Unravelling uneven livelihood transformations in China's multi‐ethnic Southeast Asian borderland: Perspectives from spatial interactions

Abstract For the past two decades, China's multi‐ethnic Southeast Asian borderland has been experiencing transitions, characterised by the confluence of capital, people, items and technologies. This borderland has effectively been repositioned, with opportunities for investment and employment, regional integration and transnational linkages featuring multiple spatial interactions. Based on eight months of fieldwork in three ethnic villages in China's Southeast Asian borderland, this article examines how geo‐economic repositioning featuring multiple spatial interactions affects agrarian livelihoods. This study argues that local households have used spatial interactions in differentiated ways to transform the use of land and to improve livelihoods, while uneven development among ethnic minorities remains a concern. Land use has been changed to include the dominant commercialisation and marketisation of high‐value‐added crops. Livelihoods have been diversified, and many local villagers have become entrepreneurs, landowners and agricultural investors. Different ethnic groups have adopted different strategies in response to market‐oriented products and processes. The Han Chinese from both inside and outside the area now dominate the commercialised processes of cash crop expansion and diversification. This article contributes to the existing literature on changing agrarian livelihoods in multi‐ethnic borderlands in the context of opening‐up and economic globalisation, especially in East and Southeast Asia.