Gender, Mobilities, and Livelihood Transformations: Comparing Indigenous People in China, India, and Laos

In the era of globalization many minority populations are subject to marginalization and expulsion from their traditional habitats due to rapid economic restructuring and changing politico-spatial relations. This book presents an analytical framework for understanding how mobility is an inherent part of such changes.
The book demonstrates how current neoliberal policies are making people increasingly on the move – whether voluntarily or forced, and whether individually, as family, or as whole communities – and how such mobility is changing the livelihoods of indigenous people, with particular focus on how these transformations are gendered. It queries how state policies and cross-border and cross-regional connections have shaped and redefined the livelihood patterns, rights and citizenship, identities, and gender relations of indigenous peoples. It also identifies the dynamic changes that indigenous men and women are facing, given rapid infrastructure improvements and commercialization and/or industrialization in their places of Environment.
With a focus on mobility, this innovative book gives students and researchers in development studies, gender studies, human geography, anthropology and Asian studies a more realistic assessment of peoples livelihood choices under a time of rapid transformation, and the knowledge produced may add value to present development policies and practices.

Ragnhild Lund is Professor in Development Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.

Kyoko Kusakabe is Associate Professor of Gender and Development Studies at the School of Environment, Resources and Development, at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand.

Smita Mishra Panda is Professor at the School of Management at the Human Development Foundation in Odisha, India.

Yunxian Wang is an independent researcher, affiliated to the Institute of Sociology, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China.