State-diaspora relations in illiberal contexts: the case of the Vietnamese diaspora in Cambodia

The thesis investigates the reasons, modalities, and consequences of the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments’ engagement with the Vietnamese diaspora in Cambodia. The case of the Vietnamese in Cambodia is of particular interest because, unlike most existing studies on state-diaspora relations, it examines a group which stands between two illiberal countries and, partly as a consequence of this, does not represent a significant threat and/or resource to either the host-state or the homeland. Furthermore, despite having lived in the host-state for generations, the Vietnamese in Cambodia have been unable to access Cambodian citizenship and hold virtually no documents from Vietnam: they are de facto stateless. This thesis seeks to answer two, interrelated questions: how do the Cambodian state and the Vietnamese state perceive of and engage with the Vietnamese diaspora in Cambodia? What are the implications of their engagement on this diaspora’s enjoyment of citizenship? To answer these questions, the research uses documentary sources from the two governments and eighty-three in-depth interviews with Vietnamese villagers, members of the Association of Khmer-Vietnamese in the Kingdom of Cambodia (AKVKC), representatives of the Cambodian government, experts, and representatives of civil society organisations. Departing from existing perspectives on state-diaspora relations, the thesis argues that the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam have viewed the diaspora as “inconvenient subjects” and engaged, respectively, in the bounded exclusion and the bounded inclusion of the group. Rather than taking full responsibility of the diaspora, the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments have shared the custody of the Vietnamese, alternating care and control and co-governing it through the work of the AKVKC. This deliberately ambiguous strategy has resulted in the Vietnamese’ de facto enjoyment of some citizens’ rights in Cambodia and Vietnam; yet, it has also (re)produced a multi-level liminal space in which the Vietnamese are more easily governable

Collecting, assembling, ordering: Border politics and the invisible data work of asylum

This article proposes to understand the ‘invisible data work’ that asylum seekers must do to put together a ‘credible’ asylum application. While the intersections between asylum and work have typically been analysed in relation to access to employment and labour conditions, we attend to the work of collecting, assembling, and ordering different forms of analogue and digital data inherent to the asylum process. Building on feminist interdisciplinary debates on work and drawing on a selection of asylum appeals from Italy and the UK, we argue that seeking asylum entails extensive and continual invisible work that requires significant resources, effort, skills and time. Attending to these forms of invisible work is crucial to understanding the challenges of seeking asylum beyond the migration journey and the implications of performing ‘invisible data work’ unaided and unequipped. It also counters problematic depictions of asylum seekers as passive subjects who are ‘just waiting’ for a decision to be made. Finally, rendering the collection and assemblage of data as ‘invisible work’ rather than just ‘doings’ has political implications for understanding the resources, responsibilities and resistance to the border politics of making precarious subjects

Digital–Nondigital Assemblages: Data, Paper Trails, and Migrants’ Scattered Subjectivities at the Border

This paper argues that the border regime works through entanglements of digital and nondigital data and of “low-tech” and “high-tech” technologies. It suggests that a critical analysis of the assemblages between digital and nondigital requires exploring their effects of subjectivation on those who are labeled as “migrants.” The paper starts with a critique of the presentism and techno-hype that pervade research on borders and technology, and points to the importance of analyzing historical continuities and ruptures in the technologization of the border regime. It then explores the assemblages of high-tech and low-tech technologies used for controlling mobility and investigates the imbrication of digital and nondigital records that migrants need to deal with and show not only at the border but throughout their journeys and, eventually, to obtain refugee status. The third section discusses migrants’ tactical uses of digital and nondigital records, their attempts to erase or reconstruct traces of their passages, and states’ oscillation between politics of identification and nonidentification. Finally, the fourth section questions the image of the “data double” and contends that, rather than a discrete digital subject, migrants’ digital traces generate scattered digital subjectivities that migrants themselves cannot fully access