Varieties of state capital: What does foreign state-led investment do in a globalized world?

Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state-led investment does in a globalized economy, especially in its host states. Comparative capitalisms research has analyzed foreign state investment as a potential source of patient capital for coordinated and mixed market economies. However, this patient capital framework cannot explain the recent surge of protectionist sentiments, even among the ‘good hosts’ of state-led investment. Therefore, we extend the patient capital argument and develop a broader framework centered on the globalized nature of foreign state investment. We create and empirically illustrate a novel typology based on different modes of cross-border state investment – from financial to strategic – and different categories of host states. Our results provide a new pathway to study the rise and effects of cross-border state investment in the twenty-first century.

From Shangri-La to De facto SEZ

Sikkim in north-eastern India is a small border state strategically located between China, Nepal, and Bhutan. Two decades of state-led investment in infrastructural development and private investment in hydropower and pharmaceutical industries has transformed Sikkim from a remote border state to a de facto Special Economic Zone (SEZ) where incursions by private capital are masked under state-led development policies. The chapter focuses on Setipool slum, east Sikkim, located near two pharmaceutical factories, to demonstrate how ambiguous land rights and the establishment of pharmaceutical factories have led to spatially contained land booms which replicate nexuses of illegality, claim-making, and exclusions that are characteristic of corporate land grabs. The paper illustrates (i) the liminal origins of development zones, (ii) the networks and, sometimes, unforeseen socio-spatial impacts within and outside development zones, and (iii) the different forms of intimate exclusions that challenge prior assumptions around local responses to corporate incursions.

Alleged abuses will raise Mexico border state tensions

Headline MEXICO: Alleged abuses to raise border state tensions

The interurban migration industry: ‘Migration products’ and the materialisation of urban speculation at Iskandar Malaysia

Iskandar Malaysia (IM) is a 4749 km2 urban conurbation and development region located at the Malaysia–Singapore border. State-led development of this regional economic corridor has attracted inflows of foreign investments and spurred the rise of mid- to high-end urban developments by foreign developers. This has resulted in the emergence of an interurban migration industry consisting of intermediary entities that are co-developing and co-marketing ‘migration products’ (real estate, education and lifestyle migration) as an integrated package to middle-class, aspiring transnational investor/lifestyle migrants from the region. This article argues that this middlemen industry is crucial to the materialisation of urban speculation, for state actors and investor/lifestyle migrants alike. Through interurban alliances that capitalise on the broader state-led speculative urbanism landscape, the industry co-creates an imagined urban future that is grounded in transnational lifestyle mobilities. This article highlights the need to analyse speculative urbanism and transnational investment/lifestyle migration as intertwined processes.