‘Frontier environments’ in Southeast Asia are much larger and more complex than mere borders and boundaries. Here, sharp conflict and strong cooperation exist side by side, with long-term ecological consequences. While frontiers attract economic migrants, smuggling of illicit commodities like drugs, and armed conflict, there is also potential for cooperation, ecological resilience, new communication networks and various forms of livelihood. Are there wiser ways to develop, collectively-manage, and govern these frontiers?
Canadian economic influences are playing a role in frontier environments in Southeast Asia through global development, and some Canadians have their origins there, too. This dialogue brings together people from public organizations and professionals who are active in long-term socio-economic development along borders and ecological frontiers.
Mainland Southeast Asia provides a rich context to understand and theorize the connections between frontiers, borders, governance, ethnicity and development. Edmund Leach called northern Burma a “frontier” whose multiethnic population did not cohere into a nation. Central governments often conceive of frontiers as emptiable spaces, ripe for colonization, development and resource extraction. In this region, borders often constrict or impinge on the everyday movements of people, goods, and ideas. Yet, in other ways, these borders are more porous and flexible than commonly understood, and to some people they offer a potential, not just a limit; they offer cooperation as well as conflict. Development projects provide a lens through which to understand how local, domestic and international aspirations and intentions intersect with and are transformed in the conjunctures of governance, ethnicity, borders and frontiers in Southeast Asia, and beyond.