Spatial Practices and Border SEZs in Mekong Southeast Asia Dennis Arnold* Maastricht University Abstract Literature on special economic zones (SEZs) has made important contributions to our understand- ing of globalization and topics including labor rights, export-led development outcomes, and post- socialist experiments with market economies. Less understood is the geopolitics of contemporary economic zones. This article focuses on border economies and state activity regarding territorial integrity and regulation of migrant labor. The case studies in Cambodia and Thailand demonstrate that SEZs reflect, reinforce and expand states’ reach, rather than prove exception to broader national orders of power. This understanding of contemporary SEZs enhances research agendas on state practices vis-a `-vis the ‘imperatives’ of global economic integration and geopolitics. The changing role of SEZs in economic globalization reveals the complexity of state spatial practices. Introduction Special economic zones (SEZs) have been a mainstay of export-led development over the past half century. Like their predecessors, contemporary SEZs primary function is to increase export competitiveness, connecting local and national economies to global mar- kets. Despite criticism that SEZ inhibit economy-wide growth (World Bank, no date) the number of zones continues to expand globally, particularly privately owned and developed SEZs (FIAS 2008). Zones continue to pose challenges for labor organizing. Recent activist research and campaigns on labor in SEZs combines workers’ rights orien- tations (AMRC 1998; Klein 2000) with analysis on state policies and the urgency to secure land and labor for the zones (Wulandari 2012; Leong and Pratap 2011). This reflects research on ‘development’ processes that rest on displacement of the poor to make way for SEZs, and the interrelationship that exists between spatiality of capital and the opening up of new economic spaces (Banerjee-Guha 2009; see also Harvey 2003). These and other studies have enhanced our understanding of SEZs in economic global- ization. Less understood are mutually reinforcing state practices that both enable globally linked economic spaces while restricting perceived dangers from neighboring countries and peoples. The changing role of SEZs in economic globalization reveals the complexity of state spatial practices. Focusing on border SEZs draws out the ways in which states do and do not seek to link territories and citizens with the economic systems, labor, natural resources and political dynamics of neighboring countries (Walker 2009). In the Mekong Southeast Asian countries 1 Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam specific border and cross-border zones once seen as territorial boundaries for state power and sites of inter- state conflict are now rapidly being re-articulated as functional economic regions requiring their own structures and practices of governance (Arnold and Pickles 2011). SEZs are emerging as a critical aspect of these processes. Drawing on case studies from Cambodia Geography Compass 6/12 (2012): 740–751, 10.1111/gec3.12012 ª 2012 The Author Geography Compass ª 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd