Paper abstract:

In 2004, the Mongolian authorities established two interconnected border trade zones, one at the Russian border and the other at the Chinese one. In the neighboring - Chinese - territory, the Erlianhot border trade zone has been in operation since 1991. On the Russian side, a "Kyahta tourism cross-border cluster" was established in 2011 and conceived as an area complementary to the Mongolian trade zone. Despite almost two decades of the Mongolian zones' operations, economic life in Altanbulag and Zamyn-Ude is barely simmering, and the border zones are rather collapsing. Covid-19 and the restrictions associated with the pandemic certainly played some part in this failure. However, the decay began long before the global crisis. The weakness of border trade zones is typical in many countries in this region, except China. For example, the idea of cross-border trade and economic zones in Russia died essentially unborn. One can find a "monument" to this death in the Prigranichny settlement, Primorsky Krai, in the form of unfinished and now swallowed by nature buildings.

The failure of the border trade zones is particularly evident if we compare them with the bazaars, for instance, located in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Irkutsk, or Krasnoyarsk (Russia). A comparison of border trade zones and bazaars, which I use in my paper, is not artificial because the main characteristic of both is exemptions from the tax, customs, and other national regulations that apply in a particular and restricted area. Exceptions are introduced from above for border zones, while they are expropriated from below in bazaars. It seems, however, that exceptions obtained by people on their own enable bazaars to survive even in severe crises. At the same time, the rules imposed above fail to keep economic life afloat even in hothouse conditions.

In the paper, using the optics of social topology (Mol 2002; Law 1984; Law and Singleton 2005) and drawing on ethnographic data from Russia, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan, I will examine how business networks (do not) work and show why and how border trade zones fade away while bazaars seem enduring.

Paper abstract:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the mass movement of people across state borders proved impossible. Restrictions on physical mobility and increased government regulation seemed destined to affect the work of small traders, the movement of goods, and thus bazaar activities. However, during my field research in the 'Chinese' markets of Bishkek, Almaty, and Ulaanbaatar in the spring of 2022, I discovered that the locals continued to engage in lively trade. This discovery provoked questions about how small-scale trade, which relied on personal trips to China for goods, survives. How do small wholesale goods currently move across the Chinese border?

Within the concept of migration infrastructure introduced by B.Xiang and J.Lindquist, I will answer the above questions by demonstrating that the infrastructure for the 'migration' of commodities partially has been moved to the virtual space (WeChat, Instagram, Facebook). Such digitalization of bazaars, supported by old social networks, makes it possible to receive goods from China and take advantage of new trade practices in the local markets. The movement of commodities, like the migration of people, is not a linear process from point A to point B but a space of several dimensions mediated by the infrastructure involved in this process. The authors of the concept distinguish five dimensions for the analysis: commercial, regulatory, technological, humanitarian, and social. Using these dimensions as a methodological tool allows revealing what was previously hidden. A detailed examination of the operation of infrastructure will enable us to demonstrate how COVID-19 affects social changes and how market relationships are reshaped by infrastructural change. The move to the digital space makes infrastructure self-sustaining and more accessible on the one hand and more burdensome.

The empirical data are based on observations and cases collected during the fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia's bazaars in April-May 2022. In addition, the analysis of social media accounts (online shops), such as Facebook and Instagram, related to selling commodities on local bazaars.

Paper abstract:

The specificity of border urbanization on the eastern borders of Russia consists in the creation of extraterritorial urban spaces that creatively combine a common socialist aesthetic and neoliberal hope for a better life in the region. Cross-border urbanization at Sino-Russian Border is actually called into question by the global epidemiological risk, which has dramatically increased the repressive functions of the border and reduced mobility. This forces us to prepare for the revision of the accepted standards of success and to pay more attention to the price paid by the participants of the cross-border exchange. The sharp increase in the production functions of cross-border cities, reinforced by the imperatives of automatization, practically deprives the previous model of social functions and the possibility of exclusive economic growth. It is possible that the former symbols of success will evolve to a discrete model, where automated closed areas of a smart city will be separated from areas of high social risk. Globalization has closed the circle, economic growth is once again becoming a privilege and cross-border mobility is an achievement not accessible to most residents of border areas. In this perspective, the pandemic forces us to concentrate on the crisis of globalization platforms and threats to their preservation in the same form. The very possibility of subordinating economic life to the economy of expectations with a sharp reduction in the presence of the state as a guarantor of a critical level of social development is called into question. The analytic approach into these border global regions in the time of de-bordering intent to describe what are the specific social and economic features of the specific city-development model? What is the relation of a “border city without border” to ordinary life, gentrification, and commodification of city space? What are the de-territorialization effects of new models of development, and its new form of security protocols? How are the rights of new citizens and labor supported in an epidemic context?