Introduction

Bruns, Bettina; Miggelbrink, Judith

doi:10.1007/978-3-531-93273-6_1

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Although motorcycle smuggling is a recent occurrence, the investigation of its organization described above has shown that it embodies the two main features – local knowledge and social networks – that also sustained the traditional mule caravan trade. While these features also prevail in the informal trade elsewhere, as pointed out by Bruns and Miggelbrink (2012: 11), their contents and patterns differ from culture to culture or region to region. It is thus meaningful to adopt a long historical perspective to compare the relevant economic activities of a certain region during different periods and trace the line of change and continuity.…”

Section: From Mule Caravans To Motorcycle Bandsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Although, on the one hand, the legal disparity creates obstacles to the smooth flow of commodities via the official border gate, it has also created economic opportunities for Burmese people who have demonstrated a high demand for motorcycles (at least until 2014) and are willing to take the risk in order to make a living via unofficial channels. Therefore, in this case, the border not only denotes the state's territorial sovereignty, but has also become what Bruns and Miggelbrink (2012: 15) call an “economic resource” for the people, which is derived from “differences in demand and supply, differences of taxation [and] differences in the legality of trading certain goods”.…”

Section: Nodes Of Suppliers From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the ‘New’ Burma Road: From Mule Caravans to Motorcycle Bands

Chang

2017

TRaNS

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Since the opening of the Sino-Burmese border trade in 1988, the movement of goods and people from both sides has increased rapidly. In 2011, China became Burma's largest trading partner and over half the total volume of goods was accrued in cross-border trade via Yunnan. However, national figures on import-export volumes are derived solely from legal flows, while contraband is largely overlooked. To date, academic studies on contraband have remained insufficient, partly due to the difficulty accessing Burmese border areas, and partly due to the mere challenges in obtaining information about smuggling from those who engage in such activity. This paper, based on multiple fieldwork sites over several years, examines a particular contraband – the smuggling of Chinese motorcycles to Burma on the ‘new’ Burma Road. This shadow economy thrived between 2000 and 2014. While highlighting its economic rationality beyond state control, I attempt to make diachronic and synchronic comparisons by engaging with dialogues within the historical trading mechanism of the mule convoys in the region and also with theories of shadow economies generated from contemporary case studies in other parts of the world. I argue that the formation of this shadow economy is not haphazard but adheres to the ethos of the mule caravan trade, predicated on local knowledge and social networks.

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Section: From Mule Caravans To Motorcycle Bandsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Nodes Of Suppliers From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

On the ‘New’ Burma Road: From Mule Caravans to Motorcycle Bands

Chang

2017

TRaNS

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“…Shuttle trade is an intrinsically gray activity, balancing on the border between legal (bringing goods in allowed amounts via checkpoints) and illegal but just lightly penalized (or at least hard-to-trace) practices, such as falsely declaring that goods are brought for private use or the illicit sale of such goods in a destination country. 6 Still, it can be argued that there is a continuum between shuttle trade and petty smuggling and that one of these activities can easily turn into the other, depending on the rigidity of states' regulation policies. 7 While shuttle trade exists in many regions worldwide, it has been argued that such trade was particularly persistent in some post-Soviet and post-Socialist eastern golunov / Shuttle Trade across Russia's Borders 887 european countries in the 1990s.…”

Section: Background Key Features Of Shuttle Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 Still, it can be argued that there is a continuum between shuttle trade and petty smuggling and that one of these activities can easily turn into the other, depending on the rigidity of states' regulation policies. 7 While shuttle trade exists in many regions worldwide, it has been argued that such trade was particularly persistent in some post-Soviet and post-Socialist eastern golunov / Shuttle Trade across Russia's Borders 887 european countries in the 1990s. 8 In this case, a sharp rise in shuttle trade's popularity was caused by both "structural" and "neoliberal" factors, such as increased consumer demand coupled with inadequate supply, liberalization of the movement of people, severe economic crisis, and rising unemployment.…”

Section: Background Key Features Of Shuttle Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Shuttle Trade across Russia’s Borders with the Baltic States and Poland: Between Tolerance and Suppression

Golunov

2017

East European Politics and Societies

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The paper focuses on the phenomenon of borderland shuttle trade across Russia’s borders with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. I argue that borderland shuttle trade is more sustainable in comparison with long-haul shuttle trade, as the former gives entrepreneurs more flexibility, involves fewer transaction costs, and can rely on the extensive support of borderland communities. At the same time, it has some specific vulnerabilities, and its susceptibility to customs control and reliance on overloaded border crossing infrastructure are among the most important. Contrary to beliefs about contemporary states’ inability to exercise efficient control over informal cross-border flows in the age of globalization, this research demonstrates that over the course of time, states may be at least partially successful in suppressing informal cross-border trade. Ultimately, cross-border shuttle trade has proven to be vulnerable to more and more targeted restrictions and control practices. Still, it has also proven to be highly resistant to governmental crackdown in various ways, such as buying fuel from long-haul truck drivers or switching to trade in non-excisable goods or to low-penalty cigarette smuggling. The latter practice illustrates that shuttle trade is only part of the flexible informal cross-border economy and that it can be transformed into low-penalty smuggling when needed.

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“…3See Bettina Bruns and Judith Miggelbrink, eds., Subverting Borders: Doing Research on Smuggling and Small-Scale Trade (Heidelberg: VS Verlag, 2012) and David McMurray, In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown (Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 2001). …”

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confidence: 99%

Crossing the mountain and negotiating the border: Human smuggling in eastern Turkey

Biner

2018

New Perspect. Turk.

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Human smuggling is a complex process. Made up of actions both organized and chaotic, it compels migrants to deal with different structures and agents of power, among them smugglers, the state(s), and migrants’ own social networks. The current literature on human smuggling provides a detailed analysis of the different phases of this process, within which discussion of the structure and operation of this “business” can be situated. However, only minimal attention has been paid to migrants’ agency in the smuggling process. Engaging with recent perspectives in migration studies, which emphasize the need to conceptualize human smuggling by focusing on the interdependencies between the different actors involved, the analysis developed in this article aims to explore the different phases of the human smuggling process by focusing on the multilayered relations between smugglers and undocumented people. Drawing upon qualitative ethnographic fieldwork conducted with migrants on the Turkish-Iranian border, the article examines how the physical and sociopolitical conditions of border crossing affect people’s ways of thinking, behavior, and engagement with different structures of power. In doing so, the article attempts to further our understanding of how smuggled migrants mobilize their agency in such a way as to manipulate and challenge the system, as well as of how this process transforms migrants’ capacity to simultaneously recognize and unsettle state bordering practices.

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Introduction

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

On the ‘New’ Burma Road: From Mule Caravans to Motorcycle Bands

On the ‘New’ Burma Road: From Mule Caravans to Motorcycle Bands

Shuttle Trade across Russia’s Borders with the Baltic States and Poland: Between Tolerance and Suppression

Crossing the mountain and negotiating the border: Human smuggling in eastern Turkey

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