Across Asia, the nexus between global capital flows, changing economic policies, infrastructural connectivity, migration and aspirations for modernity are rapidly transforming borderlands. From remote, peripheral backyards to front-yards of economic development and state-building, Asian borderlands are increasingly becoming the ‘face of the nation’ as a result of ‘Development Zones’.
Development Zones’ are socio-spatial manifestations of shifts in global and national economic/political policies towards greater economic productivity and illustrate an intricate nexus of regulatory environment, speculative investment, exploitation and/or securitization of resources and populations. Their proliferation in and along Asian borderlands herald the emergence of new forms of territorialisation, assemblage and socio-spatial changes. Cognizant of these processes and the transformations underway in different parts of Asian borderlands, ‘Development Zones in Asian Borderlands’ offers a new analytical framework for thinking of borderlands as pivotal spaces of capital accumulation, experimentation and dispossession.