The Making and Unmaking of Borders (original) (raw)

Reshaping the World Rethinking Borders

Social Sciences, 2021

This volume provides information and analyses to better grasp the social implications of geographical borders as well as the individuals who travel between them and those who live in border regions. Sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, and scholars of international relations and public health are just some of the authors contributing to Rethinking Borders. The diversity in the authors’ disciplines and the topics they focus on exemplify the intricacies of borders and their manifold effects. This openness to so many schools of thought stands in contrast to the solidification of stricter borders across the globe. The contributions range from case studies of migrants’ sense of belonging and safety to theoretical discussions about migration and globalization, from empirical studies about immigrant practices and exclusionary laws to ethical concerns about the benefits of inclusion. It is timely that this collective work is published in the middle of a pandemic that has affected every single part of the world. Unprecedented border closures and stringent travel restrictions have not been enough to contain the virus entirely. As COVID-19 shows, diseases, ideas, and xenophobic and racist discourses know no borders. Plans that transcend borders are vital when dealing with global threats, such as climate change and pandemics.

Studying Borders from the Border: Reflections on the Concept of Borders as Meeting Points

Geopolitics, 2022

Can the border be considered an epistemological starting point for the analysis of border theories and processes? Whether we look at Rumford’s ‘Seeing like a border’, Mezzadra and Neilson’s ‘Border as Method’, or at Mignolo’s ‘Border thinking’, the answer seems to be a positive one. Similar in their way of employing a different gaze to look at and from the border, yet radically divergent in their methods and outcomes, each of these approaches has indeed provided a unique perspective on borders. However, I argue, a more critical analysis of such approaches reveals how they tend to (1) reproduce those epistemological distinctions that have cut across border studies in the past thirty years and (2) selectively consider some aspects in the analysis of borders, while omitting or overlooking others. All of them appear therefore necessary to grasp the multiplicity of processes, networks, and conflicts that produce and shape – while being simultaneously produced and shaped by – borders. Drawing from, yet critical towards these works, the article will take the border itself as a starting point of investigation, in order to (1) empirically analyse the processes, forces, and conflicts unfolding across borders and (2) analytically interrogate the various epistemological approaches with their advantages and shortcomings. The paper argues that borders should be better thought of as ‘meeting points’, i.e., places of encounter, interaction/clash, and reassessment/redefinition of different theories and processes. Conceiving borders as such, the paper concludes, can provide a more comprehensive framework for the analysis of borders, capable of looking at them not just as passive places moulded by different forces and encapsulated through conventional theoretical approaches, but as active, complex, and variegated processes capable of generating social outcomes and changes.

Borders, Movement, and Being-in-Between

International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Education: Subject, Action & Society, 2023

This work in the format of interview opens the Special Issue of Vol. 2, 2022 dedicated entirely to the theme of borders starting from different multidisciplinary perspectives. The interviewed guest is Thomas Nail, Professor of Philosophy at University of Denver, and author of a now classic book Theory of Border (Oxford University Press, 2017). For many years, he has been studying the social, economic and political dynamics that are activated along border devices. During the interview, the Editors of the Journal-Prof Filippo Pergola and Prof. Raffaele De Luca Picione-discuss with the guest about a series of topics related to the definition of borders, their dynamics of movement, processes of in-betweenness, and both the specificities and diversity of border types (the fence, the wall, the cell, and the checkpoint). The study of borders is shown to be an essential means for understanding human phenomena in the contemporary world.

Borders: A story of political imagination

Borderlands, 2022

This article traces three different political imaginaries about borders, suggesting that the dominant imaginary-the one of border walls, driven by a fear of invasion-is only one way to live in the world. The goal is to make space in our political imaginations to rethink how we live together, including thinking beyond nation-states as containers that keep people in or out. By first showing how the vision of invasion is built and maintained with intersecting transnational technologies and ideologies, I open the way to thinking otherwise. Second, I trace the counterpolitics of borders developed by artists and activists, resisting borders and walls, as they work towards the end goal of freedom of movement. Finally, I turn to more speculative visions; I argue that we need to create room for alter-visions or alterpolitics-parallel alternatives to the current political order, which differ from oppositional politics. To this end, I read across the fields of immunology and anthropology in order to open an alter-political imaginary based on xenophilia, rather than xenophobia.

Engendering Borders : some critical thoughts on theories of borders and migration

Klagenfurter Geographische Schriften, 2013

This paper examines migration from the perspective of border theory. It is argued that in the changed contexts of border situation, whereby modern concepts of national territoriality and cultural boundaries are being dismantled by processes of globalization, the usual view at migration as involving border crossing between two sedentary (state) entities no long-er is theoretically adequate. To the contrary, notions of migration and rootedness, mobility and stillness, fluidity and permanence have lost their power of concepts by which to frame the debates on migration. Moreover, while the modern nation-states are being transformed from culturally homogenous to ‘liquefied’ societies, discourses on immigrants, aliens and foreigners face a serious challenge in terms of how they organize their reference point. Namely: who, or what, is the norm against which the immigrant is conceptualized as another subject, an Other, no longer is a self-evident realm. Final-ly, if the borders themselves have become moving objects, either as extraterritorial administrative points of control (e.g. Frontex) or as tools of social segregation and exclusion within a given territory (e.g. zoning), what are the conditions by which one becomes a migrant: is the legal status of citizenship still the proper means of describing one’s relationship towards the state, or have other factors, such as economic, social or cultural capital and possessions, become more rele-vant in defining the status of belonging and identity?

Introduction: Transforming Borders from Below: Theory and Research from across the Globe

Theoretical Criminology

Over the past decade a substantial body of criminological research has documented the impact of national border regimes on the bodies and lives of many around the globe. Although this research has been crucially important for developing a 'criminology of mobility' (Aas and Bosworth, 2013), there has been a tendency within the extant research to privilege the bordering power of nation-states while framing border crossers as relatively powerless. The aim of this Special Issue is to contribute theory and research to the field of border criminology by starting from a different perspective than much of the work to date. In this project, we prioritize attention to the diverse ways that borders and global processes of bordering are being transformed from below by border crossers and other ordinary people. The articles in this Special Issue examine a variety of places and contexts where migrants are climbing social, economic, political and discursive fences, claiming rights, resisting criminalization and demanding fair and humane treatment, often in collaboration with allies. All of the articles feature sophisticated theoretical insights and useful conceptual tools for examining how and why actions from below transform borders, adding nuance and complexity to the existing criminological literature on borders and mobility. All of the articles also draw on rich empirical research-from across the EU, the USA and the Asia Pacific region-to illuminate strategies and tactics employed by ordinary people to challenge, reimagine and transform borders and bordering. This collection highlights the impermanence of borders. Authors theoretically engage bordering as a performance, as a relational process and as a struggle. Theorizing is informed by empirical analyses of how borders and bordering are created, resisted and transformed in diverse sites around the globe. While borders are often designed to exclude, processes of bordering frequently include opportunities for migrants, employers, non-governmental workers and others to shape the impact and character of bordering in their everyday lives. In this way, the exclusionary laws, policies and practices of nation-states are sometimes 'transformed from below'. The collection begins with a provocative article by Wonders and Jones who seek to reframe how bordering and migration are conceived within criminology. Arguing that bordering must be understood as a tactic for socially constructing difference, they draw