New research examines how illicit economies shape development

The world’s illicit economies are not confined to remote borderlands. They are increasingly connected to the metropolitan centres where wealth, investment and development accumulate. New research, Margins and Metropoles: Illicit Economies and the Making of Uneven Development, explores these connections, challenging the assumption that violence, poverty, environmental degradation and illicit activity in frontier regions are simply consequences of isolation or weak state presence. Instead, it argues that these conditions can be produced by the unequal integration of borderlands into national, regional and global political economies.

The research highlights the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’, showing how borderlands can provide resources, labour and illicit wealth that contribute to accumulation elsewhere, while local populations bear many of the associated costs. It also demonstrates how licit and illicit economies intersect, with commodity chains, infrastructure and financial systems linking conflict-affected margins to metropolitan centres. The findings have particular relevance to efforts to understand transnational organised crime, illicit supply chains and uneven development. They suggest that effective policy responses need to look beyond the borderlands themselves to the wider systems that sustain and benefit from these economies.

This research directly informs the Centrality of the Margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development project, which examines how conflict-affected borderlands are connected to development and wealth accumulation in metropolitan centres. Led by Professor Jonathan Goodhand, Dr Patrick Meehan and Dr Xu Peng, the project focuses on the illicit corridor linking Myanmar’s north-eastern borderlands with Kunming, China, tracing flows of capital, commodities and people to understand their implications for security, poverty and development.