Navigating Informality and Mobility: A Borderland Perspective on the India–Myanmar Free Movement Regime

The India–Myanmar borderland is a result of the colonial process of boundary-making. It fragmented the borderland communities. Post-independence, the Indian government acknowledged the ground reality of divided ethnic groups in the borderland. Thus, passport exemptions led to the introduction of the Free Movement Regime (FMR) in 1968, which allowed for crossing without a passport within a certain distance from the border. In 2024, the Government of India announced the suspension of the FMR and proposed fencing the 1,643-kilometre-long border. This was necessitated by the civil war in Myanmar starting in 2021 and the ethnic conflict in Manipur beginning in 2023. This article reinterprets the FMR as a negotiated arrangement for informal border governance rather than a concession of administrative control. It argues that the 2024 turn marks a transition from negotiated informality to securitised territorial control. The concept of sovereignty along this border is constantly negotiated among state organisations, customary institutions, and cross-border networks, as political informality and infrapolitics are traversed. The new government rearranges that negotiation but does not eliminate it.

Borderland Governance, Free Movement Regime, Infrapolitics, Political Informality, Sovereignty

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