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Recent theoretical advancement in human geography has reconceptualised the border as a process and becoming, which is appropriated and constructed by myriad actors to yield diverse and changing meanings, and accommodate various needs and interests. This enables us to appreciate the dual qualities of the border, both as a barrier to be overcome and an enabling factor for practices and meanings. In particular, cross-border mobility plays an essential role in mediating meanings of the border and identities of those whose lifeworlds are affected by the very existence of the border. On the one hand, mobilities transgress territorial orders imposed by official conceptions of the border. But, on the other hand, the distinctions between economic, social and political milieus at the two sides of the border may give rise to heightened senses of difference and lead to diverging identities. Building on these insights, this article argues for a more nuanced, dynamic understanding of the relationship between border crossing and belonging. It examines two empirical cases: the cross-border attendance of Huashan Festival celebration for Miao people at the Sino-Vietnamese borderland, and the trans-border mobility of Buddhist monks from the Myanmar city Muse to the Chinese border city Ruili. Overall, this paper argues that the potentials of the border to both connect and differentiate are inscribed in the lifeworlds in the borderlands in equally visible ways. Also, this paper adds some twists to Scott's thesis on Zomia, and argues that we must not downplay the importance of the frame of nation-states in shaping the lifeworlds of border inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geopolitical focus on territory as a fixed and cohesive nation-state simultaneously conceals the ways territories form and are operationalised at other scales. At the same time, the fleeting ability of minority bodies to make and retain cohesive, property-owned territories overlooks the limited agency that marginalised groups possess while they continually reproduce social territories as they navigate their everyday lives. Lesbians, gay, bisexuals, trans and queer people began to develop urban territories -- often dubbed neighbourhoods or gay districts -- in which to find, build and share a sense of safety and refuge. Yet all urban territories are not neighbourhoods or districts because not all groups possess the power and capital to secure their boundaries through property ownership. In this paper, I draw specifically upon the experiences of urban lesbians' and queer women's often overlapping public displays of affection and harassment in New York City to demonstrate the shifting dimensions of territory in these women's lives beyond the neighbourhood/district model. I make use of two cases: the popular 'gaybourhood' of Greenwich Village in Manhattan and the border zone of Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Using a queer-feminist theoretical approach and drawing on Elden's geopolitical theorisation of territorial 'volume', I argue that a broader meaning of territory is possible. When lesbian and queer women produce and then return to them or their former sites, they experience what feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa describes as 'crossing over'. This approach highlights the role of the body for rethinking social and cultural territories and borders across scales. I suggest that territory plays a significant role at the urban scale as operationalised through the everyday movements of bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various critical and scholarly works have underlined the multiplicity of borders, or the idea that borders mean different things to different people. This paper discusses the potential of the concept of assemblage for better understanding the ontological multidimensionality intrinsic to borders. An assemblage is understood to be a heterogeneous and open-ended grouping of elements that do not form a coherent whole that helps explain how different meanings emanating from various actors may interact and endure in a contingent and provisional way. It can be argued that such a topological approach may be well suited to highlight the overall significance of a border's identity beyond its diversity and on-going transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]