense of
regional community – are challenged in the papers to follow, especially the notion of a
regional community composed of GMS ‘citizens’. Rural people, especially minority
farmers and traders, seem not to be recognized as members of the GMS community.
In Bounding the Mekong, Jim Glassman maintains that GMS regionalization has been
replete with politics (Glassman, 2010). He critiques the notion of development oppor-
tunities for all citizens in the GMS, claiming that regionalization entails uneven devel-
opment and economic integration, processes that are advantageous to some but not to
others (Glassman, 2010: 37). Using a class-based analysis, he argues that the interests of
elite political and business players, largely located in urban capitals, have driven much
of the GMS infrastructure development and capital investments. ‘Economic integration’
has meant that Bangkok, Kunming (China) and Beijing have become enhanced sites for
trade and financial investment, allowing these centres to increase economic connections
with the rest of East Asia and the world (Glassman, 2010: 37). At the same time,
Myanmar and Laos continue to be marginal, or are more disadvantaged by regional
financial and natural resource flows (Glassman, 2010: 45–46). Glassman points out that
among those left out in GMS regionalization are small-holder farmers and cross-border
Introduction – regionalization at the margins 5

traders, since the ADB has in fact invested little in agriculture or actual cross-border
trade, including that of ethnic minorities. Glassman’s study also emphasizes the ongoing
importance of the state. He contends that regionalization has not weakened or under-
mined the state, since regionalization runs ‘on the tracks of the state,’ meaning that
national policies and bilateral agreements are the drivers of ‘regionalization’.
Another take on ‘region’ or ‘area’ is Willem van Schendel’s (2002) examination of
academic ‘area studies’. He asserts that area studies, such as the study of Southeast Asia,
have largely focused on heartlands and neglected national and regional peripheries. To
counter this trend, he suggests research on an ‘area’, which he calls Zomia, comprised
of the borderlands across mountainous mainland Southeast, East and Central Asia and
extending into northeastern India. He contends that these contiguous borderlands
constitute a ‘region’ characterized by long-standing shared ideas and lifeways, related
languages and ‘ancient trade networks’ (van Schendel, 2002: 653–54). Van Schendel
emphasizes the importance of the interrelated cultures and histories of borderland
inhabitants. In the mid-twentieth century, these peoples became separated into ‘minori-
ties’ on the edges of nation-states, and more recently have been enclosed within the
GMS. As van Schendel notes, these national and regional rescalings have changed
power relations in ways that strengthened some actors and disempowered others (van
Schendel, 2002: 658). To make sense of borderland transformations, he recommends
that we pay attention to cultures and long-distance mountain connections; trace the
politics of trans-border mobility and new forms of regulation for goods and people; and
follow ‘process geographies’ productive of new scales (van Schendel, 2002: 663).
Understanding that borderland peoples have their own complex histories and trade
linkages raises a set of critical questions. To the extent that minorities on the periphery
are ‘poor’, how did they become so? In what ways does an economic region that
concentrates on the heartlands exacerbate marginalization and poverty? In what ways
do minorities participate in process geographies that generate new scales? Upland
minority peoples in the GMS have in general been dispossessed of land and forests,
impoverished and blamed for environmental problems, whether by governments or
regional environment and development projects (Sturgeon et al., forthcoming). Nega-
tive stereotypes of upland shifting cultivators that circulate in international develop-
ment circles tend to reinforce national policy makers who already stigmatize and blame
mountain peoples (Vandergeest, 2003). These findings, however valid, also bear picking
apart to reveal localized dynamics.
In this special section, we fill in nuanced pictures of the effects of regionalization on
people at the GMS margins, especially ethnic minorities. We believe that the view from
the periphery can illuminate the centre. The papers pay close attention to power
relations at multiple scales, as well as to regional and local histories. Our studies draw
on the understanding of regionalization as uneven development that benefits some
people and undermines others. We also note instances showing the importance of
interlinked upland cultures and trade networks, and the remaking of power relations
wrought by the rescaling of countries or regions, especially in areas of fragmented or
overlapping sovereignty. In our cases the results are varied and sometimes unexpected,
depending on local social histories, particular policies and their implementation, and the
actions of minority farmers and traders in adjusting to quick transformations. In our
analyses, ‘marginal’ ethnic minority farmers and cross-border traders are not always
disadvantaged by more porous borders, and in some cases have created new ‘centres’ of
cross-border investment and entrepreneurial trade. At the same time, however,
large-scale regional poverty alleviation and opium substitution projects, such as those
6 Janet C. Sturgeon

implemented by Chinese companies in Laos and Myanmar, and large dam projects in
Myanmar indirectly sponsored by the ADB, have often led to dispossession, increased
poverty and insecurity for upland minority farmers. Within countries, we also focus on
national policies and their erratic and sometimes corrupt implementation by state actors
and others in the borderlands. ‘Regulation’ of goods and people crossing borders con-
stitutes an important focus in our work.
Our papers are not local case studies, however. Our analyses bridge the gap between
regional and local scales by using multi-sited ethnographies that include interviews
with state agents, farmers, corporate managers, military officers, researchers, non-
governmental organization staff, development workers (including from the ADB) and
traders. We examine regionalization through the lens of ethnic minority experience in
the context of infrastructure development, new national policies, extensive trade net-
works, international development and opium eradication projects. Our work reveals the
multiple ways that ADB plans have ignored or impoverished minorities on the margins,
including illegal migrants and labourers, as well as important ways that minorities have
indirectly benefited.
These five articles vary in the level of engagement with ADB projects and use
differing conceptual approaches, but each paper presents processes and outcomes of
cross-border trade, investments, knowledge-sharing and migration (see Figure 1). The
first two papers look at cross-border trade. Examining the upland Sino-Vietnamese
borderlands, Sarah Turner describes the GMS North-South Economic Corridor as an
opportunity for the governments of Vietnam and China to extend state territorialization
in border locales. In response, small-scale traders have reworked long-distance trade
networks, trade goods and the use of informal border crossings to create new ‘trading-
scapes’. Traders both avoid and take advantage of new state border regulations, enabling
traders to fashion culturally appropriate livelihoods. Antonella Diana focuses on the
governing of subjects and objects’ mobility in the context of trans-border rice and corn
trade on the China-Laos frontier. She describes how Tai Lue traders from China relied
on a variety of ‘border strategies’ to become successful under state experiments with
flexible governance to promote regional trade, only to be undermined later by the
convergence of restored authoritarian governance with emerging frontier corporate
groups that halted Tai Lue trans-border ventures.
The next paper examines conditions for minorities from Myanmar under regional-
ization. Analyzing migrants crossing the Myanmar-Thailand border, Sai Latt questions
whether policy makers at various scales have genuinely taken up the notion of a ‘GMS
community’, when ADB promotion of ‘nationalized regulation’ of Shan from Myanmar
working in Thailand has resulted not only in proliferating processes and fees for formal
migrant regulation, but also informal extortion and extra-legal regulations that under-
mine migrants’ security and ability to make an income.
The final two articles examine cross-border relations between Laos and China in
relation to rubber cultivation. Yayoi Lagerqvist’s article focuses on Muang Sing on the
Lao side of the Chinese border. State and development agency planners in Laos envi-
sioned integrated development projects to zone the Muang Sing frontier with land use
plans designed to pull backward, remote hill minorities out of poverty. Minority farmers
and traders, meanwhile, have used their creativity and cross-border connections to seize
rapidly changing opportunities, most recently rubber cultivation, to improve their
incomes in ways that are largely successful and beyond government control. Janet
Sturgeon analyzes these same cross-border dynamics from the vantage point of ethnic
minority rubber farmers in Xishuangbanna, China, who have become rich on rubber
Introduction – regionalization at the margins 7

Figure 1. Location of research sites in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

cultivation and are forging share-holding arrangements with kin in Laos to help them
plant rubber. While strengthening cross-border ties, these arrangements also anchor the
Xishuangbanna farmers as citizens of a country with a booming economy. Farmers in
China are the ‘modern’ ‘dispensers of development’ to farmers in Laos who are ‘back-
ward’ and ‘poor’.
Each case study presents a different set of cross-border dynamics, even those set in
the same locale. We can nonetheless point to some noteworthy themes and conclusions
in relation to regionalization for borderland minorities:
(1) The importance of interrogating ‘regionalization’ to unsettle visions of the even
spread of economic growth to all people and places.
(2) The importance of national policies and bilateral agreements on the effects of
regionalization at the margins.
8 Janet C. Sturgeon

(3) The value of interrogating ‘margins’ to reveal the histories, power relations and
the agency of border farmers and traders in crafting their own cross-border
arrangements.
(4) The role of borderland power brokers in the vacillating and corrupt local imple-
mentation of national initiatives.
(5) The vulnerability of minorities to exploitation and abuse by state and business
actors seeking to expropriate their land, labour and trade operations.
(6) The importance of cross-border mobility and its regulation.
(7) The value of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in uncovering the uneven and
contested dynamics on the GMS margins.
As these case studies show, neither regional nor national decision makers have
focused on peripheral minorities as beneficiaries of regionalization, nor were minorities
expected to forge their own trans-border investments and trade. To the extent that
minorities have become successful, these outcomes may be fragile and transitory. Even
though ADB documents explicitly endorse ‘cross-border trade, mobility and investment’
as development strategies for rural people, rural minorities who have accomplished
these very things are still at risk from public and private power brokers in border locales
who are poised to take over production and trade that minority entrepreneurs have
pioneered. These unfavourable outcomes would not be direct results of economic
regionalization, but they would be reinforced by ADB plans and rhetoric that ignore the
borderland actors and power relations that constitute the borders where nation-states
meet to form a ‘region’. Where regionalization has produced violent and oppressive
outcomes, such as for migrants from Myanmar to Thailand, the ADB has managed to
turn a blind eye. In spite of rhetoric proclaiming economic growth for all citizens across
the GMS region, regionalization at the margins was not what the ADB had in mind.
Regionalization based on economics and economic growth may indeed produce higher
aggregate incomes, but it ignores the complex and shifting scalar arrangements, multi-
scalar politics, violence, ethnic minority trade networks and cultural relations that
actually animate what the ADB has fashioned as a singular ‘region’.

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