“Where is the border?” Villagers, environmental consultants and the ‘work’ of the Thai–Burma border

Highlights

• Southeast Asia border studies in conversation with political geography debates.

• Co-production as an approach to the study of “borders from the bottom up.”

• The border as site and process of struggle for border residents, other actors.

Abstract

This article examines how Thai–Burma border residents are enrolled and engaged in remaking the political border through their knowledge practices and performances, or their own “borderwork”. Border residents do not perform this work alone, but in connection with other actors including environmental consultants. In order to highlight this co-production of the political border, I bring together border studies scholarship that see borders as process and performance with work in science studies that has highlighted the way that knowledge and order are co-produced. The importance of this approach is that it facilitates an understanding of the multifaceted and contradictory work to remake the border by multiple actors, a way to study “borders from the bottom up” that illustrates how the border is continually enacted. While this article puts forth the notion that the border represents an important site and process of struggle and negotiation in which marginalized communities invest, it also questions the assumption that because residents are engaged in remaking the border, the border is necessarily more ‘democratic’. The discussion and empirical data presented in this article also speak to broader debates in political geography about how borders are remade through practice and performance.

Introduction

Where is the border?¹ An older Karen man posed this question during a hearing conducted as part of the decision-making process around the Hatgyi dam proposed along the Thai–Burma border. While the question was asked about one border in particular, it can also be considered part of a larger discussion on political borders. It speaks directly, for instance, to a recent article in this journal (Johnson et al., 2011: 61), which through a series of interventions pointedly asks “where is the border” in border studies?

In conversation with these questions, I argue in this article that residents at the Thai–Burma border are invested in remaking that border through their own “borderwork” (Rumford, 2008a, Rumford, 2008b). In other words, they undertake and are invested in work that manages and remakes the political border, and this runs in contrast to the notion that border residents in Southeast Asia exclusively resist or circumvent the border.

Highlighting the borderwork of residents matters to the study of borders because it shows the extent that conventional border studies continue to privilege the idea of a centralized nation-state. Border studies has too often ignored that the processes of bordering and being bordered are often simultaneous and complementary, and occur at scales that are both bound up with and unbound from nation-states. These parallel and overlapping acts, which require the participation and the active narrative and physical efforts of residents, are the concern of this article.

This borderwork also matters to border residents, such as the individual who raised the question of the border's location. Studies that ignore or that position border residents and other actors as peripheral to political borders also ignore their roles as agents in borderwork. However, I am not proposing that residents act independently or are conducting this borderwork alone. Borderwork is an act of co-production carried out in connection with other individuals and institutions.

Drawing work in political geography into conversation with scholarship in science studies, the research presented here conceptualizes the political border as something that is continually performed and enacted. This conceptualization facilitates an understanding of the multifaceted and contradictory work by multiple actors to remake the border, and offers a way to study “borders from the bottom up”. Acknowledging and examining borders as work can provide an understanding of the process of bordering and of the potentially overlooked relationships between border residents, officials, activists, and environmental consultants, as all engage with the presence and implications of the political border itself. This approach highlights that borders, in their recognition and daily operation, are accomplishments that require work and that must be maintained through their continual enactment and expression at multiple scales and sites.

The research I present here to make these arguments reflects the two intertwined stories of the Salween River-border in Southeast Asia: that of the political border, but also that of the river as a site and pathway for development. Delimited by the British to clarify colonial forestry operations, modern planning for five to six dams along the river-border poses questions for how the border will be transformed. I argue that the Salween case reveals an opportunity to understand how residents are enrolled and invested in border making. To make these arguments, this article draws on 12 months of research conducted in 2010–2011 at the Thai–Burma border, in addition to other locations within Thailand. I also incorporate and build on the rich literature on borders in Southeast Asia, as part of a move to de-center debates on borders and more seriously consider borders scholarship in Southeast Asian and other (post)colonial contexts.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows: first, I provide a more detailed explanation of the study of borders as work. Second, I briefly situate this research within the literature on Southeast Asia borders. Third, I introduce the research site and methods, and fourth, I illustrate how borderwork is carried out there and by whom, drawing on three examples: a participatory project called Tai Baan (“Villager Research”) done by border residents and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the work of environmental consultants who delivered the dam's EIA, and the public information disclosure hearings about the proposed dam that followed the EIA's initial delivery. Finally, I bring together the “work” of these actors to consider the implications and how they inform our understanding how borders are made as well as the motivations for bordering.