From Rural to Urban: A Geography of Boundary Crossing in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Migration, mobility, and movement are the inter-linked processes which provide the empirical scaffold for this paper. The paper uses this empirical framing to reflect on a series of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges for scholars of Southeast Asia. Mobility and associated geographical (spatial) boundary crossings have raised questions about the analytical units employed in research; the unsettling of these analytical units has challenged whether conceptual categories still have explanatory purchase; and the fracturing of conceptual categories has implications for the theoretical frameworks that scholars have traditionally deployed. Drawing on field research undertaken in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam the paper argues that evolving mobilities in the region, particularly in rural areas, require a degree of explanatory 'catch-up' on the part of scholars as we try to keep pace with the rate of change in the countryside. Instead of focusing on households in space, we should be trying to map out the networked relations that link lives and individuals across national and transnational space. The paper further argues that we should focus our attention on local-level dynamics associated with societal change, settlement dynamism and sustainability, population turbulence, and evolving cultural preferences which operate partly independently of the rural development project, thus highlighting the shifting web of mutual dependencies and interdependencies that shape lives and living patterns.

How Cities Erode Gender Inequality: A New Theory and Evidence from Cambodia

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Unravelling the Dynamics of Border Crossing and Rural‐to‐Rural‐to‐Urban Mobility in the Northeastern Thai–Lao Borderlands

“…Because the great majority of the population in the sending migrant countries remains involved in agricultural activities in rural areas, and because Thailand is significantly more urbanised than its neighbours (with the exception of Malaysia), international migration to Thailand has been analysed primarily as a linear movement from rural to urban areas. In particular, most previous studies on migration from Laos to Thailand have identified migrants' aspirations for modernity as a significant push factor for migration (Rigg, , , ; High, ; Huijsmans, ). This focus reinforces the rural‐to‐urban model and results in a lack of empirical data on the links between internal and international migration.…”

Continuity and change: Transformations in the urban history of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

“…Today, Cambodia's foreign policy focuses on establishing friendly borders with its neighbors, while remaining very rigid in terms of domestic real estate issues. Second, Cambodia is in the middle of a transition from a land of abundance to a land scarcity (Rigg, 2003(Rigg, , 2013. The land no longer belongs to its tiller as traditional occupational rights were lost.…”