Overview

In the 21st century, governments around the globe are faced with the question on how to tackle new migratory mobilities. Governments increasingly become aware of irregular immigration and are forced to re-negotiate the dilemma of open but secure borders. Rethinking Authority in China’s Border Regime: Regulating the Irregular investigates the Chinese government’s response to this phenomenon. Hence, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese border regime. It explores the regulatory framework of border mobility in China by analysing laws, institutions, and discourses as part of an ethnographic border regime analysis. It argues that the Chinese state deliberately creates ‘zones of exception’ along its border. In these zones, local governments function as ‘scalar managers’ that establish cross-border relations to facilitate cross-border mobility and create local migration systems that build on their own notion of legality by issuing locally valid border documents. The book presents an empirically rich story of how border politics are implemented and theoretically contributes to debates on territoriality and sovereignty as well as to the question of how authority is exerted through border management. Empirically, the analysis builds on two case studies at the Sino-Myanmar and Sino-North Korean borders to illustrate how local practices are embedded in multiscalar mobility regulation including regional organizations such as the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Greater Tumen Initiative.

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""Certainly, I will be referencing Rethinking Authority in my own writing. Having been immersed in borderland studies for about a decade, and China studies for considerably longer, I found Rethinking Authority offering frequent – and useful – insights and information on border regimes and regulations."" - Hasan H. Karrar, China Perspectives, No. 2022/2 ""Drawing upon field work, Franziska Plümmer takes on these evolving issues within a broader matrix of borderland studies and demonstrates an impressive range within the social sciences...This is a valuable book overall, recommended to scholars of China’s borderlands, border and migration studies generally, and the burgeoning discourse on rights for migrants."" - Adam Cathcart, The China Quarterly, Vol. 251, September 2022

Certainly, I will be referencing Rethinking Authority in my own writing. Having been immersed in borderland studies for about a decade, and China studies for considerably longer, I found Rethinking Authority offering frequent - and useful - insights and information on border regimes and regulations. - Hasan H. Karrar, China Perspectives, No. 2022/2

Author Information

Franziska Plümmer is Assistant Professor of Europe-China relations at the University of Amsterdam researching the role of Chinese technology companies in European data regulation and 'critical' infrastructure provision. Generally, her research lies at the intersection of International Relations, Critical Security Studies and China Studies focusing on mobility of migrants and data across borders.

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