Coercive Localization in Southwest Vietnam: Khmer Land Disputes and the Containment of Dissent

Abstract

This paper describes the protracted struggles by ethnic Khmers in An Giang Province to regain farmland taken from them by ethnic Vietnamese migrants during their forced absence from the Vietnam-Cambodian border during and after the Third Indochina War. Efforts by the original landowners to organize collectively to seek justice from national authorities were stifled by local officials motivated to preserve the new status quo and were ideologically delegitimized by members of the rural middle class. The findings shed new light on ethnic minority political agency and show how the Vietnamese state is drawn materially and discursively into conflicts between competing social groups.