By: James D Sidaway (Department of Geography, National University of Singapore)

This paper draws on Myanmar's largest city and commercial capital of Yangon, studying security structures as a window on wider political and socio-economic dynamics. Narratives of Myanmar as an investment frontier have ushered in a host of private surveillance and security actors; in an atmosphere of business opportunity, urban surveillance and intricate relations between investors, public service providers and military procurement. Configuring this shifting landscape are Tatmadaw (Burmese military) generals, surveillance equipment manufacturers, security firms and state security agencies.

In 2015, Singaporean funders organised the first ever international Security Expo in Yangon that attracted dozens of foreign security firms. Drawing on interviews with key investors and buyers in the security industry, including at the Expo (which we visited when it was re-staged in 2018), and street-level observations in Yangon conducted over three years, we traverse structures of power, urban transformation and government-military-capital relations in a transitional Myanmar.

The paper contextualises these structures drawing on literature on colonial cities and frontiers and reading these with developing debates about planetary urbanisation. Yangon thereby becomes a site for critical reflections about complex and a multitude of imbrication on security, frontiers and urbanisation with implications for how these may be conceptualised elsewhere.

Human Geography Seminar Series

The Department of Geography at King’s College London is pleased to host its Human Geography Seminar Series for this academic year. The Series brings together the interests and expertise of the Contested Development, Risk and Society, and Urban Futures Research Domains and the King’s Climate and King’s Water Activity Hubs to explore new frontiers in research and policy on human-environment interactions.

Find out about other seminars in the series here.