The Sambas Malay women in this study reside in a border territory coloured by a specific set of historical, political, and socioeconomic relations. Most notably, people in Sambas are keenly aware that living near the border is a marker that they are on the periphery of Indonesia. Moreover, the border's prominence in the economic and political projects of the Indonesian state in the second half of the twentieth century has generated a sense of resentment, because the locals have received few material benefits as a result (see also, Eilenberg, 2012c). These factors, in combination with low, stagnant socioeconomic development and the perception that the status of Sambas Malays has diminished over time, explain many Sambas Malays’ feelings of economic, political, and cultural marginality.

Two overlapping sets of geographic borders form the key receptacles of Sambas Malay women's expressions of marginality and visions for forward movement: the territorial border with East Malaysia and the administrative border of the Regency of Sambas. These borders are grounded in distinct geographic, economic, and political processes that do not simply demarcate the borders in Sambas, but constantly make and re-make them. While making the border, such processes also produce the meanings and values associated with it. As discussed in this chapter, the enactment of state power is an especially important part of territorial and administrative border making. In the past, the central government's intervention in making Sambas’ borders has been a source of feelings of marginalisation and peripherality. More recently, however, the redrawing and reconceptualisation of Sambas’ territorial and administrative borders has produced new pathways of mobility, ranging from natural resourcebased sources of income, formal and informal cross-border economic activities, labour migration, public sector employment, and investment in social development projects.

The following sections contextualise perceptions of marginalisation in relation to the key economic and political transitions in Sambas, starting from the late colonial period, continuing through the era of Independence (with a focus on the New Order government), and finishing with the first ten to fifteen years of decentralisation. The colonial state both consolidated the international border between Sambas and East Malaysia and set in motion Sambas’ transition from an independent principality to an administrative unit under Dutch colonial sovereignty.