This article examines the centrality of infrastructure connectivity within the post-2008 ‘retroliberal’ global aid regime. Through the critical interrogation of connectivity and development discourse within Southeast Asia, as well as longitudinal field research examining repeated bouts of dispossession in Laos, I argue that all Southeast Asian states, regionally operating multilateral development banks and leading regional bilateral aid providers consider transnational infrastructure connectivity essential to development. Following this, I contend that large-scale infrastructure projects frequently increase disadvantaged communities’ exposure to intersectional forms of structural violence, epistemic violence, slow violence and infrastructural violence. Having made these arguments, I suggest that the normalisation of infrastructure connectivity as constitutive of development is producing increasingly violent development outcomes, and that intersectional interrogations of infrastructure violence are needed to better understand such outcomes. The argument presented is based on more than 20 months of in-country fieldwork in Laos and 40 interviews with 18 displaced residents. Fieldwork commenced in 2009 and remains ongoing.

Following the extraordinary wealth generation of casinos in Macau and Singapore, governments and non-state actors across Southeast Asia have developed gambling establishments as a means of fast-tracking economic growth and stimulating national development. Yet, here and elsewhere, casinos have been heavily criticized for their association with immoral behaviour, problem gambling, corruption, and organized crime. In this article, I focus on two casinos in northern Laos to address two research questions. First, I consider how casinos have come to exist within the remote border regions of one of Asia's least developed countries. I discuss vice economies within the Golden Triangle region, multi-actor aspirations to boost transnational connectivity within continental Southeast Asia, strengthening political-economic relationships between Laos and China, and Government of Laos efforts to use foreign investment as a mechanism for increasing governance capacities in borderlands. Following this, I critically analyze the relationship between casinos and development in Laos. I focus specifically on the multifarious effects of casinos on the lives and livelihoods of local communities to argue that casino development has been informed by logics of expulsion and the establishment of new predatory formations. To make this argument, the article draws on four fieldwork visits to each of the casino sites between 2011 and 2015, desk-based research, and interviews with local residents, casino staff, and members of the Government of Laos.

Development in Laos has occurred slowly, with uneven distribution and significant negative effects. This article challenges the simplistic assumption of human development and human security as mutually reinforcing processes. It suggests a holistic approach addressing simultaneously competing demands from the perspective of the most vulnerable sectors of society.