Negotiating Remote Borderland Access: Small‐Scale Trade on the Vietnam–China Border |
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| Authors: | Laura Schoenberger Sarah Turner |
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| Institution: | 1. completed an MA in Geography at McGill University, Montréal, Quebec H3A 2T5, Canada, and is currently working as a development consultant in Southeast Asia. Her research interests are borderlands, access, and upland livelihood dynamics in Southeast Asia.;2. is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec H3A 2T5, Canada. Her research focuses on upland trade and highlander livelihoods in Northern Vietnam, and small‐scale trade and entrepreneurship in rural and urban Vietnam and Eastern Indonesia. |
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| Abstract: | This article explores the cross‐border trading networks and practices of highland residents in north‐west Vietnam. It reveals how such individuals, of highland minority and majority Kinh ethnicities, negotiate the political reality of an international border in highly pragmatic ways as they augment their livelihoods by trading commodities with inhabitants in south‐west China. We follow four particular commodities, traded across different political tiers of border crossing (each with specific rules, regulations and negotiations), by a diverse range of traders. In doing so we argue that border access is mediated by a complex and multifaceted set of social and structural components including not only state policy, but ethnically‐embedded social relations and specific geographic variables that, in turn, are engendering disparate economic opportunities. |
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