Cross-border Livelihood: Trade, labor, and internal displacement at the Myanmar-China Border

Abstract

Recently, forcefully displaced persons, including refugees and asylum seekers, have received increasing critical scrutiny in the literature.Little has been written about how those displaced persons adopt necessary tactics to improve their livelihood with or without external help, hindering important insights into their agency to negotiate with their harsh surroundings. To address these lacunae, this article examines Myanmar’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the border between Myanmar and China and how they cross the border for new livelihood opportunities. Our major finding is twofold. First, Myanmar IDPs are not allowed to enter into China as refugees or seek asylum status in China. While the door of refugee registration is closed, another door opens to allow these IDPs to explore opportunities of cross-border trade and jobs for livelihood improvement. Second, the Chinese state seems to stay away from direct control of these IDPs’ cross-border movement, but deploys a localized model of border control to shift IDPs’ subjectivity from refugees to border residents. This article contributes to the emerging literature on forcefully displaced persons, arguing that an analysis of livelihood improvement in northern Myanmar generates new insights into the geopolitics and biopolitics of border control. Conceptually, we offer cross-border livelihood as a valuable concept through which to analyze various tactical means used by displaced persons to achieve a relatively good life. Cross-border livelihood is a mode of survival that works through living with cross-border networks based on place- based differentials.