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Digital games are one of the most engaging forms of media. Players can have a first-hand experience and the possibility of feeling immersed within a digital setting where agency is exerted. This paper seeks to understand the role of digital games as new means of communication and their potential to convey messages that may defy gamers to question the moral grand narratives that shape contemporary societies. In a moment when many countries have opted to close or limit the circulation in their borders, it is important to think about the role played by the border as a historic liminal entity for the representation of societies and communities, distinguishing those who belong from those who do not. The representation of the border in digital games have tended to follow one of the main tropes explored in other media: the border as a physical space that set boundaries between different nations and different regions of the world. In order to assert the potential of digital games to offer a more comprehensive representation of the border as a liminal space, the case of Papers, Please! (2013) will be analyzed. Based on a qualitative methodology, having content analysis as primary data collection method, the paper intends to contribute to the discussion on how history may narrativized and, eventually, reinterpreted in digital games. Papers, Please! analysis will be centered on the relationship that is set between player and border, that is presented as a liminal space where the game's action takes places entirely. Moreover, the paper intends to discuss the role that has been played by digital games in the representation of serious topics and how they have evolved as communication tools beyond their role as entertainment products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Big Bend National Park: Mexico, the United States, and a Borderland Ecosystem" by Michael Welsh is a historical exploration of Big Bend National Park, situated on the border between Mexico and the United States. The book examines the unique landscape of the park, shaped by the Rio Grande river, and the challenges posed by its borderland ecosystem. Welsh discusses the efforts of conservationists, politicians, and scientists in establishing the park and highlights the potential for binational cooperation and collaboration. The book also addresses the tensions between preservation and development in national parks and the need to navigate the changing cultural and political landscape. While the book lacks an examination of the park's future in the face of climate change and public policy, it offers valuable insights for students and scholars interested in national identity, border relations, and environmental protectionism. [Extracted from the article]

A comprehensive understanding of the impact of land fragmentation on collective action is essential for rural governance in developing countries. Prior publications have argued that land fragmentation impedes the sustainable development of agricultural economies and rural societies, while the connection between humans and nature has not been considered comprehensively. Therefore, the conclusion that the impact of land fragmentation on collective action is purely negative may be one-sided. To examine this conclusion, this paper re-evaluates the relationship between land fragmentation and rural collective action from a multidisciplinary perspective. Based on a rural field survey using stratified random sampling, Oprobit regression was employed to conduct an econometric analysis on data from 798 rural households across 14 cities in the border region of Guangxi, China. The following research findings were obtained: (1) When the human–nature connection is considered, the relationship between land fragmentation and collective action follows an inverted U-shaped curve. Specifically, moderate initial increases in land fragmentation can lead to improvements in collective action; however, when the degree of land fragmentation exceeds a certain threshold, further increases in land fragmentation will decrease the collective action capacity. (2) This nonlinear relationship between land fragmentation and collective action may be realized through three pathways: agricultural production, land use patterns, and the ecological environment. Under the context of collective action, this study shows that a moderate level of land fragmentation objectively exists in reality. This insight provides a new impetus for developing countries to shift policy perspectives to increase their land use efficiency. Additionally, this paper integrates relevant findings from both social sciences and natural sciences. Thereby, it not only expands the existing understanding of key factors influencing rural household collective action but also emphasizes the potential for cross-disciplinary integration between social sciences and natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Badakhshan, a borderland province in the northeast of Afghanistan, the paper explores the role that opium poppy cultivation has played in a marginal high-altitude economy. Framed by the analytic of 'narco-frontiers' and the puzzle of the persistence of small farmers in uneven agrarian transitions, the paper investigates the diversity of market and non-market institutions that operate across the means of production of opium. Rather than seeing opium poppy production as the vanguard of an agrarian transition, it is suggested that it is more of a rearguard action to ensure survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper introduces a conceptual lens for leading social change in slums and informal settlements. In line with this aim, the purpose of this case study is to describe the public problem-solving approach of a social change organization situated in an informal settlement through the lens of adaptive leadership, complexity theory and social change leadership (SCL). Design/methodology/approach: This paper follows an engaged reflection tradition. First, the author-practitioners describe an informal settlement case hereafter called ISC in southeast Iran where many people have historically remained undocumented and uneducated. Using complex adaptive systems theory, adaptive leadership and SCL as the conceptual lens, the paper analyzes ISC as a complex adaptive context in which the community and the government are in tension in solving problems, particularly illiteracy. The instrumental case study draws from participant observation and document analysis to describe and examine the endeavors of a community office operating within ISC. Through this reflective analysis, the authors illustrate how a social change organization can effectively tackle public issues like illiteracy within informal settlements. Findings: This paper applies complexity leadership theory to a social context. The study illustrates how social change organizations can support the transformation of informal spaces into adaptive spaces to enact social change. Originality/value: This paper reflects on engagement activity near the insecure borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By extending an organizational-level theory to the public sphere, this paper contributes theoretically to the complexity theory literature. Moreover, it provides a practical insight for community development and slum upgrading projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban green spaces (UGS) play a crucial role in the urban environmental system by aiding in mitigating the urban heat island effect, promoting sustainable urban development, and ensuring the physical and mental well-being of residents. The utilization of remote sensing imagery enables the real-time surveying and mapping of UGS. By analyzing the spatial distribution and spectral information of a UGS, it can be found that the UGS constitutes a kind of low-rank feature. Thus, the accuracy of the UGS segmentation model is not heavily dependent on the depth of neural networks. On the contrary, emphasizing the preservation of more surface texture features and color information contributes significantly to enhancing the model's segmentation accuracy. In this paper, we proposed a UGS segmentation model, which was specifically designed according to the unique characteristics of a UGS, named the Green Space Reverse Pixel Shuffle Network (GSRPnet). GSRPnet is a straightforward but effective model, which uses an improved RPS-ResNet as the feature extraction backbone network to enhance its ability to extract UGS features. Experiments conducted on GaoFen-2 remote sensing imagery and the Wuhan Dense Labeling Dataset (WHDLD) demonstrate that, in comparison with other methods, GSRPnet achieves superior results in terms of precision, F1-score, intersection over union, and overall accuracy. It demonstrates smoother edge performance in UGS border regions and excels at identifying discrete small-scale UGS. Meanwhile, the ablation experiments validated the correctness of the hypotheses and methods we proposed in this paper. Additionally, GSRPnet's parameters are merely 17.999 M, and this effectively demonstrates that the improvement in accuracy of GSRPnet is not only determined by an increase in model parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postcolonial legacy of India's borderlands is a legacy of othering, particularly of the religious other (meaning, other than Hindu). The 'friendly' India-Nepal border, however, negotiates the sameness of religion by managing the refractions of caste and gender. The shared sacredness of the landscape reproduced in the circulation of icons, myths and pilgrims also reaffirms the shared religious identity of those crossing it. This paper argues that the sameness that constitutes friendliness at this border rests on evaluating the gendered and caste righteousness of those crossing it. It is rendered most visible in alleged instances of elopement, marital infidelity and trafficking that come into public view at the open and friendly border. The paper describes how sameness is both refracted and managed through the observation of the daily mobilities and spatiality at the India-Nepal border at two check-points in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period of the 18th-century Ottoman history is commonly labelled “the age of ayans”. As a rule, the great local warlords attracted considerable research interest. However, this paper aims to shed light on a local notable of the group of so-called “minor” ayans, whose stories are relatively less frequently presented in the historiography: the case of Elhac Ömeroğlu Hacı Ömer Ağa - the ayan of Hezargrad (mod. Razgrad) for the last two decades of the 18th. century. The study focuses on the one hand, on his networks of cooperation and contention with the regional notables and power-holders, and on the other hand, on his locally based patronage network. The 1787–1792-war deeply affected the everyday life of the South-Danubian Ottoman borderland districts and gave crucial impetus of the regional notables’ partnerships and struggles for supremacy. Locally based patronage relations are another main research issue in this paper. Тhe focus is on the role of local leadership in the system of social and administrative management of the district of Hezargrad, the ayan’s interaction with the community he represented, and his recognition in the local society as reflected in the documentation concerning some volatile points of the local notable’s story: the state decrees for his executions (at least two) and the process of the confiscation of his property (müsadere) in 1790, and another one - after Ömer Ağa’s death, in 1800. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Carta Económica Regional is the property of Universidad de Guadalajara and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the intersections between two phenomena that have shaped eastern Kachin State in Myanmar's northern borderlands with China since the late 1980s: the transformation of once-remote spaces into resource frontiers shaped by overlapping and cumulative forms of export-oriented resource extraction, and the upsurge of opium cultivation and drug use. Through the analytic of extractivism, we examine how the modalities surrounding logging and plantations in the Myanmar-China borderlands offer critical insights into how drugs have become entrenched in the region's political economy and the everyday lives of people 'living with' the destruction, violence and insecurity wrought by extractive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to describe and analyze the changes in public sites of memory in the multi-ethnic border region of Czechoslovak Silesia during the period of restoration of Czechoslovak sovereignty, between the fall of Nazism in May 1945 and the communist putsch in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. This research focuses on transformations and (dis)continuity of cults and symbols during that period, and on specifics and differences within the examined region with regard to ethnic and social structure of local population. Research is based primarily on the recorded agendas of state and district administrations, but preserved memorials and photographs or descriptions of vanished sites of memory also serve as important sources. After the expulsion of German population, the western part of the region was repopulated by settlers from various regions of East-Central Europe. Most of local German sites of memory vanished, with the partial exception of religious symbols and a few "apolitical" memorials. New monuments and memorials were dedicated mainly to personalities of Czech history in an effort to inculcate the "official" identity amongst the new-settlers. In the Ostrava coal basin, the new regime invoked the pre-war tradition of working-class identity and showed tolerance towards the sites of memory of the local Polish minority, except memorials related to the former Czech-Polish border conflicts. In the Hlučín region specifically, a strong pro-German narrative survived despite the "Czechization" efforts of state authorities. In general, the state-supported memory policy aimed to create the narrative of a "Slavic" and "socialist" Silesia, suppress the German past of the region, and weaken frictions between Czechs and Poles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Res Rhetorica is the property of Polish Rhetoric Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary study with the aim of assessing the potential combined risk from consuming locally harvested food products in the Euro-Arctic region of Norway, Finland, and Russia. The three important contaminant groups—radioactive substances, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants (POPs)—were measured in food samples such as berries, mushrooms, fish, birds, reindeer, and moose; they were sampled in 2013–2015. To assess the combined pollution levels and investigate the trends, similarities, and variations between different contaminant groups, subsequent multivariate statistical analysis was performed. The results showed that, in general, the levels of radioactive substances, toxic elements, and POPs were below the permitted EU maximum content in food products. However, statistical analysis revealed some correlations, similarities, and peculiarities between the accumulation of different contaminants in various species, which allowed for a better understanding of the mechanisms of accumulation and interaction between different contaminant groups. It also gave a better insight into the possible added risks and helped pinpoint species that could serve as reference markers for the accumulation of different contaminants in food. Mushrooms, fish, and reindeer were found to be important markers in the combined risk assessments for the contents of metals and radioactive substances. Further research, as well as the development of methodologies for combined assessments, are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large number of people from villages in the India–Bangladesh borderlands are migrants to Indian cities, particularly to the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi. Migration from Cooch Behar, an industrially backward district in the northern part of the state of West Bengal in India sharing border with Bangladesh and the Indian state of Assam, has been a regular practice as subsistence agriculture fail to provide the landless agricultural labourers continuous employment and competitive wages. This paper is based on ethnographic study in Delhi NCR and the former 'Chhit Mahals' (as the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India were called in Bengali) in Cooch Behar district, in the period immediately following their exchange, of historically marginal migrant households whose members work in the construction industry. With the implementation of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh and the finalisation of the India-Bangladesh land boundary, the former Chhit Mahals, that is border enclaves of Bangladesh and India, were exchanged between the two states in August 2015. The former Bangladeshi Chhit Mahals in Cooch Behar are now Indian villages, whose residents had opted for Indian citizenship. This paper explores migration from these former Chhit Mahals with a relational political economy perspective. It analyses both broader socio-cultural, economic, and political processes and interests and the migrants' own feelings which interact with migration to demonstrate how the migrant's labour value is determined at the intersection of identity, affect and the international border, with marginalisation of the migrants from the India–Bangladesh borderlands emerging as a product of layered struggles and a dynamic of continuous cultural reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the current export potential of Kazakhstan, highlight its shortcomings, and implement solutions that will help to avoid them, form the poles of economic development, as well as explore ways to develop and improve them. This paper is aimed at the study of the economy of the border territories of Kazakhstan, it used the method of logical analysis, the method of comparative analysis, the method of analysis of scientific literature, the method of synthesis, the method of deduction, as well as the economic and statistical method. The result of this work is the definition and development of the theoretical and practical foundations of the activities of border territories, their impact on the economy of this region, as well as the creation of an algorithm and methods for the development of the poles of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective: Political, economic, communicative and cultural borders still limit the accessibility of acute healthcare services for patients so that they frequently have to accept longer distances to travel to the next provider within their own country. In this paper, we analyze the impact of borders and opening of borders on acute medical care in hospitals and on patients in border regions. Methods: We develop a conceptual framework model of cross-border healthcare and apply it to the Polish–German border area. The model combines the distance decay effect, a catchment area analysis, economies of scale and the learning curve. Results: Borders have a major impact on acute medical care in hospitals and on patients. Setting of new borders will reduce the accessibility of health facilities for patients or require the establishment of new hospitals. Reopening borders might induce a vicious circle leading to the insolvency of a hospital which might result in poorer health for some patients. Conclusion: Strong effort should be invested to overcome political and cultural borders to improve the health of the population in border regions. Similarly, increased cross-border acute healthcare must be seen in the context of rural health and the special situation of small rural hospitals in rural peripheral areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effectiveness of cross-border cooperation programmes between Spain and Portugal, focusing on their impact and outcomes in Portuguese regions. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the programmes, the study examines the socio-economic dynamics in border regions, including job creation, population trends, and investment patterns. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative data analysis. We argue that the cross-border territorial cooperation between Spain and Portugal has played a significant role in fostering regional development and addressing common challenges. While the concerted efforts have shown positive results in terms of economic growth and employment, they have not been sufficient to reverse the regressive demographic trends. Thus, it is essential to strengthen cooperation mechanisms, invest in human capital, and foster innovation so that the two countries can work together to create sustainable and inclusive development across their shared border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how integration affects Foreign Direct Investment location in relation to a newly internalised border. It focuses on the fifth European Union enlargement that integrated the Central and Eastern European Countries. Using a spatial autoregressive model, 35,103 FDI location decisions are analysed for Europe at a NUTS-2 regional level over 1997–2010. It finds no distance effect in FDI location prior to enlargement, but after this time FDI is 37% higher in the CEEC regions that are contiguous with the newly internalised border. This is not explained by a national border effect that occurs throughout the union, nor by a drop in FDI in the border regions of the old Member States, but rather it is consistent with improved market access from the removal of the border checks. Along the internalised border it amounts to an extra 60 FDI projects and 13,600 gross jobs per annum, which is up to 2000 investments in the long-run. The results have implications for economic development and cohesion of the enlarged union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Space & Society / Tér és Társadalom is the property of Centre for Economic & Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents a synthesis of the sociolinguistic situation of the Polish-Belarusian borderland, on the territory of the former parish of Usnar. Field studies were conducted systematically in the years 2015-2020 and irregularly in the years 2021-2023. The author employed an original method based on using museum fund. The paper focuses on the influence of the border (the state one, as well as other types of borders) on the sociolinguistic situation of the microarea. Particularly noteworthy is the persistent division into settlements of the petty nobility and villages, along with the corresponding language codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article initiates historical, linguistic, and textological research into the rich diaristic legacy of Emilia Wróblewska, nee Beniowska (1830-1886), a Polish woman from the circle of Vilnius intelligentsia, who had written intimate diaries for herself and her children for almost 30 years. The subject of exploratory study are the texts of the diaries kept by Wróblewska for her son Tadeusz in the years 1859-1886, and her daughter Maria in the years 1865-1873 (with an entry for Emilia's younger son, Augustyn, added in 1886). The paper aims at identifying the most prominent features of spelling and linguistic phenomena (regarding phonetics, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and lexis) that can be qualified as regional features typical of the North-Eastern Borderlands (Kresy) in the diarist's Polish language. A comparative method was used in the study; the material extracted from the diaries was confronted with the usage and developmental tendencies of the standard Polish language of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at providing a synopsis of previous studies on the Kaunas Polish language, as well as identifying knowledge gaps, i.e., the things that - despite extensive research on this language variety - are still not known. At the turn of the 20th and the 21st century, intensified research both on the current Polish language variety, as spoken in the Kaunas region, and its history (mainly over the 19th century up till the 1950s) brought about vast amounts of linguistic and extralinguistic data. However, a detailed analysis shows that there is no easy answer to the question posed in the title of the paper. The article overviews the situation of the Kaunas Polish language, its territorial range, scope, and functions, as well as its defining features observable at the beginning of the 21st century. The author also outlines how the language variety -a subdivision of the Polish in the North-Eastern Borderlands - has evolved over the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commuting, the spatial mismatch between work and residential locations, necessitates integrated urban and transport policies to mitigate its societal impacts. While cross-border commuting (CBC) is increasing and governance of border regions is on the rise beyond national borders, no systemic review of this specific commuting pattern exists. We aim to consolidate the CBC literature accumulated over the years into a coherent and synthetic framework. Our systematic review assembles an inaugural comprehensive corpus of cross-border commuting literature. It reveals three transversal key topics (transport-oriented topic, qualitative approaches versus a lack of quantitative data, and a large majority of European papers) and four sub-topics (patterns, determinants, impacts and policies). Moreover, we consolidate findings through meticulous mapping of evidence, where most links are traced between the determinants and the level of flows across borders. Finally, the discussion offers directions for future research, with an exhortation to explicitly link policies to sustainability and social concerns, and the necessity for standardised datasets for methodological comparability across cases and in alignment with general commuting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the incursions, or more accurately, the interventions of the Indian state into what are often called its "Northeast borderlands." It grapples with the specific space occupied by those who belong to this minoritized region in India. Theoretically, it works through conceptions of "sovereignty" and "intervention" to underscore what is at stake for those who lie within the remit of recognized state sovereignty but are nonetheless subject to brutal and invasive "intervention." The article engages Naga author Temsula Ao's writing on questions of "tribal" identity, globalization, and borders to situate India as a postcolonial "settler" state. Finally, it puts her work in conversation with Manu Karuka's notion of "counter-sovereignty" to highlight the ways in which even critical International Relations (IR) theory risks falling into the trap of reifying "sovereignty" and unwittingly giving credence to Westphalian and Euro-centric understandings of sovereignty at the expense of alternative and prior imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Don Sahong Hydropower Project (DSHPP), located in the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos, near the border with Cambodia, has been amongst the most controversial hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin. Despite considerable regional and international opposition, the dam was finally constructed, becoming commercially operational in 2020. In 2011, I expressed serious concerns about the project's potential impacts on long-distance migratory fish and associated fisheries, especially fish that migrate from Cambodia and Vietnam up the Mekong River to Laos and Thailand. However, my concerns have somewhat changed along with the circumstances, although they continue to focus on dam impacts on migratory fish. I am now particularly concerned about the indirect impacts of the DSHPP on the fishing livelihoods in the Khone Falls area, and the impacts of the dam on fish larvae and fish passing through the dam's turbines when migrating downstream. Using a political ecology approach, this paper considers how infrastructure, in this case a large hydropower dam located on the Mekong River, has altered the spatialities associated with the project in particular ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ripple effects of European border externalisation have transformed everyday life in the Tunisian coastal town of Zarzis. Building on ethnographic fieldwork among artisanal fishermen, and actors involved in two migrant cemeteries in Zarzis, the article provides an understanding of entangled processes and of how violence and death co-exist in the externalised borderlands of the EU. The felt and lived embeddedness and simultaneity of otherwise separately viewed policy issues is revealed through a focus on intersecting processes coming together in one place. The article analyses the ripple effects of these policies on third actors (the fishermen), the environment (marine life), and space (two migrant cemeteries) in Zarzis. The article unpacks how externalisation translates into human rights abuses, environmental crisis, and death, and how these are distinctly intertwined. I propose the concept 'felt externalisation' as a theoretical contribution which ties together the three core themes: the actors, the environment, and the space. In doing so, the article brings together three different, yet interrelated dimensions of border externalisation that are still largely understudied in the literature. By looking at externalisation from a spatial and geographically situated angle the paper makes not only an empirical but also a conceptual and theoretical contribution, by seeking to expand the empirical basis but also the very meaning of externalisation and its effects, in the extended EU borderland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Export revenue from small-scale cross-border trading activities is a critical source of income to households in often remote and disconnected border regions of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines how this type of trade is affected by changes in market conditions driven by conflict spikes on the other side of the border. Combining a unique dataset on monthly daytime small-scale cross-border trade between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with georeferenced data of conflict events in the DRC, I investigate whether changes over time in the relative exposure to armed conflict shocks at different border posts explain differences in the evolution of local exports from Uganda to the DRC. Combining instrumental variable and difference-in-differences estimation strategies, I confirm that an increase in exposure to armed conflict activity has a large negative effect on daytime exports. Estimates vary depending on how nonclassical measurement error prevalent in most measures of conflict is accounted for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the conventional understanding of North Korean borders as classic barriers that block infiltration of outside influences, this paper argues that the Sino-North Korean border region has undergone considerable transformations, especially at the local level. By analysing local-level trans-border activities, it shows that North Korea seeks to develop the Sino-North Korean border region as a space of opportunity. Even the heightened political conflicts between China and North Korea and the tightened international sanctions against North Korea failed to dampen local actors' economic imperatives, particularly after the 2012 and 2013 decentralisations in North Korea. Local actors were active in driving trans-border economic practices and, in turn, transformed the Sino-North Korean border region into potential cross-border cooperation zones. Although there has been conflict and competition in border region development between North Korea and China, we argue that local governments and entrepreneurs' efforts to maximise economic independence in the border regions are persisting, and their geo-economic imperatives are important factors in reshaping the Sino-North Korean border region by initiating and advancing trans-border interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that to understand the impact of former U.S. President Donald Trump on the U.S.-Mexico border, his presidential agenda needs to be compared with other presidential administrations from the 1990s to the present. It looks at presidential policy agendas, as seen in executive orders, legislative policies, binational initiatives, deployment of the National Guard and military, presidential visits, and use of the bully pulpit with visits to the border region. These are compared to border operations indicators, highlighting formal and informal crossings of people and movement of goods. Though Mr. Trump has been specifically negative and aggressive toward the border, the securitization of the region has been part of presidential agendas since the 1990s. A key takeaway is to think about and discuss these results to ensure the border is livable, manageable and ready for the challenges of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on official imperial discourses in the Russian Empire and archival documents of the Orenburg Border Commission (1799–1856), the Russian imperial administrative institution subordinated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this paper analyzes the ransoming, release, and reintegration of freed Russian subjects and shows how these processes and practices were inextricably linked to the Russian imperial concept of political belonging. In such a context, the concepts of freedom and liberation must be questioned; that is, we must determine the extent to which "freedom" can represent a universal value and is legally defined and thus dependent on sociopolitical situations and frameworks. To contribute to a more precise and multifaceted understanding of "freedom" and "dependency" as well as "freeing" and "enslavement," this article examines the liberation and repatriation of enslaved Russian subjects in the Central Asian khanates of Khiva and Bukhara in the first half of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how Brazilian and Angolan national-popular songs were related in a space of cultural circulation on a transnational scale. For this goal, it takes as its object a tour of Brazilian musicians to Angola, in 1980, called Kalunga Project. It proposes an analytical path which apprehends the musical event as a heuristic object while it aims to investigate how the two national musical formations were confronted in their nationalization and internationalization strategies. It is an attempt to compare two musical realities, prioritizing an examination of the development of the Angolan national and popular music in the post-independence period, based on field study in Angola as well as an analysis of documentary and bibliographic sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sikhs in Ladakh arrived as traders in Jammu and Kashmir, and settled around the major trading centres along the silk-route such as Skardu, Kargil, Leh in the then undivided erstwhile princely state as it existed before 1947-partition. Tracing their journey across tribulations of time, this paper studies identity and belonging among the Sikh-community living in the borderland town of Kargil through life-histories and oral-narratives collected on the ground. Despite having always existed as a small minority amidst an overwhelming Muslim majority, the work while recording the lived-experiences of the Sikhs during partition and, in times of subsequent wars in a post-partition era in this borderland, foregrounds the binding role that linguistic and territorial ethnic identity plays in a multi-religious community. In doing so, the work studies the parallel construction and evolution of a religious identity with that of an ethno-religious one, where shared ethnic-affiliations bind a multi-religious community together when religious differences tend to divide them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the incredible rise of multifaceted socio-ecological crises, the concept of resilience has seen such a cross-cutting diffusion in both academic and policy arenas, resulting in a panacea incapable of translating the intricacies and geometries of power embedded in societal complex systems. This conceptual vagueness, rather than unintentional, constitutes an explicit strategy within the new neoliberal design that conceals the power domination over marginal communities, particularly border crossers. Drawing on qualitative, field-based research held in Lesvos (GR), this paper wants to deconstruct the techno-managerial appropriation of the resilience concept, particularly underlying the several criticalities in terms of socio-spatial segregation and punitive management of marginality that could arise from it. Therefore, it will investigate why and to what extent the actual EU migration policies and narratives, by framing migration flows as a sort of resilient adaptation strategies, represent a necropolitical strategy that implies the control and the reshaping of bodies, cultures, social roles, and agencies, through different domination strategies. Opposed to the top-down hegemonic apparatus, different forms of resilience are created by migrants in the liminal space in which they create, reshape, and produce new space and values. We will conclude with a reframing of resilience under a more comprehensive and systemic view that can represent an exercise of affirmative biopolitics of cross-border communities and rethink borderlands as a space of new multiple possibilities and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on cross-border regional innovation systems suggests that facilitating cross-border interaction and knowledge flows promotes the innovativeness of border regions. Tourism can heighten the interaction and knowledge flows between populations, businesses, and other organisations on opposing sides of the border. However, by reviewing empirical studies on the topic, the paper contends that progress towards cross-border regional innovation system integration has remained modest while the role of tourism in facilitating it has remained under investigated. The paper demonstrates how the systems failure approach offers an effective framework to address these research and policy gaps: a deeper understanding of the nature of failure can provide an important steppingstone to advancing the role of tourism in cross-border development. • Cross-border tourism development faces distinctive and major challenges. • Cross-border tourism flows facilitate knowledge transfer and innovation. • Cross-border regional innovation systems have limited success. • Systems failure approach helps to uncover barriers to cross-border integration. • Systems failure provides a platform for refreshed cross-border policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Society for the History of the Map (ISHMap) recently held its II Workshop and VII Symposium in Berlin, Germany. The workshop provided early career scholars with the opportunity to exchange knowledge with renowned map historians and other members of the international community interested in the study of maps. The symposium brought together scholars from around the world to discuss various topics related to map history, including knowledge circulation, indigenous mapping, and maps in literature. The event also included a visit to the Map Reading Room at the Staatsbibliothek and a trip to the headquarters of Justus Perthes Verlag in Gotha. Two prize winners were announced for the best papers presented at the symposium. The society also elected new trustees and officers and opened calls for nominations for future prizes and hosting opportunities. [Extracted from the article]

Under the background of complex international situation, how to build the special geo-economic space of China-Russia border lies in strengthening their foreign trade resilience against external shocks. Based on empirical evidence from ten prefecture-level China-Russia border regions in Northeast China, this paper analyzed the spatiotemporal evolution of foreign trade resilience under different shocks. Furthermore, through the Panel Regression model, the mechanism of the industrial structure on the foreign trade resilience in contraction period and expansion period was discussed. The results showed that: 1) from 2004 to 2021, foreign trade in China-Russia border regions experienced five phases. The overall foreign trade resilience was higher than expected, showing a rising volatility trend, but there was significant spatial heterogeneity in the ability of cities to cope with shocks. 2) Highly specialized clusters were mainly concentrated in Yichun, Heihe and Da Hinggan Ling Prefecture, while Mudanjiang and Yanbian performed better in related and unrelated diversification. 3) In different stages of economic system evolution, the response mode, degree and result of border foreign trade resilience to regional industrial structure showed obvious stage characteristics. During the contraction period, related diversification was more conducive to improving the resistance through risk spillovers. During the expansion period, specialization played a more significant role in improving regional resilience through self-reinforcing effect. These results are beneficial for expanding the resilience theory, ensuring border economic security and optimizing border industrial investment layout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Typically mobile and vulnerable, migrants face significant barriers to access to routine malaria prevention, diagnostics and treatment, which leads to unchecked malaria transmission, particularly in border regions with a high population displacement. This study aimed to investigate the demographic and socioeconomic obstacles to access to malaria services among Myanmar migrants residing in the Thailand–Myanmar border areas. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in early 2024 across three districts near the Thailand–Myanmar border. Quantitative data were collected from Myanmar migrants using standardized questionnaires through structured surveys. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and simple and multiple logistic regression models. Results: Out of 300 participants, approximately a quarter (27.3%) reported adequate access to comprehensive malaria services, including prevention, diagnostics, treatment and malaria-related health information. In multiple logistic regression models, factors associated with inadequate access included Myanmar migrants aged over 60 years (aOR: 7.63, 95% CI 1.74–20.58), accompanied by one to three family members (aOR: 3.33, 95% CI 1.06–8.45), earning monthly incomes below 3000 THB (aOR: 5.13, 95% CI 1.38–19.09) and 3000 to 6000 THB (aOR: 3.64, 95% CI 1.06–12.51), belonging to the Karen ethnicity (aOR: 2.13, 95% CI 1.02–3.84), with poor perception toward malaria (aOR: 2.03, 95% CI 1.03–4.01) and with poor preventive and health-seeking practices (aOR: 5.83, 95% CI 2.71–9.55). Conclusions: A significant proportion of Myanmar migrants encounter demographic and socioeconomic barriers to access to routine malaria services in Thailand. Tailored interventions are required to expand such access, including the recruitment of worksite health volunteers, strengthening the role of ethnic health organizations across the border and collaboration with private sector stakeholders (e.g. farm/company owners) to distribute preventive tools and ensure timely referral of suspected malaria cases to health facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists attacked people in their homes, fields, and at a music festival in Israeli communities near the border with Gaza. More than 1,145 men, women, and children were killed, about 1,800 wounded were evacuated to hospitals in the country, and 253 infants, children, women, elderly, and men were abducted. This mass casualty incident (MCI) was the start of a war that is still ongoing. The Israeli medical system, which faced an overwhelming first 24 h, continues to take care of casualties, including those who are injured by missiles that target Israeli residential areas. Israel has a well-established trauma system, and as a result of the experience gained in this war, the system merited review. This was the topic of a meeting of leaders of the Israeli healthcare system, and it forms the basis of this report. The meeting and report provide a platform for presenting the trauma system management during the war, highlighting the strengths of the system as well as its challenges and lessons learned. The participants also brainstormed and discussed possibilities for future improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The present research investigates the activity of Kolberi in the border villages of western and northwestern Iran, specifically in the Kurdish area of Nosud in Kermanshah province. Kolberi, a form of labor in these regions, subjects individuals to severe risks, including painful death or lifelong physical injuries, bringing considerable suffering and hardships to the Kolbers and their families. This study explores the narratives of Kolbers' mothers regarding their children's Kolberi experiences through Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework of social suffering. Methods: This qualitative study employs interpretive phenomenology to examine the lived experiences of mothers in the Nosud border area. Twentytwo Kolbers' mothers were selected using purposive sampling. Data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, continuing until theoretical saturation was achieved. Results: Content analysis of the interviews revealed eight basic themes: (1) occurrence and aggravation of physical and mental complications, (2) reproduction of poverty and misery, (3) marginalization of the field of education in border areas, (4) emergence of structural determinism alongside environmental determinism, (5) weakening of the social status of Kolbers, (6) Kolber and bare life, (7) structural dehumanization of Kolber's position, and (8) unique experiences of mothers regarding Kolberi. Discussion: The findings highlight the unique and often neglected experiences of mothers related to Kolberi, emphasizing the economic struggles in Iran's border areas. These experiences unveil hidden aspects of Kolberi, suggesting potential avenues for further research and contributing to the revitalization of activism among Kolbers' mothers in border regions. The study underscores the importance of addressing the socio-economic conditions that perpetuate Kolberi and its associated sufferings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the concept of death in contemporary Serbian culture (in the context of thanatological and anthropological studies), the author focuses on the analysis of communication with the deceased in dreams, which is still perceived as an important form of contact with the otherworldly. The analysis of material collected during field research at various locations in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania (from 2017 to 2024), supplemented by dream narratives from the internet, has shown that based on the main messages conveyed by the deceased to the living, dreams can be divided into: (1) dreams about "the unappeased deceased" (who lack something in the otherworld, usually due to an omission by the living related to funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and provide verbal assessments of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased inform of their departure or final passing into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., providing information pertaining to the sphere of the dreamer's social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person's call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld. Basic element analysis of the spatial world image, projected via the dream, highlights the importance of the locus perceived as a border space. Dreams about the deceased seem to be ambivalent in this respect, given that, on the one hand, they are perceived as an important means of communication between this world and the otherworld, and on the other hand, through the ideas on which they are founded and that they further transmit, they are also part of the narrative strategies of the boundary between this concept of two worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for the ability of regional elites to respond to the challenges posed by the Russian war against Ukraine? This study argues that elite cohesion elevates the ability of subnational elites to cope and adapt to crises. It employs social network analysis of a novel biographical data set of elites' connections in Belgorod Oblast, the border region that has been severely affected by the war. The analysis reveals that the war has made a relatively minor impact on the structure of the elite network as it has retained its original characteristics. Furthermore, it shows that the outsider governor has not only managed to strengthen his own position among the elites but also to reinforce elite cohesion. By bringing together different elite groups, the governor has enhanced their ability to perform under substantial stress. These findings advance our understanding of the sources of resilience in personalist autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the economic and fiscal consequences of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine for subnational governments in Russia. Using annual fiscal and economic data, we study how different groups of regions have been affected by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Despite the Russian economy being more resilient to a sanctions shock than initially predicted, we document several important negative tendencies at the regional level, sometimes overlooked in policy discussions and the literature on economic sanctions. In this article, we present new regional data and focus on the effects of the war on overall regional tax collections in 2022–2023, as well as the dynamics of different types of regional and federal taxes. We identify several groups of "winners" (oil- and gas-extracting regions, weapons-producing regions, and the largest city-regions) and "losers" (regions that share a border with Ukraine and regions with sanctions-prone industrial specializations) and discuss the prospects of their resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The day we discovered we were islands in an archipelago" is an article that explores the experiences of two individuals who formed a friendship during a course on black Marxism. The authors discuss the complexities of ethnographic fieldwork and the emotional intricacies involved. They challenge established norms in academia and emphasize the importance of recognizing and expressing emotions in research. The text also explores the impact of coloniality on research and reflects on the tension between being a researcher and fully participating in the communities being studied. It concludes by highlighting the transformative nature of emotions in research and the need for a more reciprocal and ethical approach to fieldwork. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the Brexit-driven remaking of some EU families into mixed-status families. Drawing on original research conducted in 2021–2022 with British, EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA citizens living in the UK or the EU/EEA, it shows how families whose members have previously enjoyed equal rights to freedom of movement across the EU/EEA variously negotiate the consequences of Brexit on their lives. Central to our analysis is the interplay between hardening borders and the stickiness of family relations, and its effects on families' migration and settlement projects. The article brings to the fore these emerging entanglements offering a much-needed relational analysis of the impact of Brexit on the directly affected populations, while contributing more widely to expanding the existing scholarship on mixed-status families, by attending to the peculiar ways in which families whose members previously enjoyed equal status under EU law have experienced their transformation into subjects with unequal rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the life-stories and identity narratives of Turks of Western Thrace (Greece) focusing on the role of the Turkish–Greek border and its changing permeability. It suggests that people who have strong attachments to both sides of a national border experience spatial liminality and the border is a place of passage between not only territories, but also lived identities. For young Turks of Western Thrace, travelling to Turkey to work or study is an established strategy that is intertwined with major life events. Drawing on ride-along interviews and focusing on five participants, who travelled to Turkey during the Cyprus crisis, the article identifies the disciplinary power of bordering on identities and life-stories. By examining how different individuals dealt with this power, and how their circumstances affected the outcomes, it explores the tensions between agency and structure, state power and resistance, and categorisation and liminality during life-planning and identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainstream approach of regional integration impact assessments is mainly limited to assessing cross-border development projects/programmes. There is still a lack of critical assessment of how stakeholders at different institutional levels conceptualise the border. Local (municipal) strategic plans provide a reflection of the spatial imaginaries of stakeholders, perception planners, institutional power structures, and, to some extent meaning of the border to the local people. Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) in South Africa were adopted as an important development planning strategy in the post-apartheid era. IDPs of 49 borderland municipalities were systematically reviewed using the Key-Word-in-Context (KWIC) content analysis technique of the keyword 'border' to determine the importance of state borders in light of regional integration. Border security and management is one of the most common themes associated with the border. This suggested that borders were mainly perceived as threats and barely considered as a potential resource for cross-border cooperation or integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Premature ventricular complexes (PVCs) are spontaneous excitations occurring in the ventricles of the heart that are associated with ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Under long QT conditions, PVCs can be mediated by repolarization gradient (RG) and early afterdepolarizations (EADs), yet the effects of heterogeneities or geometry of the RG or EAD regions on PVC genesis remain incompletely understood. In this study, we use computer simulation to systematically investigate the effects of the curvature of the RG border region on PVC genesis under long QT conditions. We show that PVCs can be either promoted or suppressed by negative or positive RG border curvature depending on the source and sink conditions. When the origin of oscillation is in the source region and the source is too strong, a positive RG border curvature can promote PVCs by causing the source area to oscillate. When the origin of oscillation is in the sink region, a negative RG border curvature can promote PVCs by causing the sink area to oscillate. Furthermore, EAD-mediated PVCs are also promoted by negative border curvature. We also investigate the effects of wavefront curvature and show that PVCs are promoted by convex but suppressed by concave wavefronts; however, the effect of wavefront curvature is much smaller than that of RG border curvature. In conclusion, besides the increase of RG and occurrence of EADs caused by QT prolongation, the geometry of the RG border plays important roles in PVC genesis, which can greatly increase the risk of arrhythmias in cardiac diseases. NEW & NOTEWORTHY: The effects of the curvature or geometry of the repolarization gradient region and wavefront curvature on the genesis of premature ventricular complexes are systematically investigated using computer modeling and simulation. Premature ventricular complexes can be promoted by either positive or negative curvature of the gradient region depending on the source and sink conditions. The underlying mechanisms of the curvature effects are revealed, which provides mechanistic insights into arrhythmogenesis in cardiac diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]