Talk at the Library: Myanmar's Borderworlds with India and China
VIEW EVENT DETAILSSpaces of Control, Extraction, Resistance, and Negotiation
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Since the military coup in February 2021, Myanmar has been in a state of renewed war. In 2024, the conflict between the Myanmar military and resistance actors, such as the People's Defense Forces and Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) have intensified, leaving many common civilians in dire straits. For decades, Myanmar's Northern resource-rich and strategic borderlands with two giants, China and India, have been spaces for geo-political, geo-economic and national security maneuvering. On the Yunnan-Myanmar border in Kachin State for example, Chinese investments – both private and state-led – have rapidly changed the region and transformed thousands of hectares of land into monoculture plantation, hydropower projects and special economic zones with the aid of local elites. This is not only disrupting labor, lives and ecosystems, but has also reshaped social and political dynamics. Meanwhile, India is expanding its influence with mega-infrastructure and border urbanization projects in Northeast India, such as the Kaladan Multimodal Transport Project, often for its own national interests rather than for border communities.
How have the lives of those who live and navigate these connected borderlands changed over the past years? What are China's and India's wider interests in Myanmar? What strategies are the military Junta as well as other actors pursuing with its neighbors? And what insights can we gain from studying these borderworlds, where economic, political, cultural and indigenous lives converge?
Join us for a Talk at the Library with political geographer Jasnea Sarma, who has conducted extensive fieldwork in the region. Together, we will explore how borders function not only as physical dividers of territorial states, but also as spaces of control, resistance, extraction, and negotiation. The conversation will be moderated by Rebecca Farner, Outreach and Communications Manager at Asia Society Switzerland.
Become a Member and join us in-person at our office at Mühlebachstrasse 20 in Zurich. You can easily purchase a membership by selecting the One-Year Membership during the registration process.
Dr Jasnea Sarma is an ethnographer and political geographer from Assam, Northeast India. She works on borders, migration, conflict and resource frontiers with a focus in the borderlands of China, Burma, India and Bangladesh where she has conducted multi-lingual and multi-sited fieldwork since 2014. She is currently a senior scientist and lecturer in Political Geography at the University of Zurich, and nonresident research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. She is an editor of Geopolitics as well as supporting editor of the Tea Circle, which publishes new perspective on Burma/Myanmar. More of Jasnea's research and other public publications can be found here.
About Talks at the Library
Talk at the Library is a members-only series where we invite an expert to our office library, over lunch, for a conversation on specific niche topics on a variety of countries and regions of Asia. The program consists of a moderated discussion and subsequent audience Q&A. Participants have the opportunity interact with the experts, asking questions live or online. Online participation is open to the public.
Event Details
Asia Society Switzerland
Mühlebachstrasse 20
8008 Zurich
(MAP)