Navigating Small-Scale Trade Across Thai-Lao Border Checkpoints: Legitimacy, Social Relations and Money

ABSTRACT

Marked in part by a narrow river, the border between the neighbouring provinces of Loei in Thailand and Sayaboury in the Lao PDR appears to be porous and unregulated. While a Friendship Bridge regulates large-scale international trade, an extensive amount of informal, small-scale trade continues to flow across smaller checkpoints and other parts of the river. Trade along these sites is not only highly organised, most of it also happens under the gaze of border officials. This article examines the material and power exchanges that occur at local checkpoints between the different actors involved in the facilitation and restriction of trade. Between Loei and Sayaboury, trade is regulated according to a spectrum of licitness that is constantly negotiated and renegotiated between traders and officials. Negotiations rely on the social relations between these actors and involve practices of gift-giving and bribery, which blur the boundaries between reciprocity and corruption. By focusing on the interactions between state and non-state actors, this article sheds light on the way the informal economy is configured by checkpoint politics.

KEY WORDS:

• Borders
• checkpoints
• small-scale trade
• Thailand
• Laos

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Despite the Thai government’s US$1.2 million invested in the bridge, it has not received as much attention as the four Thai-Lao Friendship Bridges that cross over the Mekong River. In fact, in official publications, the bridge in Loei province is not considered one of the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridges. Tucked away between the mountains of Loei and Sayaboury, the roads that lead to the bridge on the Thai and Lao sides are twisting, narrow and bumpy. During the time when research was being conducted, the scale of trade and tourism was significantly lower than at other Thai-Lao Friendship Bridges. For this reason this article refers to the bridge as Friendship Bridge rather than Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge.

2. By the seventeenth century, travellers had noticed the predominance of women in Siamese markets. It has been argued that this uneven division of labour is grounded in the Buddhist belief system, in which women are “deemed to be more deeply rooted in this-worldly activities and secular concerns than are men” (Kirsch 1975, 191). In recent decades, however, women have achieved greater mobility in many spheres of life (see, for example, Walker 1999; Kusakabe 2003).

3. The names of villages and checkpoints have been made anonymous.

4. Despite being able to build rapport with local traders through long-term fieldwork, it was difficult for the author to gain full insight into all of their trading activities, particularly when it came to illicit activities and monetary transactions with state actors. My gendered positioning played a role in this. Being an unmarried female researcher was advantageous when interacting with female shophouse owners but disadvantageous when it came to male interlocutors, including border guards. Despite this, it was possible to interview the border guards at checkpoints and to encounter them at festivals and markets. Female interlocutors also provided information about the state officials’ activities and attitudes.

5. The conflict was mainly conducted about 100 kilometres from the area where the research for this article was conducted. Different interpretations of a 1907 treaty over the demarcation of the border between Sayaboury province and adjoining Thai provinces saw war erupt. Fighting broke out after a Thai logging company stopped bribing the Lao militia and started bribing the Thai paramilitary instead (see Stuart-Fox 1989; Wijeyewardene 1990). Locals remembered soldiers passing through the area and hearing the sounds of gunshots and bombs in the far distance. However, they were firm in saying there was never any fighting in the research area.

6. See Arghiros (2001) for a critical discussion of patron–client relations and their applicability in contemporary Thailand.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.