How does market-induced internal migration affect state building? I argue that market-led internal migration can help the state expand its physical presence in minority-concentrated peripheral areas, but it can also hurt the state's ability to induce compliance from minority populations. This is especially true where migrants and natives compete over ownership of limited, valuable land. I leverage an exogenous positive shock in global coffee prices in the mid-1990s that drove an influx of ethnic majority migrants into minority-concentrated areas in Vietnam. I hope to show that the Vietnamese state was able to expand its bureaucratic and infrastructural capacity in affected areas, but at the cost of minority compliance, decades after the shock. State building can occur at times without being induced by warfare or internal conflict, and even without the direct supervision of the state.

Picture: created by me using data from FAO Global Agro-Ecological Zones v4.

This project explores the impacts of a state-led population resettlement program on the expansion of state presence and the consolidation of state authority in ethnically diverse peripheral areas. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, the Vietnamese government resettled three million people of the dominant ethnic group to rural and highland minority-concentrated areas. I explore the conditions under which this migration event helps or hurts state building. I argue that the success of state building depends on the nature of interaction between migrants and natives in areas subject to the policy. Where migrants compete with natives for fertile land -- a scarce resource, the state has a harder time expanding bureaucratic reach and inducing state compliance in the long run. The empirics of this paper will involve descriptives of inter-provincial migrant flows, combined with spatial variations in agriculture suitability, and supplemented by deep qualitative works. I hope to uncover which areas end up having the most extensive state presence and highest rates of state compliance as a result.

Picture: Vietnam planned population movements 1976-80. Source: Jones and Fraser 1982

This project proposes and tests a theory of minority language promotion as an assimilation tool that the state can use to consolidate control over diverse ethnic minority populations. Existing works have tended to analyze state policies regarding official/national languages and minority languages in the same bundle. Yet minority language policy can vary significantly while coercive imposition of the national language remains in place. This generates different incentives for learning the national language, and thus assimilation, among ethnic minorities. I use the Vietnamese government's shift from symbolic recognition to active promotion of eight minority languages as a starting point to theorize on the potential tradeoffs that each strategy entails, and the conditions under which a government is likely to choose one over another. While my theory covers a wide range of strategy, I seek to understand the consequence of minority language promotion in particular. Does it boost minority compliance by revising perception of their group's belonging in the state? Or does it provoke minority skepticism towards the state's appropriation of their cultural heritage? Meanwhile, does minority language promotion instigate backlash from the majority group? Or does it reinforce majority group's trust in the state as a benevolent provider of social welfare? Most importantly, can these concerns influence different groups' willingness to comply with the state?

Picture: Thai language textbooks for grades 1, 2. Source: Quang Dung