New European–Southeast Asian Research on the Region: Conclusions of the SEATIDE Project on "Integration in Southeast Asia, Trajectories of Inclusion, Dynamics of Exclusion"

Abstract

SEATIDE brought together fifty researchers from nine European and Southeast Asian institutions to research national and regional integration in Southeast Asia. Its conclusions examine the impact of the region’s past on its present, including the colonial and Cold War periods, and the persistence of pre-colonial principalities as cultural regions. Nation-building is analysed in the light of assimilation policies, while borders, transnationalism and connectivity are the focus of discussion of regional integration. Other themes include mobility, gender and work; development models and the environment; state centrality, human security and the “ASEAN integration conundrum”; and an “integration/exclusion nexus” showing that integration involves exclusions by its very nature.