Margins and Metropoles: Illicit Economies and the Making of Uneven Development
August 2026
Research Paper 46
Prof Jonathan Goodhand (SOAS, University of London), Dr Patrick Meehan (University of Manchester) and Dr Xu Peng (Manchester / SOAS CIVAD)
SOC ACE Project: The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development
PUBLICATION SUMMARY
Illicit economies do not exist at the margins of global development; they can be deeply embedded in the systems that drive growth at its centres. This research examines how frontier and borderland regions are connected to rapidly developing metropolitan hubs through networks of extraction, labour, trade, finance and infrastructure. It challenges the common assumption that poverty, violence, environmental degradation and illegality in these regions result from their isolation or lack of development. Instead, the paper argues that they are often produced by the unequal ways in which borderlands are incorporated into national, regional and global political economies.
The research introduces the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’ to explain these relationships. Frontier regions can become sources of resources, labour and illicit wealth that support accumulation and development elsewhere, while the costs, including dispossession, environmental damage, insecurity and exploitation, remain concentrated locally. The paper highlights connections between frontier zones and metropolitan hubs such as Dubai and Kunming, showing how apparently stable centres can be economically and politically connected to systems of conflict and illegality.
A key theme is the relationship between licit and illicit economies. Rather than treating informal and illegal activity as separate from mainstream economic development, the research shows how they can intersect with formal markets, commodity chains, infrastructure and financial systems. Drug trafficking, illegal logging and wildlife trade, extractive industries and Southeast Asia’s rapidly expanding cyber scam economy all illustrate how frontier regions can become critical nodes in wider systems of accumulation.
These findings are particularly relevant as transnational organised crime, environmental pressures, conflict and illicit supply chains become increasingly interconnected. They suggest that focusing policy responses solely on policing or securitising borderlands risks addressing symptoms rather than the wider systems that sustain them. The paper therefore calls for greater attention to the metropolitan centres, financial infrastructures, institutions and regulatory gaps that enable illicit supply chains to support and accelerate licit metropolitan development, shifting the focus from ‘fixing’ the margins to understanding the relationships that connect margins and metropoles.
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