How to Evade States and Slip Past Borders: Lessons from Traders, Overstayers, and Asylum Seekers in H ong K ong and C hina

This paper analyzes how traders, overstayers, and asylum seekers in H ong K ong and south C hina experience and evade the state. It does this by utilizing two of A nanya R oy's key ideas—the organizational logic of informality, and “unmapping” as an informalization of the state. It considers the organizational logic of informality by examining the individual strategies followed by traders, overstayers, and asylum seekers in their conduct of low‐end globalization. These strategies include laying low beneath the notice of the state, using one's social networks and cultural capital in one's evaluation of uncertain information, and engaging in self‐presentation that remains carefully concealed. The paper applies R oy's concept of unmapping to the governments of H ong K ong and C hina in their informalization of state control over immigration and police, rendering the enforcement of low‐priority laws a matter of the individual discretion of state agents. However, even if the state does not usually act, it could act, making the lives and livelihoods of these immigrants particularly uncertain. This paper shows how R oy's ideas may be applied to a realm of analysis far from her original purview. [traders, overstayers, asylum seekers, low‐end globalization, H ong K ong, C hina]