Experiencing the State and Negotiating Belonging in Zomia: Pa Koh and Bru-Van Kieu Ethnic Minority Youth in a Lao-Vietnamese Borderland

Geopolitical borders physically demarcate the nation-state. They delimit the territoriality of nations, which Anderson (2006) famously described as ‘imagined communities’. It is the work of states to construct and nurture such imagined communities, first and foremost within its national borders. This is done, among other things, through projects of nationalism which are here understood as efforts ‘to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 536). Such social practices or the absence thereof erect borders but also render borders irrelevant, rather than the physical demarcation of state territory as the quote above illustrates.