Territorialised and Networked Scam Logistics: Digital Fraud Industries in Southeast Asia and West Africa
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
12:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS, University of London
- Room
- P 459 (4th Floor, Main Building)
About this event
Explore the contrasting worlds of digital fraud: Why do scam industries in Southeast Asia become enclosed compounds, while in West Africa they thrive as networked, platform-based ecosystems?
This talk develops a comparative political economy of digital fraud by placing Southeast Asia’s compound-based scam industry in dialogue with West Africa’s long-standing ecosystems of email-enabled and platform-mediated fraud, with particular attention to Nigeria and Ghana and the “Yahoo Boys” subculture. It advances a core puzzle: why do some scam markets consolidate into territorially enclosed, compound-based regimes of production, while others remain networked and dispersed, organised through peer recruitment, skill communities, and platform infrastructures?
The argument centres on the “logistical soils” that enable scams to scale and persist. In Southeast Asia, scam operations are sustained through territorialised logistics, corridor infrastructures, checkpointed governance, and protection markets that facilitate supply chains while immobilising and disciplining labour. In West Africa, scams are more often organised through networked logistics, platform ecosystems, informal training and mentoring circuits, and financial/payment workarounds that prioritise the circulation of identities and value rather than the control of labour’s physical mobility. Across both regions, digital infrastructures lower entry costs and heighten expected returns, but distinct cost structures and governance interfaces shape organisational form: capital-intensive territorial enclosures versus skill-intensive networked operations.
Empirically, the talk draws on multi-sited fieldwork and archival work on the China–Myanmar–Thailand borderlands (2018–2025), and integrates a developing comparative research strand on Nigeria and Ghana that will form a dedicated chapter in a second book project on the politics of the digital illicit economy. The comparison reframes cyber-fraud as an industry that organises circulation of labour, devices, identities, and illicit revenues, under uneven infrastructures and regulatory constraints, with implications for interventions that move beyond raids towards payment, platform, and infrastructural governance.
This research is part of the early career grant by the BISA, a project called ‘Checkpoint Politics and Digital Illicit Economies: Scam Logistics in Southeast Asia and West Africa'.
About the Speaker
Xu Peng works in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. Trained in political science, she adopts a historically grounded approach that integrates archival research with fieldwork-based oral histories to examine the persistence of conflict and illicit economies in Southeast Asia’s contested borderlands, with a particular focus on Myanmar.
Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Contemporary Asia, China Perspectives, and Asian Studies Review. She is currently developing two book projects: one on borderland statecraft and armed politics, and another on the politics of the digital illicit economy. The second book includes a comparative component - developed as a side project and intended as a dedicated chapter - that brings South Asia and West Africa into dialogue.
She also contributes expert analysis to major international media outlets, including the BBC, The Washington Post, and the South China Morning Post, where she provides evidence-based commentary on Myanmar’s conflict dynamics and China’s engagement in Southeast Asia.
Image credit: Le Vu via unsplash