"Zomia" is a term coined in 2002 to describe the broad swath of mountainous land in Southeast Asia that has always been beyond the reach of lowland governments despite their technical claims to control. This book expands the anthropological reach of that term, applying it to any deterritorialised people, from cast-out migrants to modern resisters-in the process finding new ways to understand the realities of peoples and ethnicities that refuse to become part of the modern state.

Frédéric Bourdier is an anthropologist at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Marseille.Olivier Ferrari is associate researcher at the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia in Bangkok and lecturer at the Lausanne University in Switzerland.Jacques Ivanoff is an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific ResearchMaxime Boutry is an independent scholar who received his PhD in social anthropology and ethnology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2007.

1 Introduction: from Padi States to Commercial StatesPreliminary RemarksNations and States or Nation-States?Inner Zomia and Globalization: the Other among the SelfEthnogenesis: Ethnic Minorities or Social Groups?Identity Construction in the Borderlands2 Populations on the Move in the Borderlands of Northeast Cambodia: Socio-Economic Changes and Identity Creation (F. Bourdier)Irremediable InterferencesInternational Linkages, Newcomers, and Alternative PerspectivesTheoretical Prospects3 The Burmese 'Adaptive Colonization' of Southern Thailand (M. Boutry)IntroductionHistorical Background: the National Roots of International MigrationsRationaleThe Burmese Adaptive Colonization of ThailandMigrations, Exchanges and the Making of BordersThe Perception of Borders and Segmentation of MigrationConclusion4 The "Interstices": A History of Migration and Ethnicity (J. Ivanoff)How was the first Zomian created?Interactions and SegmentationsThe Creation of 'Sea-Zomians'The Moken in ThailandThe Moken in MyanmarEthnogenesis: Fear of Slavery Versus Nomad Ideology5 Borders and Cultural Creativity: the Case of the Chao Lay, the Sea Gypsies of Southern Thailand (O. Ferrari)IntroductionAre Borderlands Exclusively Administrative Features?Territory and Borderland as Manifold ConceptsThe Sea Gypsies in the Ethnoregional Social FabricThe Coast as a BorderlandThe Nomads and the SeaThe Tenth Month CeremonyThe Sea Gypsies and the National BordersConclusion6. BibliographyIndexAbout the authors