Bordering on immoral: Piracy, education, and the ethics of cross-border cooperation in the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle

Abstract

The constructed and contingent nature of state borders raises a host of ethical questions regarding their legitimacy and the moral standing of the consequences they engender. This ‘ethical dimension’ is frequently central to how people living in border regions regard both the border and those living on either side of it. Studying border practices as ethical action offers important insights into borderland subjectivities and the factors underpinning the success or failure of cross-border cooperation. This argument is advanced with reference to the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle, a transnational arrangement which has been argued to herald the inception of the ‘borderless world’. Although in reality the region remains highly ‘bordered’, notions of ‘borderlessness’ endure as a normative ethical good for inhabitants of Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago. Their ethical stance subverts satisfying collaborations with Singaporeans in the fields of education and maritime security, and ironically works to propagate a sense of national cultural difference.