The Friction of Cartography: On the Politics of Space and Mobility among Migrant Communities in the Thai–Burma Borderlands

Abstract

The dominant approach to understanding migration in the Thai–Burma borderlands frames migration largely as an economic effect of industrialization in Thailand and economic stagnation in Burma. Drawing on a range of secondary sources and long-term field-based research on the Thai–Burma border, this article pursues a different approach, seeking to situate current migration trends in a historical and political context. James Scott's recent work on Zomia and upland Southeast Asia is instrumental here. Key factors Scott cites as drivers of flight from state space over the longue durée—taxation, forced or corvée labor, and war and rebellion—remain strikingly relevant today. This article examines the applicability of Scott's migration analysis to contemporary mobility patterns in the Thai–Burma borderlands, proposing two concepts that highlight the politics of mobility in this border area: the friction of cartography and migrant counter-topographies. The former evokes the protective quality of the border line itself, whereby ostensibly economic migrants who cross it achieve a measure of distance and refuge vis-à-vis Burma's predatory state structures, especially the military; the latter seeks to name the spaces created by migrants to evade forms and structures of state power, in both Thailand and Burma. I argue that today's migrant communities, far from being overdetermined reflections of recent trends in political economy, much resemble Scott's state-evading peasants from centuries past, displaying political agency and intentionality in their strategic use of space to seek and secure refuge in the Thai–Burma borderlands.