From land grab to agrarian transition? Hybrid trajectories of accumulation and environmental change on the Cambodia–Vietnam border

This paper explores the divergent processes of agrarian transition in Cambodia and Vietnam and the ways in which they intersect through flows across the border, arguing that it is not possible to understand current processes of agrarian change in Cambodia without being attentive to agrarian histories in Vietnam. The paper examines how the influx of Vietnamese re-shapes the Cambodian borderlands into hybrid socio-ecological zones that are tied into the broader agro-industrial ecology of the Mekong Delta, but shaped also by the state of infrastructure and social property relations in Cambodia. The paper looks at the possible paths of agrarian transformation now set in motion through the synergistic but tenuous relationship between powerful Cambodian landlords and precarious Vietnamese tenant farmers.