A pool of living water: managed circulation and migrant suspension along the China–Myanmar border

Contemporary migration regimes often admit migrants into labour markets while withholding full social and legal incorporation. Building on this insight, this article introduces the concept of managed circulation to capture a compressed temporal configuration of inclusion and exclusion, in which admission and potential removal are organised within the same governing framework and often within a remarkably short time horizon. Drawing on ethnographic research among Myanmar migrants at the China–Myanmar border, this research shows how mobility is governed through administrative temporal windows defined by the validity and renewal requirements of border passes. Migrants are recruited into local labour markets while simultaneously remaining vulnerable to document expiration and repatriation. The article further develops the concept of migrant suspension to describe the lived condition produced by managed circulation. Temporal urgency embedded in managed circulation compels repeated, often involuntary movement as migrants seek to maintain legal presence and secure livelihoods. By examining two distinct temporal windows and migrants’ strategies for navigating them, the article demonstrates how mobility itself becomes a condition of suspension rather than incorporation. It also argues that Myanmar border-pass holders constitute a significant and enduring component of China’s cross-border labour regime rather than an exception to it.