The logistics and (im)mobilities of digital illicit economies: The online scam industry in Southeast Asia

A light lunch will be provided

Abstract:

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia caused between US$18 billion and US$37 billion in losses in 2023 alone. Behind these losses lies an industry sustained by recruitment networks, physical infrastructure and political protection. How did scam compounds grow to such a scale, and why have repeated crackdowns failed to dismantle them?

Building on longstanding research into Myanmar’s illicit economies, this talk draws on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2026 along the China–Myanmar and Thailand–Myanmar borders, and in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. It follows the people, supplies and money that keep scam operations running, showing how workers’ confinement depends on the continued movement of food, electricity, communications and funds. It examines who controls these movements, who profits from them, and how operations relocate or reorganise under pressure while workers struggle to leave or return home.

The talk also looks towards West Africa, asking how recruitment, working conditions and political protection might differ across the two regions, and what these comparisons could reveal about how scam industries take root and persist. It presents findings to date from research supported by the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE) research programme.

Speaker:

Dr Xu Peng is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Chinese Political Economy at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester. She is also a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Illicit Economies, Violence and Development (CIVAD) at SOAS University of London, and Thematic Editor for International Relations at Asian Studies Review.

Her research examines the political economy of conflict, illicit economies and contested borderlands in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Myanmar. Her broader interests include China–Southeast Asia relations, and her current work extends to a comparative study of scam industries in Southeast Asia and West Africa.

Her research has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, China Perspectives, Asian Studies Review and Current History. She has been interviewed by major international media outlets, including the BBC, The Washington Post and South China Morning Post, on Myanmar’s conflicts and China–Southeast Asia relations.

Chair:

Professor Bingchun Meng (Co-Director of the LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy and the Director of LSE-Fudan Global Policy Hub)

This seminar is open to LSE staff and students only.