Search

This contribution examines the development of territorial dynamics on the Ceuta-Morocco border region in the context of the structural Spanish-Moroccan rebordering that followed Spain's EU entry. The evolution of border practice is canvassed through the confronting notions of territorial discontinuity and territorial continuity. Clearly, current territorial dynamics between Ceuta and Morocco are characterised by both the existence of conflictive geopolitical cross-border dialectics and the implementation of fortifying securitisation measures. However, simultaneously, the border region is also marked by intensifying patterns of cross-border interaction which are sourced in the rising potentialities of economic and urban cross-border co-operation. In this light, the paper seeks to map the present intertwining of these apparently disagreeing territorial trends. To conclude, the paper underlines the ongoing modification of relational power between Ceuta and Morocco. It depicts the strengthening of local cross-border co-operative practices as a potential tool to cope with persistent sovereignty disputes in the border region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to accomplish cross-fertilisation between border studies and transmigration studies, research fields which exist almost separated from each other. It claims that the concept of border can contribute to the theoretical growth to maturity of the relatively young field of transmigration studies, and especially to a deeper understanding of the in-between lifeworlds of transmigrants (migrant transnationalism). In transmigration studies, borders are usually considered as boundaries, the physical lines on the ground, and therefore are seen as beginnings and endings of migrant transnationalism. In this paper, it is argued that borders can also have a constitutive role in migrant transnationalism. This constitutive function of borders has been thoroughly theorised in border studies in the last two decades. Contemporary border scholars regard borders not as passive lines, but as active and polymorphous social constructions which are the outcome of people's need to make differences. By bringing this broader notion of borders to the transmigration debate, it is argued that migrant transnationalism is about experiencing the border, or experiencing the difference. This broader sense of borders might help to bare the soul of migrant transnationalism, namely the condition of being continuously between here and there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]