border cities

Persons fleeing the fighting in Burma that choose a legal status have settled in refugee camps. Persons that have gone beyond the law and chosen an illegal livelihood have settled in urban an industrial areas around Bangkok, as well as in cities lining the border between Thailand and Burma. The largest city in the west of Thailand is Mae Sot. The Thai government applies special laws here for border partial citizenship in order to maintain the influx of vulnerable, cheap, disciplined workers.

"Cross-national border development has become an emerging contemporary global phenomenon. Volumes of cross-border trade, investments, and migration across national borders have increased exponentially over the past two decades in many areas of the world. Various intergovernmental agreements and spatial industrialization strategies for each nation have been proposed and implemented under the theme of sub-regional cooperation and regional development planning."

"One side of the border might engage in certain forms of development such as industry, tourism, and trade, as in the case of the Thai border towns at the Thai-Myanmar border. The other side across the border might engage in activities that are considered "illegal" by the adjacent national space, such as gambling and the pirate entertainment."

"Global restructuring in terms of international divisions of labor in production, rising foreign investment, and the economic and political transition from socialist to market economy of many countries in the region (such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia), as well as China's transitional economy, are crucial forces transforming the Southeast Asian region."

"In 1988 rapid economic and political changes in Myanmar, and Thailand's shifting economic and security policies towards her neighboring countries, triggered excessive cross-border development of the border frontier of both countries."

"On the one hand, various international development agencies, international and national consulting firms, and the state's planning and research development, have produced knowledge and rationale in favor of cross-border economic growth and sub-regional cooperation especially in terms of cross-border trade, investment and tourism. On the other hand, various humanitarian, alternative development, non-governmental organizations, and liberal and progressive academics have raised major concerns regarding the impacts of cross-border economic growth toward environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and life chances for a large number of illegal non-ethnic Burman immigrants."

"The debate over economic globalization is trivial, especially in terms of the belief in the declining role of the nation state against the tremendous global market economy expressed in the term "borderless world" (Ohmae 1995, 1999 and 2005). What actually takes place at the border is the articulation of spatial administration by various factions of the state agencies that regulate people, by the deployment of a certain set of territorializations. These are territorializations not only of cross-border activities (such as trade and investment regulation), but also internalized/bio-power territorializations, which are territorialization upon the body of the people. Thus, border regulation takes place both at the actual physical geographical space, and upon the physical body of population via a system of economic and political entitlements."

"The Thai government under the proposal of the National Economic and Social Development Board and the Industrial Estate Authority, is proposing a new "Special Economic Zone" policy. Selected border areas are under consideration to be promoted as Special Border Economic Zones, in an attempt to replicate the "success" stories of China's Special Economic Zone and the United States and Mexico’s Maquiladoras (in terms of foreign direct investment and effective administration of the area)."

"Cross-border development at the Thai-Myanmar border region will be continued in a paradoxical way; i.e. through the promotion of cross-regional collaboration among the neighboring countries in terms of trade, investment, and tourism, while simultaneously there will be an increase in a more confined and stringent border partial citizenship system."

recommendations for research to understand city and regional planning

"The Thai-Myanmar cross-border region was developed out of the tension at the conjuncture space of Myanmar's frontier and Thailand's border. The tension itself was a result of the internal dynamic of the respective national spaces. What take place at the border are social interactions at multiple layers of cross-border economy that range from criminal to informal and to formal activities. These multiple layers of cross-border economy are subject to both the internal dynamic of each national space and the way the connection between the two adjacent spaces develops."

"Studying the Thai-Myanmar cross-border development helps us understand that there has never been one single space at the border. Rather there exist two borders adjacent to each other; two practices of customs and immigrant border stations, one Thai, and one of Myanmar. The recognition of this is frequently lost on people from outside the cross-border area. Such an understanding makes seemingly simple categories and actions exponentially complex. What might at first glance appear to be a simple action (for example, “closing the border,”) may be enveloped in multiple layers of complexity in terms of trade, production, legal and illegal activities."

"The regulation over the body of the immigrant is enacted via the identification and enforcement process at the check-points of the outskirt of the town. Theses checkpoints are built on the highways leading to the provincial towns and to Bangkok the capital city of Thailand. These two regimes are the secret of the wealth accumulated and produced at the border towns. The regimes also lay the foundation for situations of primitive accumulation. The workers were invented as cheap and vulnerable labor, without political rights (e.g. to form a union), social rights (e.g. for welfare), or economic rights (e.g. to make decisions to move for better employment elsewhere). The systems of border partial citizenship ensure that the immigrant and immigrant workers are contained in the town; contained in a temporary situation, waiting in limbo for either citizenship or deportation."

"There was no discussion of the illegal immigrant workers’ political rights, social welfare, or economic freedoms in the proposal."

"The study of city and regional planning seems to be obsessed with space. Such an obsession precludes adequate attention to (if not completely excludes an understanding of) the point that people, not space, are central to planning issues. The case of border partial citizenship and the growth of the border town and cross-border region did not arise from the best or even explicit land use planning."

"Finally, unlike the saying that "Houses make a town, but citizens make a city" (Rousseau 1762 cited by Mumford 1961 in Castells 1983), which implies that people’s participation is crucial for urban development, what we learn from the system of border partial citizenship is that it is the city that makes the citizens. Planners and urban advocates seem to take it for granted that people in the city are citizens who have power to make change."

(Dr Pitch Pongsawat, Border Partial Citizenship, Border Towns, and Thai-Myanmar Cross-Border Development: Case Studies at the Thai Border Towns, 2007)

"Immediate documentation of migrants on arrival would put traffickers out of business, and brokers could only facilitate not manipulate the labour market. Migrants could travel freely to their places of work and then register with local authorities once they have found work.

More migrants might come, but more migrants might also return. Research has shown that the greater the restrictions placed on migration, the longer migrants stay put. Ease the restrictions and migrants can move with the economy, the labour flows and the normal patterns of ones life.

There is an urgent need for review of the policies towards migrants and towards Burma. Mass expulsion and mass unemployment of migrants without temporary passports in February 2010 is a repugnant solution; collective expulsions are inherently arbitrary and thus prohibited under international human-rights law. They invariably result in accidents, abuse and the separation of families.

Migrants are asking for policies which protect their rights and dignity as people, which enforce labour standards equal to their Thai counterparts, and which do not force them to live in states of insecurity, instability and dishonesty."

(Illegal Burmese migrants: caught between hiding or becoming legal, www.thaiburmanews.net November 20, 2009)