Migration, mobility, and movement are the inter-linked processes which provide
the empirical scaffold for this paper. The paper uses this empirical framing to
reflect on a series of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges for
scholars of Southeast Asia. Mobility and associated geographical (spatial)
boundary crossings have raised questions about the analytical units employed
in research; the unsettling of these analytical units has challenged whether
conceptual categories still have explanatory purchase; and the fracturing of conceptual
categories has implications for the theoretical frameworks that scholars
have traditionally deployed. Drawing on field research undertaken in Laos,
Thailand, and Vietnam the paper argues that evolving mobilities in the region,
particularly in rural areas, require a degree of explanatory ‘catch-up’ on the
part of scholars as we try to keep pace with the rate of change in the countryside.
Instead of focusing on households in space, we should be trying to map out the
networked relations that link lives and individuals across national and transnational
space. The paper further argues that we should focus our attention on
local-level dynamics associated with societal change, settlement dynamism and
sustainability, population turbulence, and evolving cultural preferences which
operate partly independently of the rural development project, thus highlighting
the shifting web of mutual dependencies and interdependencies that shape lives
and living patterns.