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This article interrogates the meaning of kyukyaw, often shortened as kyu, a Burmese word that is used as both a verb—to occupy or encroach—and a noun—squatter or slum. This deployment of language demands attention because kyu evokes strong negative sentiments, despite its ambiguity. The rapid pace of change in post‐junta Myanmar has compelled both the elite and the marginalized to seek rightness through the notion of rule of law, even though customary practices have not adhered to the strictures of manmade law. Through the personal narratives of residents in Hlaingthaya Township in Yangon, this article raises questions about rightful settlement in unclear legal frameworks.

This article examines the entangled secular/religious construction of neighbourhoods in Mandalay as dynamic, people-based and relational processes that are centred in dhamma-youns (dhamma halls) which work within and across administrative ward boundaries. Cities in Myanmar have not followed the trajectories of urbanisation documented in the global North and its socio-spatial relationships are inextricably bound to the Theravadin Buddhist lifeworld. This entanglement requires attention because international development aid promoted purely secular forms of urban governance between 2011 and 2021, and Buddhist morality remains salient after the February 2021 military coup d'état.

Place‐making is an assemblage of related concepts and practices predicated on the phenomenon of place. Although scholars have mostly focused on human actions in particular locations and have prioritized the significance of materiality, some have argued that place is porous and multiscalar and contains multiple human and nonhuman actors. As a process, it can be conceived of as a bundle of numerous actors rather than as a prescribed territory. As praxis, it has been a loosely defined set of practices that seek to make, transform, and care for places and for the people in them. This process tends to be inclusive and is often synonymous with community‐building, which celebrates collective action, sometimes without sufficient recognition of the politics in place‐making. Given the increasing mobility of our world, mobility and place cannot be binaries. Today, to consider mobility in the discussion of place‐making is not just a theoretical discussion but also an empirical imperative.

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