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As a social institution, a border simultaneously divides and connects. When thinking about state borders, or borderlands, scholars tend to view them as either linear or zonal spaces, distinguishing as well as linking one state with another. My article argues for an alternative interpretation and explores the geopolitical and cultural meanings of a historical border region from both domestic and inter-state perspectives. The border of China and Korea along the Yalu and the Tumen Rivers, is arguably one of the oldest state boundaries that is still effective today. The history of the border river region as a "buffer space" can be traced back to the seventeenth century when Qing China and Chosŏn Korea established the border along their northern frontiers. However, the geopolitical function of this border went beyond considerations of defence or communications. From the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, both the Manchu-Qing court and the Chosŏn court implemented strict laws to control domestic population flows to their northeastern and northern frontiers. Such policies, I argue, must be understood in the context of domestic politics in the two courts. Internal anxiety over preserving Manchu and Korean identity, coupled with strategy to control the border against an external power, contributed to the making of this borderland. Hence, the Qing-Chosŏn border region served as a "dual buffer". Employing historical records and local gazettes in the two countries, my article reveals a subtler layer of "buffer" from a case study in early modern East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great War and Trianon opened a new chapter in the history, not only of the Kingdom of Hungary, but also of Western Hungary. Besides dividing up the counties of Sopron, Moson and Vas, the newly re-drawn borders also split up most of the railway lines running within them as well. From the territory sliced from the three counties, the previously non-existent province of Austria, Burgenland, was established in 1922. In many cases, the new demarcation lines followed boundaries of old districts or settlements, but it was rare to find natural boundaries among them. As a result, between the two World Wars, the use of the affected railway tracks began to change similar to several contemporary Central European cases, with the exception of GYSEV (Győr–Sopron–Ebenfurth Railway Company), which could remain in its original form. This research paper aims to examine how the shift of borders in this region affected railway transport. It is based on the local historical literature on the railway, regional history and primary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regions are main building blocks of larger territorial units, but they also display high dynamics affecting how regional identities can be studied. The regional dynamics and multilayered nature ultimately require new approaches to their visual representation. The goal of this article is to present a novel approach to visual presentation of the administrative regions' dynamics by cartographic means of representation in a synthetic map that can assist in the research of regional identities. We adopt the theory of the institutionalisation of regions, the administrative division of the state is a process in which the borders and names of regions are constantly transformed causing changes in the perception of the population. Then we analyse the laws on administrative division reforms and old/historical map documents. This enabled us to identify the dynamics of individual borders and names of administrative regions (choronyms) that form spaces with a higher or lower degree of stability. We propose a visualisation approach to represent such dynamics, and we assert that through cartographic visualisation of the degree of transformation in these spaces it is possible to get an insight into population's awareness about the named regions and their delimitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has concentrated on border guards and the politics of bodies, but less attention has been made to the interaction between embodied differentials and women's varied household income classes and its consequent effect, such as a dichotomy in gendered control over women's mobility. This study established such a perspective by following the continuation of the application of the body as an analytical scale in scholarships of feminist political geography and taking the heterogeneous women's voices into account. The analysis shed light on the gendered forms of domination implied by the entangled protection and control paradigms in framing the practices of patrolling the border. Thus, in this article, the author unpacked how incorporating the entwined paradigms of protection and control into the framing of border guarding manifests differential gendered implications, ranging from fear of making mobility-related decisions to immobilisation patterns. It connects these practices to gendered processes of othering, highlighting the interaction between embodied differentials and the various economic positions of women and thus finds a dichotomy in gendered control over mobility in the name of border protection under the guise of border patrolling practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extension of legal protection to natural areas has often been artificially confined within the borders of given countries. The border between Poland and Slovakia offers a very good example of this. While the very beginnings of this trend date back to the eighteenth century, it was here in the 1930s that early cross-border cooperation made its appearance. The solutions arrived at justifying their pioneering status, by the standards of Europe and the globe. Initiatives included the establishment in the Pieniny Mountains of Europe's first (and the world's second) transboundary protected area, as well as the founding of a world-first tripartite UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the Eastern Carpathians. The article outlines the development of the areas under legal protection from their origins through to the eve of the accessions of Poland and Slovakia to the European Union. It draws on legal documents and analyses of scientific works, regarding the dilemmas associated with the founding of protected areas, and interviews with the administrations of the protected areas concerned. Emphasis is laid on the geopolitics of historic cross-border conservation and cooperation. • Explores the intersection between border geographies and historical nature preservation. • Studies how legally protected natural areas took shape over five periods in the twentieth century. • Demonstrates that borders isolate conservation communities and prevent cooperation. • Explains the idea of Europe's first transboundary Parks and the world's oldest tripartite Biosphere Reserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the border effect phenomenon affecting the mobility of inhabitants in border regions. It aims to identify the determinants of the border effect in transport at the municipal level, considering the distance from the border, the populations and the characteristics of the closest bordering country. The survey in the Czech Republic eventually involved 675 representatives of municipalities who answered questions on inter-municipal mobility. The results confirmed that the most substantial handicap was population size, with small populations corresponding to the limited use of public transport when travelling beyond a given border. The results confirmed that the characteristics of the state or region that shares the border must be considered when assessing border regions. Therefore, the solution to the problems of individual border regions cannot be viewed with a single instrument. It is necessary to consider substantial differences resulting from the economic level of neighbouring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia exhibit numerous analogies when it comes to their local communities' experience of borders, divisions and partitions. The experience is reflected in recent partition narratives which prove that geopolitical and administrative interventions in space and territory are likely to create and define more than just lines on the maps and new jurisdictions. Borders and partitions are felt and endured, often imprinted on provincial memories, both individual and communal. Border crossings, borders in the mind and actual experiences connected with being partitioned and living in a borderland have determined, for the last 100 years, the parameters of what I call provincial memory in Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia, making them markedly different from national memory cultures in Ireland/Britain and Poland, respectively. The transcultural memory of partitions and borders, preserved in contemporary literary accounts of the past, informs the main thrust of the narratives of belonging in both regions. By exploring related examples of partition narratives and attitudes of regional writers to borderlands and partitions, this essay argues for a recognition, in the respective contexts of Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia, of significant differences between the discursive performances of provincial memory cultures and national ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the roles of urban actors supporting migrants' struggles and confronting state control, focusing on the fields of family reunification and access to health care in the city of Frankfurt am Main. We bring together insights from border studies, street-level theory, and social policy and social work literature to elaborate on the notions of 'urban border space' and borderwork to offer a new theorisation on 'where the border is' and 'who makes the border'. Multiple transformations that have taken place in border control and the welfare state regime have led to diverse engagement on the part of civil society towards migrants, particularly in cities. City authorities, in turn, enforce the border, yet also respond to migrants' exclusion. Here, devolution and collaboration between city and civil society organisations have partly blurred the line between different types of urban actors. Our analysis identifies four roles within urban actors' borderwork – brokerage, advocacy, direct care and gatekeeping –, each of which is associated with a different relationship with state migration control. We thus argue that the supposed dichotomous relationship between state (re-)bordering and civil society de-bordering is too simplistic and that urban actors' roles in borderwork are instead multifaceted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensification of cross-border interactions, the progress achieved in the process of European integration and the expansion of the EU to the east raises the issue of cross-border cooperation in a political-geopolitical context. The issue of cross-border cooperation in general goes beyond geographical, economic and legal approaches. If we intend to treat the phenomenon from a specific point of view, we will find ambiguities and uncertainties regarding the role and functioning of some institutions in the process of cross-border cooperation and partnerships. Therefore, the full analysis of the cross-border cooperation process cannot be done only if we also evaluate the effects produced by the institutions in the local governance sector and their political dimension. The study aims to realize an inventory of the general trends and evolutions from the past century, regarding the perception of the Romania-Hungarian, but also focuses on the border cooperation activities which had an impact on transnational institution building amongst the local governance apparatus in Bihor County in the process of cross-border cooperation in the development period 2014-2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border areas are a real challenge for tourism development. Usually associated with the periphery from a socio-economic point of view, these areas often have natural potential and attractive landscapes that have been little transformed by human activity and numerous historical and cultural tourist attractions. Although these areas have considerable tourism potential, this is not sufficient for the sustainable development of tourism and the exploitation of this potential is strongly influenced by the degree of permeability of the border. This is the case of the Romanian-Serbian border, which overlaps the most spectacular sector of the Danube – the Iron Gates Gorge. The main aim of this article is to analyse the role of tourism in the development of border areas and how it functions in a particular territorial context: the Danube Gorge located at the border between Romania and Serbia. The Romanian-Serbian border currently functions as an external border of the European Union in a favourable historical and political context, given the tradition of good neighbourliness between the two entities, the states located on either side of the Danube. However, the communist period altered the prospects for tourism development in this region through a very drastic and controlled border regime, even though the area benefited from major investment projects, such as the dam and hydroelectric power station at Porțile de Fier, built in the 1970s in cooperation with the former Yugoslavia. An analysis of the statistical data on tourism development shows that tourist traffic is on the increase, although there is a contradiction between the upward trend in tourist flows and the backwardness of large-scale tourist infrastructure, with the dominant type of accommodation being small, flexible, and rural accommodation that does not require large investments. The results presented in this article can be summarised in the general conclusion that the development of tourism in the Danube Gorge–Iron Gates remains dependent on the political factor and the border regime, even though the region has a remarkable tourism potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes an important way in which the Porfirio Díaz government tried to empower the president to control Mexico's northern border in the late 1870s. Just a few months after Díaz gained power, officers of the incoming administration attempted to gain exclusive authority for the Mexican executive over matters related to extradition requests. The president, Díaz's allies argued, was responsible for the country's foreign relations, and only he could decide on the surrender of fugitives to other nations. The article maintains that such claim aimed to build a legal apparatus that would strengthen the figure of the president to control what was then the key and problematic area of northern Tamaulipas. Furthermore, the article argues that the legal changes adopted regarding extradition matters contributed to shaping the early twentieth-century borderlands, although they failed to achieve their main objective. Thus, after the 1870s, the borderlands entered an unprecedented phase of transformation that, in many ways, revealed the inefficacy of the regime's extradition policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marginalization based on geographic-isolation has serious repercussions on construction of identities. Identities in geographically isolated borderlands in Jammu and Kashmir are doubly-marginalized due to lack of development and the impact of ongoing conflict and dispute between the nation-states of India and Pakistan. Dard-Shins; one such tribal borderland community of village Kilshey in Gurez, Kashmir have been living as 'non-registered non-rehabilitated refugees'. This research while tracing their displacement from across the border during the time of partition in 1947 to the present day refugee-camps and resettlement colonies, studies the concept of belonging and place-attachment vis-à-vis transition and mobility among the refugees here. The displacement led migration across hostile borders has made both the idea of home unsettled and identity uncertain for them. Caught up between these two is the idea of marginality that further informs their bonds of nationalism with both India and Pakistan. Survival as a borderland community in India has not been without the geographical-isolation and under-development that has further led to psychological-distancing and social-disability. Invoking their ancestral links to uss paar/the other side of the border they migrated from becomes pertinent while imagining a life outside decades of marginalization as has been experienced on iss paar/this side in India. This intersection of marginality, identity and displacement thus creates an interesting sphere where aspirations of moving out of the category 'refugee' are stronger than having lived as refugees for ages in the hope of just and fair rehabilitation and resettlement policies in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tens of thousands of children living on Mainland China cross the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong for a 'better education' every day. A well-oiled industry is in place to manage, facilitate and control this education mobility field. It involves schools, diverse businesses and nongovernmental organisations that, in articulation with the Chinese and Hong Kong states, stimulate and regulate the movement of people, materialities, ideas and practices. Drawing on our fieldwork and media analysis, this paper unpacks the transurban mobility industry to illustrate the role of the various players and how they work in conjunction to facilitate cross-border schooling, especially among the very young children. We map out and visualise with photos the workings of the schools, buses, escorts, tutoring centres, day care and boarding houses. We show how the mobility industry, intersecting with other business networks and mobility systems, links Shenzhen and Hong Kong, taking and making places in these cities, especially in the border region. Our paper illustrates the role of this mobility industry in the making of the political-economy and socio-culture of the border area, which constantly connects, divides and redefines the two cities and regions it bridges. We end with some reflections on the implications of the recent political challenges and COVID-I9 pandemic on this cross-border education mobility system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frontier tribes, inhabiting the Indo (Naga)-Myanmar border, are at the fringe of the nation-states. They remain outside the radar of connectivity and development. The international boundary line demarcated during the colonial rule, pierces through the middle of many villages. This was reinforced by the post-colonial Indian and Myanmar States, thus deepening the contestation between state and tribal society(s). The Indo (Naga)-Myanmar borderland, elicits the case of nation-state construction as opposed to what Lefebvre posits geographical space, as 'socially constructed'. The distortion of tribal land and territory in the forms of fencing and securitization amounts to the denial of a tribe's agency and erasure of their shared history and social relation. The paper charts out the ramification of the colonial state making project in the contemporary frontier tribes. It unfolds the contestation, presence and absence of the state in the borderlands and posits for development with justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being an Ethnic-Pahari-Sikh-Borderlander in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir is a phenomenon that adds to the discourse of ethnicity and nationalism. Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 acted as a disruption in the socio-political history of the ethnic-community of Poonch generating difference and othering. This led to a newer set of challenges that re-imagines the concept of ethnicity altogether. Through an ethnographic account of the religiously assertive Sikh-identity in Poonch, this study asks the questions: Can the religious-reassertion of identities in a community render a concept as giant as ethnicity a myth? What happens to the historic origins of ethnic-bonds when identities begin to organise themselves exclusively on religious lines? Identities in Poonch exist at crossroads where being a religious Sikh challenge the idea of an ethno-geographic Sikh, both of them trying to co-exist under a bigger identity of being a borderlander. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the issue of "covidfencing" (the resurrection of borders during the COVID-19 pandemic) in the context of the historically and ethnically complex region of Cieszyn Silesia / Těšínské Slezsko / Śląsk Cieszyński / Teschener Schlesien on the Czech-Polish border. Conducting interviews with cross-border workers, representatives of municipalities or cross-border regions, and a street survey in a border town, this study analyses the impacts of covidfencing on this region between March 2020 and March 2021. Applying the concept of Balibar (2002), this study shows that the border between Czechia and Poland in the Cieszyn Silesia region has characteristics of a polysemic border. Some inhabitants experienced the border closure due to the pandemic situation as an existential threat, some organised protests because they perceive the border region as a whole to be their home, some claim that the resurrection of the border did not influence anything in their lives. This study introduces the complex network of cross-border relationships and discusses the possible reasons for different perceptions of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theoretical approach to the study of identity narratives from the concept of the bordering process. The first section describes the theoretical concepts that sustain the proposal, in particular, the concept of border as a mediating artifact, the theoretical concept of the bordering process as a social practice, and finally, identity narratives and the dialogical perspective of the self. The second section analyzes the proposals and limitations of some studies on identity narratives in international borderlands. In the same section, we develop our theoretical proposal for studying border identity narratives, which attempts to overcome some limitations of previous studies and respond to the debate on the role of others in the construction of the self. We conclude that the inclusion of the border as a semiotic artifact and the bordering process in the construction of the self provide a new perspective of identity narratives as border narratives for the study of border experiences throughout human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking back to remember the "arrival" of AIDS in Turkey, this article explores how the spread of the new disease fueled border panic in Turkey from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. Drawing on a rich array of material from the archives of national newspapers and magazines, this article analyzes the media discourse on migrant sex workers from the former USSR and the first HIV-positive men. It shows how both groups were seen as intruders bringing the virus from outside Turkey's borders to its territory. In both cases, I argue, fear of the spread of the virus across borders became entangled with anxieties about the movement of ideas, images, lifeworlds, and meanings relating to sexuality that were discursively constructed as fundamentally alien to Turkish ones. The movement of sexually and racially "other" bodies across borders was seen as a threat to the fragile construed border between "Turkishness" and "foreignness". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to answer why Kawaluso Island peoples have an orientation to send their children to a higher level. Kawaluso Island as one of the islands in the RI-Philippines border region, like other border areas, has problems in the field of education, both access and infrastructure. This study uses ethnographic methods as part of qualitative research making researchers as the main instrument. Data collection uses participatory observation where the researcher is involved in the activities of the community under study. The findings in this study are that school and prestige for parents (Kawaluso peoples) become discourses that cannot be separated from one and another. A form of recognition or prestige for parent, who are able to send their children to a higher level, is one of the practices of denial of economic practices. Nevertheless, the process of recognizing parents in achieving educational attainment by children, at the same time also benefits economically. The economic benefit in question is when Kawaluso residents who have finished school are able to carry out a process of vertical social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Albanian town of Gjirokastër is located 30 kilometers from the Greek border. While this proximity has inevitably contributed to directing migration flows to Greece, the focus of this article is to understand the characteristics of migration from Gjirokastër to Italy - the second destination for Albanian migrants after Greece. Findings will show how, despite its marginality, migration from Gjirokastër to Italy plays a significant role in remaking the symbolic boundaries within the social space under consideration. Based on a short period of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the summer of 2015, this research follows the ties and traces of migration from Gjirokastër to Italy through an experimental analysis of the town's visual landscape and soundscape and that of the narratives which emerged from photo-elicitation sessions and face-to-face interviews with individuals related to Albanian migrants in Italy. Thanks to the analysis of both these public and private spheres, the article specifically proposes an understanding of the migration phenomenon which focuses on its transformative role within the place of origin, its categories and its hierarchies. In particular, we will see how migration to Italy may become a way to transform the status of Muslim Albanians vis-à-vis Orthodox Albanians in Gjirokastër through religious conversion to Catholicism, as well as as through the opportunities provided by learning the Italian language. In fact, both language learning and religious conversion - either before or after migration - seem to act as tools for social mobility on an individual basis. This concerns not only migrants, but also their kin and, more extensively, the local population of Gjirokastër through infrastructures (church, honorary consulate, school, etc.) indirectly linked with migration to Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of a political border has led to the surfacing of many socio-cultural activities in all the borderlands across the globe, igniting the interest of social scientists worldwide. Borderland studies more than often accentuates the history of how the political border came into being and its impact on the ethnic identity (articulations, ambiguities, and contradictions of identity) of the people residing in the borderland (Berdahl, 1999). The present borderland under study has witnessed a parallel upshot of the political border on the identity of the people residing in the borderland between West Kameng (Arunachal) and Bhutan. The identity of the Monpas* from West Kameng and Sharchops from the Eastern Bhutan has been jeopardized time and again. This paper is an attempt to understand the “Plurality of self ” from the periphery of Arunachal-Bhutan Borderland from an emic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature that explores the effects of European integration, providing new evidence about its impact on population distribution in the EU28 regions (NUTS 3 level) during the period 2000-2018. The main objectives are to explore the effects of the recent three EU enlargements on the growth in population share within the border regions and to compare the behaviour between core and peripheral regions. We use an empirical difference-in-difference approach. The findings show that border regions experienced positive effects on growth in population share since EU integration, but it did not completely reverse their relative population decline. At the same time, the process of European integration seems to have aggravated the demographic decline of EU peripheral regions compared to the EU core regions. Moreover, for the regions that are both border and peripheral, the EU integration effect has been stronger than in border only regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay questions the rise of border humanitarianism in the North-Eastern Moroccan borderlands. The increasing presence of humanitarian organizations in contexts marked by border violence has raised the attention of a number of critical migration scholars. Observers, however, have failed to problematize the presence of humanitarian activities, traditionally connected to emergency contexts, in sites integrated in the "routinary" regulation of mobility. Building on 8 months of fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2017, the article addresses this gap, taking the working of border humanitarianism as a vantage point to reflect on the relation of borders to the exception, on the role of violence in border maintenance and, ultimately, on the politics of life and death at the frontier. Drawing on the work of Salter and Vaughan Williams on exceptionalism and biopolitics at the border, the article makes two points. First, I argue that the ordinary functioning of the Spanish–Moroccan border is founded on the bestialization and devaluation of Black lives, often to the point of death. Second, I contend that the integration of the "exception" in border normalcy activates, challenges, and endlessly reproduces the need for emergency interventions. In this dystopian framework, humanitarianism becomes a tool for the ordinary maintenance of migrants' degraded life, transformed by the border into a less-than-citizen, less-than-human form of existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of the Look East Policy (LEP) ─ now the Act East Policy ─ in the 1990s signaled a marked shift in India's economic policy aimed at transforming its northeastern region from a peripheral frontier to an economic corridor. The regional focus of the policy commonly appears in references to the northeast region as a whole and the policy suggestions are centered on ending the region's isolation and underdevelopment. This paper looks at how the inhabitants of a borderland village on the Mizoram-Myanmar border maneuvered themselves in response to the economic drive for the border opening intertwined with the extension of state rule and control. The paper shows how the agenda of the state and the local communities, rather than being in opposition, often converged with local community interests when it came to enhancing trade and liberalizing movement. These factors further served to re-shape ways of identification and belonging as well as everyday trade, commercial transactions, and nationhood. Against this backdrop, the paper engages with everyday borderland lives to examine how change through the policy was mediated upon the interface of competing state and non-state agents as well as local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the perception of border. It is widely believed that the border of European Union is dividing Europe from non-European space. It contributes in developing of European identity versus the identity of „others? or non-European countries. Through source analysis I will try to focus on the concept of border and see if it contributes to homogenization of the space. Does the border of European Union create particular perception around the European space?! To what extent are economic and border policies of European Union making member states similar in a way and how do members themselves perceive their role in transnational organization?! Non-European countries try to include themselves in this alliance of advanced states thinking they gain particular privilege by being the members of European Union. After creation of European Union non-member states started to perceive the border as the obstacle or the divider rather than unifier. Even if member states might perceive the union as homogeneous entity to some extent, other non-member countries view the border as divider of spaces and definition of Geographic Europe. Could it be that political border created special perception around the organization which influenced the idea towards European Union among Non-EU states?! The paper will try to see if the border perception influences the perception of whole European Union. Article will try to also look into the problem of homogenous perception of organization and the concrete tools introduced to achieve the similar level of understanding among the member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This photo-essay illustrates a study of visual representations of Russia in the Sino-Russian borderland. I suggest that what is distinctive about this region is not a particular identity of its residents, but rather the gradual emergence of Russian-themed spaces. This "space theming" phenomenon is not exclusive to this area: In the last decades, representations of foreign countries have become a part of the Chinese landscape. However, while we find examples of simulated "foreign" urban spaces in newest suburban developments or theme parks portraying different countries (such as "Window of the World" in Shenzhen) throughout the country, images of Russia have been present in one continuous space, stretching to the Chinese-Russian border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border cooperation, border regions, soft spaces? This special issue approaches cross-border informal planning processes in cross-border regions by analysing them from a perspective that combines networks, governance and territorialization. Such a relational perspective will be developed by papers which deal with a variety of European cross-border regions and empirical evidence related to the nexus of networks, governance and territorialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork with displaced Shan living along the Thai–Burma border, this study focuses on the translocal lived spaces that the Shan people have created in accounting for the multiplicity of voluntary or forced migration experiences and uncovering a very different picture of ‘home’ during displacement. It argues that ‘homes’ on the move function as nodes in wider networks of convergence and mobilization, which link internally displaced person (IDP) camps to translocal networks, connecting with migrant communities and refugee camps across the border. Therefore, a ‘home territory’ is constructed through the activation of networks that reorient geographical, political and cultural boundaries in the midst of protracted insecurities and uncertainties. It not only captures changing geographical imaginaries and the fluidity of places across Asian borderlands, but also subverts the ‘national territory’ of a state-centred perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 30 years, the opening of internal borders in the European Union has engendered many cross-border exchanges in borderlands. European cross-border regions created within this context are thus framed and characterized by the simultaneous dynamics of bordering and cross-border integration. This paper examines these two processes and the analysis is based on the representations of stakeholders from the Eurometropolis of Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai. It highlights two main results. First, the representations of stakeholders shed light on bordering dynamics that can be combined even though they can also appear to be contradictory. In particular, the paper unveils the dimension of ‘a-bordering’, which refers to a certain status quo of and about the border. Second, the representations of stakeholders show ambivalent and concomitant visions of a ‘cross-border integration with the border’ and a ‘cross-border integration without the border’. These representations challenge the implementation of cross-border policies and schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Canada and the United States attempted to protect sexual morality at home by extending their power abroad. They used border surveillance to control the transnational movements of Euro-Canadians, Euro-Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Native Americans. At the same time, they developed creative ways to punish deviancy abroad by relying on an expansive understanding of the extradition process and by using race-based legislation to increase their coercive power. They deprived individuals of their intergenerational access to wealth and status through their ability to control marital recognition. Deprivation served as a powerful tool to secure conformity even beyond the explicit legal boundaries each country maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the analysis of literary representations of Galicia in two discourses of the region: Ukrainian and Polish. They are discussed on the basis of essays by Yurii Andrukhovych and Andrzej Stasiuk. For both writers, the narrative of Galicia, understood concurrently as a bordering and post-bordering space, is the starting point for reflection on the epistemology and ontology of Polish–Ukrainian borderlands and Central Europe. A disparity emerges from the perspectives of the two writers which can be described by way of the opposition city/province. Andrukhovych explores the palimpsestic and heterotopic character of the Galician urban sphere, while Stasiuk focuses on the most peripheral regions. The meaning generated by that difference evokes disparate ideological concepts regarding both former Galicia and Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ethnography of the India and Bangladesh international border areas. It focuses on the illicit economy, its structure and operation, and more importantly, its linkages with the state apparatus. It tries to demonstrate how the securitization of the border has affected the illicit economy. The paper explores how the triangular interaction between (1) the apparatus of border and security personnel, (2) illicit economy and smugglers and (3) the ordinary society produces a dynamic which is different from the mainland of a nation. It creates an exceptional political space where the normal liberal structure of a nation-state, and the state-citizen-civil society mediations are suspended. As a result, local communities have very little control over either the state apparatus or the illicit economy, and they live in the fear and intimidation-not of the enemy of the state or the nation, but the state's security forces and the criminals. The border is the zone where the naked dance of the sovereign and the criminal power can be witnessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In compulsory population transfers and expulsions such as those wrought by partition, costs may accrue not only to the banished, but also to the places left behind. In particular, forcibly removing portions of the population rends social networks and discards location-specific skills and knowledge; these costs may be even worse if the expellees are replaced by refugees from elsewhere. The case of the interwar German-Poland borderlands, now Polish territory, shows that even six-plus decades after a population expulsion, ethnically cleansed and resettled places are appreciably different, with higher crime rates, lower civic engagement (measured by voter turnout), and less efficient public services (as measured by educational statistics). Although post-conflict population transfers might increase local social cohesion in some dimensions, this does not guarantee improved economic and sociological outcomes. Expelling local populations can, instead, cause highly persistent damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an ethnographic case study of the experiences of Peruvian female migrants at the International Bus Terminal of Arica (Chile). The analysis aims to establish theoretical-methodological linkages that question the structure-agency dichotomy, based on the spatial experiences of locals and migrants. We begin by contextualizing the research and debating some theoretical categories of the urban migration studies. Later we develop an ethnographic description of the Terminal's internal spaces and how they "interlock" with the landscape of Arica. Our main conclusion regarding these findings proposes the concept of hyper-border spatiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the conurbation process of two Peruvian cities on the border with Ecuador: Zarumilla and Aguas verdes. This article studies how different processes and phenomena at local, national, international, and global scales influence the socioeconomic dynamics of borders and shape the urban landscape and residents' ties with cities on the other side of the border. Intensive fieldwork involving surveys, interviews, field observations, and the use of secondary sources took place as part of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the changes in two cross-border processes: employment and giving birth in the United States among the northern border populations of Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Various statistical methods are used to analyze the trends and the changes in the socioeconomic profiles of those who perform these practices. While the numbers of cross-border workers dropped, cross-border births increased; people with higher levels of education became increasingly represented in both categories. These results suggest that this border has become a more selective "blockade" for transborder interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese influence at the northern Nepali borderlands have created cartographic anxieties and new political subjectivities for Himalayan Indigenous communities and Tibetan refugees, who call these mountain border spaces their home. This article discusses the changing dynamics of intercommunity kinship at the scale of the local which are ruptured yet re-imagined to repurpose and intervene state imaginations of borders. What affective bearings do new border dynamics create for citizens - both formal citizens and Tibetan refugees - at the borderlands? Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research conducted between 2016 and 2019 in Nepal, I examine the ways in which intimacy produces affection and familiarity at one end, while at the other engendering notions of disruptions in the everyday. For my respondents, placemaking and memory become active experiences of making do to overcome anxieties of the future. • Narrates everyday engagements with geopolitics at multiple scales. • Addresses belonging and placemaking practices situated in multiple sovereignties. • Illustrates intimate geopolitics and ways of making do in the borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our paper we deal with both the theoretical and methodological aspects of our research, which focuses on the quality of life in cross-border regions. The aim of the paper is to draw on the methodological system for assessment of the quality of life in those regions, taking into consideration both the objective and subjective dimension. The first part of the paper contains the use of qualitative methods when assessing the quality of life, which, in our understanding, are not sufficiently applied in the process of assessment of quality, not only in the field of Geography. We also focus on the definition of the key terms related to our work, such as 'quality of life, border and border-region/neighbour'. The main emphasis of our work lies in the formulation of the theoretical and methodological model of the quality of life assessment in the cross-border regions. The methodological outline of researching this issue is presented in the chart. The scale of the region is a key element we take into consideration, since it is significant when choosing the appropriate method of life quality assessment. We also distinguish between the application of both the qualitative and quantitative research methods on various scales. In our opinion, the representation of the qualitative methods in research should increase with the increase in the scale of the area researched. In the conclusion we provide selected outcomes of our research at various scales, which confirm the validity of our theoretical basis, since we came to various findings, depending on the scales researched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the cold war order post-Soviet borders have been characterised by geopolitical tensions and divergent imaginations of desirable political and spatial orders. Drawing upon ethnographic research in two border towns at the Russian-Estonian border, the article makes a case for a grounded examination of these border dynamics that takes into account how borders as sites of ‘mobility and enclosure’ are negotiated in everyday life and shaped by the differentiated incorporations of statecraft into people's lives. Depending on their historical memories, people interpret the border either as a barrier to previously free movement or as a security device and engage in correspondingly different relations to the state—privileging local concerns for mobility or adopting the state's concerns over security and sovereignty. Analysing these border negotiations and the relations between citizens and the state, articulated in people's expectations and claims, can provide us with a better understanding of how people participate in the making of borders and contribute to the stability and malleability of political orders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The border is a place of encounter for geopolitical and literary accounts as well as historiographical and anthropological ones, but also is, like the doors guarded by the god Janus, a location where the dichotomy between control and integration--the paradox of globalization-- is apparent. All this may allow an informal measurement of relations between neighbors. This article will discuss the implementation, over 30 years, of border controls at the Chilean-Bolivian frontier through the deployment of one of the most aggressive policies seen in teichopolitics: mine-laying that resulted in a virtual wall between both countries. F inally, the reasons that led Chile in recent years to remove mines and reduce its control of the border will be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the influence of globalization and state integration processes, the importance of a border as a barrier is gradually decreasing. Borderlands are still perceived as specific phenomena, however, not only in terms of historical development but especially in the context of their changing impact on the daily lives of their inhabitants. Along with EU enlargement, the de-bordering process has also become significant in many countries where the borderland played an important role in the past. These include the V4 countries, whose borderlands are the object of this research. In this article we analyze these areas on the basis of selected socio-economic indicators, with a focus on change in the period 2001-2011. As indicated by the Analysis of Variance, the results show the significantly differentiated development of the borderlands, in terms of the individual values of indicators both within the borderland of the EU member states, as well as along the external border of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the making of Hong Kong's water supply system since 1959. It starts by assessing the perspectives provided by the regime approach and the political ecology literatures. The case of Hong Kong brings in ideas from border studies and draws attention to the changing nature of the border to explain socio-ecological and scaling interactions. The case study maps the border relationship between China and Hong Kong (and Britain), and the political tussle between them over the control of water supply to the city in the late colonial period 1959-78, which resulted in the creation of a localized self-sufficient water supply system in Hong Kong, and the consolidation of Hong Kong's scale as a colonial city-state under British rule. It further explicates the change in the nature of the political border since 1979, and the processes by which Hong Kong abandoned attempts to strengthen its local supply, becoming dependent on supply from the regional Dongjiang water networks, as well as the transformation of its scale to become a subordinate of the larger political unit in subsequent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian–Estonian border has undergone radical changes in the past two decades – from an integrated borderland between two Soviet republics to a border between nation-states and the new EU external border. Until the present day, it is a discursive battlefield that reflects the difficult relations between Russia and Estonia after the restoration of Estonia's independence. While much research has concentrated on antagonistic projects of identity politics and state-building from a top-down perspective, this paper asks how people living in the borderland make sense of the place they live in and negotiate shifts in the symbolic landscapes. Based on life-story narratives of Russian-speakers, it analyzes different ways of narrating and framing place and argues for a consideration of the plurality and ambivalences of place-making projects on the ground. Furthermore, it argues for a more balanced account of continuity and discontinuity in memory narratives by taking into account how the socialist past continues to be meaningful in the present. As the interviews show, memories of the socialist past are used for constructing belonging in the present both by countering and by reproducing national narratives of boundedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fight for Lwów/Lviv in 1918 was the first military conflict in the difficult twentieth-century history of Polish–Ukrainian relations. In the inter-war period, an impressive military memorial, the Eaglets Cemetery, was constructed in Lwów to honor the young defenders of the city. A monument to the Eaglets was also erected in the neighboring Przemyśl. In inter-war Poland, the Ukrainians, who had lost their cause for state independence, created their own cult of national heroes, the Sich Riflemen. Their graves in Lwów and Przemyśl, as well as in many smaller towns, became sites of public commemoration and national mobilization. This article traces the emergence, the development and the post-World War II decay of both competing memorial cults, focusing on their revival and political uses after 1989. It examines the trans-border aspects of memory politics in Lviv and Przemyśl and analyses the role of war memorials in (re-)establishing the link between ethnic communities and their homelands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language as it appears in the public space is at the centre of investigations into linguistic landscapes. Language agents immersed in a given geo-historical context contribute to the construction of spatialised meaning and to the transformation of space into place. The visibility of a language in a linguistic landscape does not just index a reality, i.e. the use of one or more languages within a community, but contributes to the symbolic construction of a given space. The current study aims to investigate the peculiarities of place-making and -marking of the Slovenian-speaking community in the area of Trieste via an analysis of written signs displaying the minority language. The paper will show that the tension resulting from achieved equality in the legal status of Slovenian and the perception of unequal power relations between different ethnic groups is reproduced in the construction of the local linguistic landscape. The final part of the discussion will suggest that public use of the Slovenian language is central to the performance of a material border. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper explores the politics of community making at the India–Bangladesh border by examining the public and private narratives of history and belonging in a Bangladeshi enclave—a sovereign piece of Bangladesh completely territorially surrounded by India. Drawing on framings of political society, this paper argues that understanding populations at the margins of South Asia and beyond requires attention to two processes: first, to the ways that para-legal activities are part and parcel of daily life; and second, to the strategies through which these groups construct themselves as moral communities deserving of inclusion within the state. Border communities often articulate narratives of dispossession, exceptionality, and marginalization to researchers and other visitors—narratives that are often unproblematically reproduced in academic treatments of the border. However, such articulations mask both the complicated histories and quotidian realities of border life. This paper views these articulations as political projects in and of themselves. By reading the more hidden histories of life in this border enclave, this article reconstructs the notion of borders as experienced by enclave residents themselves. It shows the ways that the politics of the India–Bangladesh border are constitutive of (and constituted by) a range of fractures and internal boundaries within the enclave. These boundaries are as central to forging community—to articulating who belongs and why—as are more public narratives that frame enclave residents as victims of confused territorial configurations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the permeability of the Romanian-Yugoslav border on the Danube during the Cold War, which challenges the traditional perception of the perfect closure of the borders in Communist Romania. Using an oral historical approach, the research tries to explain that smuggling merchandise and people were long-term surviving strategies for borderland communities. In spite of political issues such as the diachronically changing Romanian-Yugoslav bilateral relations during the second half of the 20th century, borderland people continued to cross--and to assist other to cross--to the other side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides abstracts of the articles presented in this issue, on topics including political theory of geographical borders, political violence and cultural policy.

This paper analyses accounts of a racialized Canada/US border gathered from young white Canadian border residents. I argue that these accounts clearly support scholarly and activist reports of the "racial profiling" of non-whites. While some white interviewees criticized the border practices that they described, some also suggested that nonwhites were appropriately targeted for greater surveillance as part of a binational security project. Meanwhile there was little acknowledgement of the significant benefits of whiteness in the racialized border context. While these white narratives contradict official denials of "racial profiling," I suggest that they ultimately offer limited challenge to racially differentiated border im/mobilities that reproduce racial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legendary Mexican heroes have reemerged in the public space to meet the varying political, artistic or commercial needs of the various sectors of both the Mexican and American society. I intend to delve into iconic figure of Pancho Villa in relation to a theoretical framework of the border region. My paper pursues answers to the following questions: what sort of relevant role does the Mexican revolutionary icon undertake for current Chicano/Latino life? To what extent does Villa still have a certain political or ideological viability that speaks for and to communal interests of Chicanos or Latinos? I want to focus on how the figure of Villa is evoked in relation to a number of border concepts because Villa himself inspires questions about the representation of images of the border, as an allegorical construct of the unrepresented/ misrepresented physical frontier. I examine the ways in which his presence is invoked, discussed, and re-appropriated in theoretical, literary, and filmic works whose thematic figurations revolve around the border. Organizing my discussion in three parts, I analyze how the figure of Villa is reincarnated in three contexts: drama, film, and folklore always in dialogue with issues of border culture, border identity and border representation. I propose that the figure of Villa signals persistent conflicts and ongoing debates involving the border region as it returns, repeatedly, as a popular icon for both the U.S. mainstream society and the Chicano/Latino community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]