Asymmetrical border governance and everyday borderland practices: the Indonesia–Papua New Guinea case

This study examines how asymmetrical border governance shapes – and is concurrently navigated and reshaped by – everyday practices along the Indonesia–Papua New Guinea (PNG) border. Rather than proposing a new conceptual framework, this article brings together and extends insights from scholarship on everyday borderwork, negotiated sovereignty and flexible territoriality, and informal state practices to demonstrate how asymmetrical border governance is negotiated and shaped in practice by community actors. Although Indonesia’s proactive investment in border infrastructure and PNG’s more limited development have created an asymmetrical environment, local communities have not remained passive. In response, they have adapted to, subtended and coped with these asymmetrical conditions through their mobility, kinship and social ties, local economy and trade, and religious activities across the line. These practices reveal that local actors are not passive recipients of state power, and cross-border practices remain vital even under unequal governance.