This paper aims to clarify the geopolitical vision of Chinese leaders in guiding China's foreign policy over the last two decades. It does so by analyzing China's geopolitical codes - which involve reasoning based on a set of political-geographical assumptions about security - in shaping the geographic mental maps of Chinese leaders. The article focuses on places where China projects its influence and power, examining how Chinese leaders view these locations. The geopolitical codes analyzed include the Belt and Road Initiative and the active defense doctrine. The methodology used to infer China's elite geographic mental map relies on public statements, documents from China's decision-making bodies, analyses by Chinese military experts, and academic studies. The paper contends that the geopolitical vision of China's leaders consists of concentric rings of island chains controlled by the US and its allies, which obstruct China's free movements and compromise its national interest, as well as serving as benchmarks for the operational geographic scope of the Chinese navy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnamese cities, adhering to the central government's mobility and social restriction policies, enacted regulations that curtailed access to and use of public spaces. In industrial towns, measures to create "COVID-free" environments led to even more stringent restrictions and surveillance in residential and work settings. In this article, we examine the changing perceptions and uses of public spaces among the residents of D & itilde; An, an industrial town in southern Vietnam, and the impacts of these shifts on everyday life. We completed 15 Photovoice exercises and interviews with residents in 2022, as Vietnam's lockdown measures were easing, and analyse these findings alongside insights from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the town since 2016. Drawing on a situated assemblage framework of publicness, we propose a typology of public spaces to explore the changes and diversity in social interactions within them. We show that residents' conceptions of public and private spaces were open and flexible, rooted in socio-cultural norms and immediate needs. Although public spaces and their transformations during the COVID-19 lockdowns were constrained by the Vietnamese state's authoritarian role in implementing new forms of socio-spatial surveillance, these forms of control varied, creating room for residents' tactics and differentiated experiences. Discrimination and trauma, alongside resilience, shaped local experiences of public spaces during and after the pandemic. By highlighting how state-society relations, labor conditions, and socio-cultural structures shape the lived experience of urban spaces, our study contributes to a more grounded understanding of public space generation under conditions of crisis and constraint.
This study examines how migration motives relate to lifetime migration trajectories in Indonesia using longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey. Moving beyond one-time and purely economic perspectives, we apply sequence analysis and multinomial logistic regression to map lifetime trajectories and their associated motives. We document three main patterns. First, internal migration commonly unfolds as multi-directional trajectories, including onward, return, and repeated movements, rather than single permanent moves. Second, migration motives vary across the life course. Work and housing-related motives are more prevalent in onward and adult one-way trajectories, while education and marriage are more common in earlier life stages, and affiliation is closely associated with return migration. Third, gender differences are evident in both trajectories and associated motives, with men more frequently linked to work-oriented mobility and women more often associated with affiliation-related movements, although female participation in education- and work-related migration is also observed. Overall, the findings suggest that migration is better understood as a life-course process in which motives and trajectories are closely intertwined, rather than fixed or one-off decisions.
In the highlands of Borneo, the once closely connected Lun Bawang (Lundayeh) communities have for decades been separated by the Malaysia-Indonesia border, yet they remain linked through uneven patterns of mobility and exchange. This brief examines how internal migration in Sarawak and cross-border movement from North Kalimantan intersect to shape inequality and identity in this borderland. In Sarawak's highlands, youth outmigration has contributed to aging communities and weakened traditional livelihoods. Meanwhile, limited opportunities on the Indonesian side continue to push many across the border in search of work in Malaysia. These movements have created an uneven form of interdependence: Indonesian migrants fill labor gaps but remain vulnerable in informal sectors, while Sarawakians rely on them yet resist their permanent presence. Over time, divergent demographic paths have emerged - shrinking, aging villages in Sarawak alongside younger, in-migrating communities in North Kalimantan - fueling tensions over land and belonging. The border has thus produced contrasting living conditions and forms of national attachment, illustrating how mobility sustains livelihoods while reproducing inequality in Borneo's borderlands.
This paper examines the adaptation of Russia's international air transport network during the first year following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Using data from the Official Airline Guide (OAG), the article explores the response of the Russian international air transport network to airspace restrictions imposed on Russian airlines. Despite an initial 41% decline in international capacity, Russia's air connectivity rebounded to near pre-invasion levels by January 2023, with only a 4% overall decrease, suggesting that sanctions were largely ineffective. The geographical reconfiguration was substantial, with country connections, primarily European, dropping from 64 to 34. Simultaneously, T & uuml;rkiye and the UAE emerged as the top two international markets for Russia, with Istanbul (IST) and Dubai (DBX) airports benefiting strategically. Former Soviet republics in Central Asia, especially Armenia, experienced air seat capacity growth. Within Russia, Moscow's airports remained the main international gateways, while Sochi airport (AER) emerged as a new entry point. Aeroflot maintained its position as the leading international Russian airline, despite capacity reduction, while other Russian airlines showed significant growth. This research contributes to understanding how geopolitical events can reshape international air transport networks, providing empirical evidence of the Russian air transport sector's resilience and adaptability in the face of significant international sanctions.
