The present essay focuses on borderlands, identity creation and its consequent concept of ethnic flexibility. As clarified in the introduction, the notion of boundary is not restricted to a spatial administrative limit for the reason that it could neglect sections of local groups, widely dispersed migrants and modern resisters residing within ethno-national borders. As it has been justified by recognised scholars working on borderlands, ‘border can by no means be limited to a territorial line. It extends deep into the heart of the national territory – into the centre itself – to every agency with the alien […]’ (Horstmann 2006). The term boundary needs to be understood in a more integrated representation. It should encompass the symbolic space of human encounters, contributing to the emergence of new social assemblages. It should reflect the existence of a particular hybrid socio-cultural landscape within a geographical setting in which both notions of centre and periphery can oscillate, be obsolete or revitalised. That is why this chapter deals with the construction and representation of internal boundaries, real or imagined, within a given territory that is shared by groups of people having different or (pretended) common origins. Under these circumstances, I pay less attention to methodological issues that focus on general implications of the creation of international boundaries, which, too frequently, offer tautological elements of reflection (generator of unexpected results, places constituted by the state, space of intensified control, etc.). Such has been the case for the geographer Baird (2010) who keeps concentrating on the administrative demarcation line between Laos and Cambodia. Such reductionist understanding leads to unsolved contradictions when the author envisions new places of relative independence (op. cit. 2010: 280) while, simultaneously, rejecting the notion of non-state place – a notion that, at the most, is nothing but pure evidence in a state building context. His analysis moreover remains incomplete, and demonstrates his inability to catch the essence of resistance at the microlevel. In fact he overlooks the discrete appearance of internal boundaries resulting from incessant movements and encounters not only among Brao, separated since 1904 by the new international border, but between this ethnic group and other neighbouring social units.

This deliberate choice for orienting the chapter in such a comprehensive way by incorporating internal boundaries is supported by two aims.