Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T06:41:23.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Rural to Urban: A Geography of Boundary Crossing in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Jonathan Rigg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Migration, mobility, and movement are the inter-linked processes which provide the empirical scaffold for this paper. The paper uses this empirical framing to reflect on a series of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges for scholars of Southeast Asia. Mobility and associated geographical (spatial) boundary crossings have raised questions about the analytical units employed in research; the unsettling of these analytical units has challenged whether conceptual categories still have explanatory purchase; and the fracturing of conceptual categories has implications for the theoretical frameworks that scholars have traditionally deployed. Drawing on field research undertaken in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam the paper argues that evolving mobilities in the region, particularly in rural areas, require a degree of explanatory ‘catch-up’ on the part of scholars as we try to keep pace with the rate of change in the countryside. Instead of focusing on households in space, we should be trying to map out the networked relations that link lives and individuals across national and transnational space. The paper further argues that we should focus our attention on local-level dynamics associated with societal change, settlement dynamism and sustainability, population turbulence, and evolving cultural preferences which operate partly independently of the rural development project, thus highlighting the shifting web of mutual dependencies and interdependencies that shape lives and living patterns.

Keywords

mobilitymigrationhouseholdsrural changelivelihoods
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 1 , Special Issue 1: Movement, Motion, and the (Im-)Permeability of Boundaries , January 2013 , pp. 5 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Institute of East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amyot, Jacques. 1976. Village Ayutthaya: Social and Economic Conditions of a Rural Population in Central Thailand. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute.Google Scholar
ARTEP. 1973. Transition and development: employment and income generation in Laos. Report on a mission to Laos by the Asian Regional Team for Employment Generation (ARTEP).Google Scholar
Baker, Chris. 2003. Thinking about the Future of the Thai Countryside. Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund.Google Scholar
Bell, Michael M. 2007. The two-ness of rural life and the ends of rural scholarship. Journal of Rural Studies 23(4), 402–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, Donald R. 1967. A refinement of the concept of household: families, coresidence, and domestic functions. American Anthropologist 69(5), 493–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouahom, Bounthong, Douangsavanh, Linkham and Rigg, Jonathan. 2004. Building sustainable livelihoods in the Lao PDR: untangling farm from non-farm, progress from distress. Geoforum 35, 607–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breman, Jan. 1980. The Village on Java and the Early-Colonial State. Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Program, Erasmus University.Google Scholar
Breman, Jan, Kloos, Peter and Saith, Ashwani (eds.), 1997. The Village in Asia Revisited. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Caouette, Therese, Sciortino, Rosalina, Guest, Philip and Feinstein, Alan. 2007. Labor migration in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Rockefeller Foundation report. Available at: http://apmrn.anu.edu.au/regional_members/LaborMigration%20in%20GMS.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
Dapice, David, Gomez-Ibanez, Jose A. and Thanh, Nguyen Xuan. 2010. Ho Chi Minh City: The challenges of growth. Harvard Kennedy School, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Policy Dialogue Paper number 2, HCMC: UNDP (January). Available at: http://www.undp.org.vn/detail/publications/publicationdetails/?contentId=3516&languageId=1 (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
Davis, Mike. 2004. Planet of slums: urban involution and the informal proletarian. New Left Review 26, 5–34.Google Scholar
Davis, Mike. 2006. Planet of Slums. London and New York: Verso.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dercon, Stefan. 2009. Rural poverty: old challenges in new contexts. World Bank Research Observer 24(1), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dick, Howard W. and Rimmer, Peter J. 1998. Beyond the Third World city: the new urban geography of South-east Asia. Urban Studies 35(12), 2303–2321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eder, James F. 1999. A Generation Later: Household Strategies and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Ekejiuba, Felicia. 2005. Down to fundamentals: women-centred hearth-holds in rural West Africa. In Cornwall, Andrea (ed.), Readings in Gender in Africa, pp. 41–46. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Fukui, Hayao. 2003. Migration and the variability of rice production in a Northeast Thai village. Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 12, 107–17.Google Scholar
Funahashi, Kazuo. 1996. Farming by the older generation: the exodus of young labor in Yasothon Province, Thailand. Southeast Asian Studies 33(4), 107–21.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jim. 2004. Thailand at the Margins: Internationalization of the State and the Transformation of Labour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GSO. 2006, November. The 2004 Vietnam Migration Survey: the quality of life of migrants in Vietnam. General Statistics Office and United Nations Population Fund, Hanoi.Google Scholar
Halfacree, Keith. 2007. Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: introducing alternative localities, representations and lives. Journal of Rural Studies 23(2), 125–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, Andrew. 2001. Rules and resources: negotiating the household registration system in Vietnam under reform. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 16(2), 187–212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirsch, Philip. 2002. What is the Thai village?. in Reynolds, Craig J. (ed.), National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand Today, pp. 262–276. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Jones, Gavin W. 1997. The thoroughgoing urbanisation of East and Southeast Asia. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 38(3), 237–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Gavin W., Tsay, Ching-lung and Bajracharya, Bhishna. 1999. Demographic and employment change in megacities of South-East and East Asia. Working Papers in Demography 80. Demography Programme, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. Available at: https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/41462/4/80.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
Kemp, Jeremy. 1988. Seductive Mirage: The Search for the Village Community in Southeast Asia. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kemp, Jeremy. 1989. Peasants and cities: the cultural and social image of the Thai peasant community. Sojourn 4(1), 6–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemp, Jeremy. 1991. The dialectics of village and state in modern Thailand. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 22(2), 312–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keyes, Charles. 2010, May 26. Dealing with ‘the devil’, the reds and looking within. Bangkok Post.Google Scholar
Kundu, Amitabh. 2009. Urbanisation and migration: an analysis of trend, pattern and policies in Asia. Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/16 (April), United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/papers/HDRP_2009_16.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
Martin, Philip. 2009. Migration in the Asia-Pacific region: Trends, factors, impacts. Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/32 (August), United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
McGee, Terry. 1989. Urbanisasi or kotadesasi? Evolving patterns of urbanization in Asia. In Costa, Frank J., Dutt, Ashok K., Ma, Lawrence J.C. and Noble, Allen G. (eds.), Urbanization in Asia: Spatial Dimensions and Policy Issues, pp.93–108. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGee, Terry. 1991. The emergence of desakota regions in Asia: expanding a hypothesis. In Ginsburg, Norton, Koppel, Bruce and McGee, T.G. (eds.), The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia, pp. 3–25. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
McGee, Terry. 2003, September. Distinctive urbanization in the peri-urban regions of East and Southeast Asia: (1) renewing the debate. Paper presented at the 7th International Congress of Asian Planning Schools Association, Hanoi, Vietnam.Google Scholar
McGee, Terry. 2009. Interrogating the production of urban space in China and Vietnam under market socialism. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 50(2), 228–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nartsupha, Chatthip. 1999. The Thai Village Economy in the Past (Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, trans.). Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Newland, Kathleen. 2009. Circular migration and human development. Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/42 (October), United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/newland_HDRP_2009.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
Nguyen, Tuan Anh, Rigg, Jonathan, Huong, Luong Thi Thu and Dieu, Dinh Thi. 2012. Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural-urban migration and relations in Viet Nam. Journal of Peasant Studies 39.Google Scholar
Phongpaichit, Pasuk. 1980. Economic and Social Transformation of Thailand, 1957–1976. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute.Google Scholar
Ouyyanont, Porphant. 1998. Bangkok as a magnet for rural labour: changing conditions, 1900–1970. Southeast Asian Studies 36(1), 79–108.Google ScholarPubMed
Rigg, Jonathan. 2007. Moving lives: migration and livelihoods in the Lao PDR. Population, Space and Place 13(3), 163–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigg, Jonathan and Salamanca, Albert. 2011. Connecting lives and places: mobility and spatial signatures in Northeast Thailand, c.1982–2008. Critical Asian Studies 43(4), 551–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigg, Jonathan and Vandergeest, Peter (eds.). 2012. Revisiting Rural Places: Pathways to poverty and prosperity in Southeast Asia. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press and Honolulu: Hawaii University Press.Google Scholar
Rigg, Jonathan, Suriya Veeravongs, Rohitarachoon, Piyawadee and Veeravongs, Lalida. 2010a. A revolution in the Thai handicraft industry? Handicrafts, integration and rural development in northern Thailand. In Agergaard, Jytte, Fold, Niels and Gough, Katherine V. (eds.), Rural-Urban Dynamics: Livelihoods, Mobility and Markets in African and Asian Frontiers, pp. 116–132. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rigg, Jonathan, Veeravongs, Suriya, Rohitarachoon, Piyawadee and Veeravongs, Lalida. 2010b. From farm to factory: village change in a rice-growing region. In Agergaard, Jytte, Fold, Niels and Gough, Katherine V. (eds.), Rural-Urban Dynamics: Livelihoods, Mobility and Markets in African and Asian Frontiers, pp. 143–150. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rigg, Jonathan, Veeravongs, Suriya, Veeravongs, Lalida and Rohitarachoon, Piyawadee. 2008. Reconfiguring rural spaces and remaking rural lives in Central Thailand. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39(3), 355–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodrik, Dani. 2007. One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, institutions, and economic growth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sattayanurak, Attachak. 2010. Changes in the perception of ‘Thai rural society’ and a new model for resource management (Working paper no. 455). Institute of Developing Economies.Google Scholar
Shigetomi, Shinichi. 2004. Multi-household farming system in a Northeastern Thai village: its transformation during economic development. Sojourn 19(1), 28–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tapp, Nicholas and Hirsch, Philip (eds.). 2010. Anthropological Traces: Thailand and the Work of Andew Turton. Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Thompson, Eric C. 2004. Rural villages and socially urban spaces in Malaysia. Urban Studies 41(12), 2357–2376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Eric C. 2007. Unsettling Absences: Place, Migration, and Urbanism in Rural Malaysia. Singapore: NUS Press. Google Scholar
Tirtosudarm, Riwanto. 2009. Mobility and human development in Indonesia. Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/19 (April), United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
United Nations Habitat. 2009. Planning sustainable cities: global report on human settlements 2009. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). Available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/GRHS2009/GRHS.2009.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme. 2007. Thailand human development report 2007: sufficiency economy and human development. Bangkok: UNDP. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/nationalreports/asiathepacific/thailand/THAILAND_2007_en.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
UNDP. 2009. Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming Barriers – Human Mobility and Development. New York: UNDP.Google Scholar
UNDP. 2010, July. Internal Migration and Socio-Economic Development in Viet Nam: A Call to Action. Hanoi: UNDP.Google Scholar
Walker, Andrew. 1999a. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Andrew. 1999b. Women, space, and history: long-distance trading in northwestern Laos. In Evans, G. (ed.), Laos: Culture and Society, pp. 79–99. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Walker, Andrew. 2007. Beyond the rural betrayal: lessons from the Thaksin era for the Mekong region. Paper presented at the International Conference on Critical Transitions in the Mekong Region, Chiang Mai, 29-31 January. Available at: http://rcsd.soc.cmu.ac.th/InterConf/paper/paper1.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2012).Google Scholar
World Bank. 2003, September. Urban poverty in East Asia: a review of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam (East Asia working paper no. 11). Urban Sector Development Unit, East Asia Infrastructure Department.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2008. Vietnam development report 2008. Joint Donor Report to the Vietnam Consultative Group Meeting, Hanoi, December 6–7.Google Scholar