297. Transnational Borderland Identities in Southeast Asia. Sponsored by AAS SEAC Rising Voices

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

As Southeast Asia becomes increasingly globalized, and as mobility increases due to a number of technological, economic, political, environmental and social factors, new scholarship in the region has been transcending national borders, and considering the aspirations and identities associated with transboundary issues. This panel focuses on the ways that national borders and various types of boundaries are affecting the lives and identities of people from Southeast Asia. To do this, panelists examine the ways that rural identities are being formed and reformed through transnational mobility and exploitative relations on both sides of national borders; the ways that kinship relations are being affected by memories of mobility; the ways that various discourses and narratives about development and environment, particularly related to large-scale hydropower dams on transboundary rivers, are being affected by national identities and politics; and the ways that gendered narratives related to reproductive health issues are shaping the lives of transboundary female migrant workers. Combining perspectives originating from sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, development studies, and inter-Asia studies, and drawing upon case studies situated in Cambodia and Thailand; the Central Philippines; Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam; and Thailand and South Korea, the panel papers provide illuminating interdisciplinary and transboundary examinations of how national borders and cross-boundary mobility are affecting the ways that identities are being constructed and shaped. The varied but linked case studies that the papers draw upon provide fascinating and incisive views of processes that are affecting borderlands and border identities in Asia.

Area of Study

• Southeast

Session Organizer

• Ian G. Baird, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Chair

• Ian G. Baird, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Individual Presentations

• Negotiating Life Course and Social Change through Transnational Mobility: Cambodian Labor Migrants in Thailand - Chivoin Peou, Royal University of Phnom Penh

• Globalized Labor Market: State Security and Impacts on Women Migrant Workers - Lalita Yawangsan, Sungkonghoe University

• Multi-Sited Contestations along the Borderwaters of the Mekong: Discourse Analysis of Hydropower and Anti-Dam Movements in Cambodia and Laos - Ham Oudom, Center for Khmer Studies

• Intimate Borders and Long-Distance Journeys: Migration and the Life of Kinship in the Central Philippines - Resto S. Cruz, School of Social and Political Science

Discussant

• Ian G. Baird, University of Wisconsin, Madison