Edo Andriesse

• PhD (Utrecht University; human geography/development studies)
• Professor at Seoul National University

In this forum, we focus on precarious international migrant workers and examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in four middle-income economies in the Global South: Ghana, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Thailand. In this way we consider varying geographies of (im)mobilities, responses, and governance. During the global struggle to cope with the pandem...

This paper investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational challenges and youth well-being in Iloilo Province, the Philippines. This article offers a holistic understanding of youth wellbeing. Based on micro survey data (N = 212), we conducted a mixed method analysis focusing on content analysis and logistic and order-logit regress...

Seaweed farming is a significant source of livelihood for many coastal communities in the Philippines. While it is one of the most profitable forms of aquaculture, seaweed farmers are nevertheless encouraged to participate in other business activities to provide financial security. Thus far, studies among seaweed farmers in the Philippines have pri...

This article examines how tourism becomes integrated into rural communities and how an isolated Vietnamese community explores and creates employment opportunities through social networks. The empirical investigation is based on a case study of local involvement in tourism employment in Viet Hai, a remote coastal commune. The results of forty in-dep...

While typhoons and floods are highly visible, droughts are slow-onset disasters. As more prolonged dry seasons appear to be inevitable in South and Southeast Asia, it is important for the involved stakeholders to find solutions to freshwater shortages and associated livelihood challenges. This article discusses the findings of a questionnaire condu...

Thailand and Vietnam have done relatively well in terms of containing the COVID-19 pandemic. While hundreds of thousands of cases and thousands of deaths have been registered in Indonesia and the Philippines, Vietnam’s number of cases was only 2550 (and only 35 deaths) and Thailand 26,679 (85 deaths) by 15 March 2021. Nevertheless, it is also impor...

This purpose of this article is to demonstrate (1) how growing seaweed in the central Philippines is affected by multifaceted local dynamics and (2) how it is also dependent on the complementary livelihood strategies of in situ and ex situ diversification. This article explores the livelihood trajectories of 45 households that were all engaged in g...

As coastal communities across the Global South confront the multiple challenges of climate change, overfishing, poverty and other socio-environmental pressures, there is an increasing need to understand diverse coastal governance responses and livelihood trajectories from a comparative perspective. This paper presents a holistic investigation of th...

This chapter discusses within-country spatial inequalities of development. With a particular focus on South, East and Southeast Asia, it argues that spatial inequalities remain a persistent challenge within many countries that are otherwise lauded as development success stories. Attention is given to the ‘profound’ spatial disparities that continue...

This study investigates the perception of the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of small-scale fishing communities in the Western Region of Ghana. A mixed-method approach was employed, consisting of a survey of 400 fisherfolk households and 20 interviews with stakeholders. Changes in rainfall pattern, decreasing rainfall, stronger waves a...

This article delves into the effects of the continuing structural economic transformation on the economic and development geography of Southeast Asia. An important question that will be addressed is to what extent the shift from agriculture and fisheries to manufacturing and services is not only contributing to urban economic growth, but also to ru...

This article investigates collective action dynamics and local politics amidst Philippine seaweed‐growing communities. Government agencies and civil society organizations generally encourage collaboration at village level through the formation of cooperatives and associations, often on the assumption that it facilitates the translation of economic...

Adaptation and coping have been frequently compared. However, their relationship is still in dispute. So far, three approaches have been suggested: interchangeable, distinct and interrelated. We argue that the third is the most useful as it provides insights into how long-term adaptation can be achieved by a series of short-term coping mechanisms....

An invited commentary based on our research on fishing communities in Southeast Asia, published in East Asia Forum

The purpose of this article is to examine the multi-spatial and developmental dynamics of the cinnamon industry in Sri Lanka, the largest exporter in the world by value added. This contribution compares Karandeniya, a major traditional cultivating hub, and Matale, a region new to cinnamon cultivation, deploying a Global Production Network (GPN) fra...

The purpose of this article is to examine the multi-spatial and developmental dynamics of the cinnamon industry in Sri Lanka, the largest exporter in the world by value added. This contribution compares Karandeniya, a major traditional cultivating hub, and Matale, a region new to cinnamon cultivation, deploying a Global Production Network (GPN) fra...

As part of fisheries governance initiatives, conservation has been deployed as an important management strategy in the rebuilding of depleted marine fish stock. However, a major challenge associated with conservation initiatives concerns the lack of participation and broader consultation of relevant local resource users, as well as restricted acces...

In this article, we compare four fishing‐based areas in Thailand and the Philippines to examine if and how small‐scale fishing communities are able to escape marginalisation. Three questions guide our inquiry: (i) How have fishing communities been affected by overfishing, climate change and other pressures? (ii) What adaptive strategies have these...

Diversification in rural coastal areas has been promoted for two major reasons: reducing overfishing and increasing living standards. This article investigates diversification efforts in light of coastal squeezes in central Philippines. It presents evidence from 11 coastal villages in Iloilo Province, all of these communities are confronted with ov...

Coastal fisheries communities in sub-Saharan Africa are under high socioeconomic vulnerability in the face of environmental pressures. This article contributes to the current adaptation debate by revisiting the benefits of in-situ adaptation. We assess possible in-situ adaptation strategies amid ongoing vulnerabilities by comparing Ghana and Tanzan...

Laos was drawn into the Second Indochina War, making the country the most heavily bombed country on earth. Although the war ended more than four decades ago, unexploded ordnance (UXO) continues to kill and injure civilians. In many provinces UXO constitutes the major hindrance to socioeconomic development and obstacle to local people earning a dece...

This article is concerned with the impact of environmental pressures on coastal livelihoods in the municipality of Ajuy, Iloilo Province, central Philippines. The empirical research focuses on three issues: artificial reefs submerged to increase fish stocks, the search for alternative livelihoods options after Typhoon Yolanda (international name Ha...

This article focuses on the steep fall in the international natural rubber price and investigates its impact on the socioeconomic situation of rubber smallholders in Southern Thailand, particularly diversification and community development. Based on surveys and semi-structured interviews, this article highlights the vulnerability of rubber smallhol...

The insertion of Philippine agriculture and fisheries into global value chains has not contributed significantly to rural poverty reduction, in contrast to several other Southeast Asian countries. While there are pockets of downstream export successes, upstream actors face persistent precarious conditions. This comparative investigation of the rela...

Theoretically informed by the relationships between growth poles and regional development, this article investigates two industries in Iloilo City, a secondary city in the Philippines: business processing outsourcing (BPO) and English as a second language (ESL). The empirical analysis is based on 46 interviews. First, the results of the empirical i...

This article provides a review of regional inequalities in the Philippines, one of the most challenging countries in Southeast Asia due to its combination of continuing high population growth in both urban and rural areas and lack of gainful employment. The article connects structural drivers of regional disparities to policy options recently propo...

This article provides one of the first academic assessments of upstream agribusiness value chain and rural livelihood challenges after the November 2013 Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), which devastated many coastal communities in the central Philippines. Based on a survey and semistructured interviews among fisherfolk, seaweed farmers and other stakehold...

This article is concerned with the linkages between the livelihoods of tea smallholders and domestic value chains in Indonesia. Theoretically, our empirical inquiry is informed by an integration of the sustainable livelihoods approach and value chain analyses. This enables a better investigation of micro (livelihoods) - meso (industry) - macro (nat...

Integrating the concepts of social capital, informality and geo-institutional diversity more explicitly in theories of capitalist diversity opens up new and promising avenues for further regional research in less developed countries. The case of Laos demonstrates that economic integration with neighbouring countries is leading to specific regional...

Although institutional arrangements have been widely studied in recent decades, relatively little attention has been paid to the spatial dimensions of informal political and economic institutions. This review article discusses these dimensions and their interactions with formal institutions. In each country, a unique mix of institutional overlap, c...

Although academics, civil servants and non-governmental organizations involved in development have continued to promote policies for local economies, many localities fail to catch up with average national development patterns. The body of knowledge on this topic has been split into two parts: private sector development (PSD) and local-central relat...

Although the average poverty level in Lao PDR has declined substantially since the beginning of economic reforms in 1986, sub-national dynamics give rise to a discussion of the trends and issues that determine and sustain provincial poverty and the variegated processes of rural transition. It appears that migration to core areas does not always gen...

Regional economic development is played out in a network of relations along value chains and within a territorial setting. Chain insertion favours growth but also exclusion or inclusion on adverse terms. This may happen at different levels of scale, especially when a nation-state has not produced a cohesive institutional setting. Territorial contro...

:This research note proposes the entry of the emerging body of knowledge on Varieties of Asian Capitalism into Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam. While geographers and economists have begun to study capitalist diversity in several Southeast Asian countries, former "Indo Chine" has so far been neglected. This seems to be an omission as economic reform i...

This paper assesses the current variety of capitalism in Laos using Hall and Soskice’s (2001) comparative approach and the emerging body of knowledge on Varieties of Asian Capitalism. In addition to a systematic discussion of the traditional capitalist elements proposed by Hall and Soskice (the financial system, industrial relations, internal str...

This contribution applies the ‘comparative business system approach’ to three sub-national settings in Southeast Asia in order to unravel patterns of private sector development. In each setting, the behaviour of small and medium enterprises is shaped by a distinct business system. The nature and functioning of regional business systems in Malaysia...

This contribution aims to couple national institutional complementarities to issues of regional development and long-term sustainability in Southeast Asia’s non-core regions. A comparison is made of Satun in Southern Thailand and Perlis in Northern Malaysia. Based on fieldwork data, the findings reveal that Malaysian institutional complementarities...

It is increasingly recognised that both formal and informal institutions could be important variables in explaining the diversity of capitalist systems. However, less is known about the relative importance of regional institutions for regional economic activity and regional development, especially in developing countries. This article analyses the...

A comparative analysis of Satun (Thailand) and Perlis (Malaysia) was carried out to study the functioning of institutions and regional development in Southeast Asia. The regional performance is examined by comparing the economic institutions that shape particular capitalist systems and that offer interesting perspectives for the study of economic a...