Organising AIDS in the borderless world: A case study from the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle*

Abstract

Abstract: Tropes of borderlessness are pervasive both in discourses concerning the spread of HIV/AIDS and the Growth Triangle, a transnational economic zone that ideally binds together the Indonesian island of Batam, the Malaysian province of Johor and Singapore. This paper considers how the emergence of HIV as a problem in the Growth Triangle, and on Batam in particular, has been framed as a problem to be addressed in context of the nation-state rather than as a transnational problem that demands cooperation across borders. In conjunction with this, it focuses on further attempts to create boundaries around HIV, through the identification of risk groups, the localisation of prostitutes and the distribution of condoms. The paper focuses particular attention on the relationship between Batam and Singapore, and how non-governmental organisations and governments have dealt with HIV/AIDS issues in both places. Furthermore, it problematises these activities by paying ethnographic attention to other forms of cultural and economic logics that often are odds with prevention models. This raises important questions concerning, most specifically, the problems of HIV prevention and cross-border cooperation, and, more generally, the regulation and formation of new kinds of borders in a ‘borderless world’.