Zhuo Niu

Border closure was a widespread strategy for states globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Trubeta, Promitzer, and Weindling 2021). However, its impacts often extend beyond the pandemic period, intertwining with other socio-political dynamics in border regions and fostering different and sometimes polarized life realities for those living around borders. My research project focuses on a marginal city along the China-Myanmar border, aiming to explore the enduring impacts of COVID-19 embedded within the precarious political economy amid the post-pandemic border regime.

Centering my fieldwork in Ruili, Yunnan, the largest land port between China and Myanmar—once characterized by significant cross-border mobilities prior to the pandemic—my ethnographic research seeks to illuminate how the border in this region has shifted from a porous space to a heavily fortified one. This transformation was accelerated by China’s efforts to construct a thousand-mile-long border wall with Myanmar during the pandemic. This shift in border politics is also compounded by the fragmentation of the Myanmar state following the 2021 military coup, which has caused numerous wars between various armed groups and led to the displacement of countless Myanmar nationals.

A central objective of my research is to unravel the interplay between “Security vs. Development” that defines border politics here: on the one hand, the fortified border aims to secure the Chinese state from potential instabilities, including armed conflicts, refugee crises, drug trafficking, and other illicit economies. On the other hand, this newly rigid border regime partially allows entry to certain Burmese economic migrants, in the name of “selective inclusion” (Baban, Ilcan and Rygiel 2017; Su and Cai 2020), which seeks to supply cheap and “obedient” laborers to local businesses.

Another key focus of this research is to examine the often grim yet intimate “border struggles” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013) faced by various groups of border crossers, caught within the elusive tensions between the fortified Chinese state and the fragmented Myanmar state in the post-pandemic time. Their lived experiences reveal the potential for resilience amid solidarity, even under a harsh border regime. In this sense, these border crossers have become active agents, co-shaping the border itself by sustaining transnational migrant networks, setting up information-sharing groups, and more. Such self-organized efforts also offer insights into (potentially) making existing border politics more inclusive and adaptable.

Funding: German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Duration: October 2022 – October 2026

References:

Trubeta, Sevasti, C. Promitzer and P. Weindling. 2021. “Introduction: medicalising borders.” In Medicalising borders: selection, containment and quarantine since 1800, edited by Sevasti Trubeta, Christian Promitzer and Paul Weindling, 1-28. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Baban, Feyzi, S. Ilcan, and K. Rygiel. 2017. “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Pathways to Precarity, Differential Inclusion, and Negotiated Citizenship Rights.” Journal of ethnic and migration studies Vol 43 (1): 41-57.

Su, Xiaobo, and X. Cai. 2020. “Space of Compromise: Border Control and the Limited Inclusion of Burmese Migrants in China.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers Vol 110 (3): 847-863.

Mezzadra, Sandro, and B. Neilson. 2013. Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham: Duke Univ. Press.