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This paper explores the operationalization of policy directionality in terms of goal consistency as well as the spatial dimensions of problems and solutions. The study focuses on cross-border regions (CBRs), since they are engaged in cooperation to tackle common challenges. This study employs a comparative analysis across two EU CBRs, drawing on a theoretical framework that integrates the trinity of agency scholarships and the literature on the multiplicity of border functions. By combining these perspectives, we aim to illustrate how agents navigate the opportunity spaces generated within CBRs. This paper aims to shed light on the interplay between agents to navigate the conditions that the presence of international border generates in the EU cross-border regions (CBR)s to tackle Societal Challenges (SC)s. Through this integrated framework, we explore how agents perceive, interpret, and respond to the complex dynamics and possibilities that emerge in CBRs, shedding light on the interplay between structure and agency in these unique spatial settings. The findings show how SC can be framed at different scales with ambivalent results in terms of consistency of policy goals. Framed through the trinity agency framework, actors interacted collectively to generate and transfer knowledge in the CBRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Quebec, geopolitics has not given rise, as a research field, to lively epistemological debates as was the case in France and elsewhere. At the crossroads of the French and Anglo‐Saxon schools of thought, Quebec's geopolitics developed progressively, with a few pioneers in the 1960s, to become an integral part of the geography discipline in the 1980s, driven by geopolitical issues related to the issue of Quebec within Canada. From the 2000s onwards, geopolitics diversified and became more international, becoming a commonly accepted sub‐field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to provide an analysis of the processes involved in the construction of the perception of a cross-border sustainable tourism destination image in peripheral regions. The research presented was conducted using an empirical approach that merges qualitative and quantitative techniques. The main results of this study include the identification of the key components that contribute to the formation of the image of a sustainable cross-border tourist destination in the region encompassing Alcoutim (Portugal) and Sanlúcar de Guadiana (Spain). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon a review of geographic research agendas and concepts related to the uneven geographies of COVID‐19, this first of three articles debates the benefits of geographic analyses to the syndemic approach and, vice versa, of a syndemics perspective to geographic analyses. The syndemics perspective was proposed by critical medical anthropologists. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the structural dimensions and processes that lead to the convergence and cascading of multiple epidemics in specific population groups. Geographers have also highlighted the intersections of multiple health or other crises during COVID‐19, when the pandemic and global health emergency coincided with and escalated existing structural inequalities produced by the climate crisis, environmental degradation, political conflicts and war, socio‐economic disparities and poverty, social divisions, racism, hatred and violence, mental health problems and stress. Geographers have mobilized concepts such as scale, territory, borders and intersectionality to unravel the uneven unfolding and consequences of the global health emergency for diverse population groups. We therefore argue that geography has a lot to contribute to the understanding of the spatial and contextual dimensions of COVID‐19 as a pandemic as well as a syndemic – but it has so far not actively employed the latter concept's analytical lens. Mobilizing the syndemics approach can contribute to more comprehensive accounts of the structural dimensions and processes that continue and cascade in pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article investigates the "Memory struggle" in-between the two Koreas presented in the documentary films after the April 2018 Panmunjom Declaration. The Children Gone to Poland and Shadow Flowers carry out politics of representation that create a new moment of cultural memories about borders normatively standardized by hostility and indifference. The two documentary films place the camera on the border of the Cold War, which connects the past and the present, which was either not recorded or was misrecorded by one side of the border and therefore erased off the surface of our memories. They are non-nationals in that they can be stateless or multinational, depending on the location of the border. As such, they disrupt the border as boundaries that have continued since the Cold War. On the other hand, the struggle of North Korean defectors to return home reveals the indifference and hostility of South Korean society over this fact, confirming the Red Complex, which eventually exists as a shadow of hospitality for North Korean defectors. In this way, the two texts invite us to confront history before the establishment of the border through war orphans or face the reality that the Cold War frontier has expanded infinitely through an individual of ambiguous identities, such as a North Korean defector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study innovates the way in which digital ethnography techniques can be applied in the analysis of complex phenomena, in this case the wave of migrants and refugees at the border between Romania, Serbia, Hungary and Ukraine, in the last two years (2021 - 2022). Thus, we regard this paper as an example of multidimensional education for both students and practitioners of media studies that struggle to address broad, transdisciplinary topics. The present research aims to present a multidimensional approach of the manner in which journalistic materials portray people who have arrived at the border between the three states in their attempt to travel further to the countries of Western Europe. Our methods consist of non-participatory content analysis on some communication products in the mass media from Great Britain and Romania, sentiment analysis and critique of professional practice. We used digital ethnography to reveal interesting data for a comparative analysis of the way different types of migrants are portrayed in British and Romanian media. The comparative analysis was conducted by using data provided by Dchipher Analytics and ZeList Monitor, ensuring a high degree of confidence in the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution combines literature on logistics with literature on the articulation between racism and the securitisation of migration. Studying security infrastructures in Mexico in conjunction with the Mesoamerican Project, a massive transnational infrastructure plan, I show how security and trade infrastructures become intertwined in what governments have called a "secure trade corridor" between Colombia and the United States. In this securitised project of accelerating trade across the Americas, the promise of infrastructure itself is one of enabling flows and controlling the mobility of racialised others. The article describes how security infrastructures redirect and potentially revictimise migrants, contain contestation, and, ultimately, enable capital flows for corporations that provide technology at Mexico's northern and southern borders. Fantasies of containment materialise in wires, border posts, military posts, and even graves. Trade infrastructures also serve as "filters" for migration. Joining logistics and security studies allows us to observe how these different infrastructures simultaneously perform multiple functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agribusiness has unleashed new territorial dynamics on the Brazil and Paraguay border. Derived from Brazilian public policies influenced by geopolitical objectives, the spillover of agribusiness into Paraguayan territory has created productive, commercial, and logistical networks that have intensified the porosity of this border. In light of this, criminal groups have used these networks to carry out cross-border crimes. Among these illicit acts, the illegal flow of pesticides and agrochemical inputs stands out, since they use the road network to transport and distribute these products to the thriving agribusiness segment, despite the asymmetry between sanitary and legal parameters between Brazil and Paraguay. Through a qualitative analysis of quantitative data and interviews with agents responsible for security in the Brazilian Border Strip, we identified the characteristics of this cross-border illicit flow and built a scenario for the period after the construction of the RILA, which will make the river border of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, with the department of Alto Paraguay, Paraguay, between the cities of Porto Murtinho and Carmelo Peralta, more porous and therefore more vulnerable to these crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The border city of El Paso, Texas, and its water utility, El Paso Water, initiated a SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring program to assess virus trends and the appropriateness of a wastewater monitoring program for the community. Nearly weekly sample collection at four wastewater treatment facilities (WWTFs), serving distinct regions of the city, was analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 genes using the CDC 2019-Novel coronavirus Real-Time RT-PCR diagnostic panel. Virus concentrations ranged from 86.7 to 268,000 gc/L, varying across time and at each WWTF. The lag time between virus concentrations in wastewater and reported COVID-19 case rates (per 100,00 population) ranged from 4–24 days for the four WWTFs, with the strongest trend occurring from November 2021 - June 2022. This study is an assessment of the utility of a geographically refined SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring program to supplement public health efforts that will manage the virus as it becomes endemic in El Paso. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigeria is in a security quandary. The country's security debacles are impacting its socio-economic and political landscapes. Aside from the protracted Boko Haram terrorism, banditry and kidnapping have taken on momentary dimensions in the country. Many studies have attributed this menace to the porous and ill-manned status of Nigerian borders, which lend ambience to unwholesome intrusions and thus render the borders a national burden. This study unpacks the state of Nigeria's borders vis-à-vis the national security experiences of the country. It argues that, beyond the 'porosity' debates and narratives, the lingering cross-border challenges are the effects of patronage networks and internal crises that have engulfed domestic lives and state politics. It submits further that, notwithstanding the subjective colonial status and the uncoordinated management agenda of Nigeria's borders, they have inherent geo-strategic potentials and advantages capable of transforming national lives and enhancing state security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 10,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel - approximately half of whom are women - cross the Green Line on a regular basis to study at universities in the West Bank. Challenging views that would dismiss these cross-border flows as illustrative of their relatively privileged legal, material and socio-economic status as citizens, this paper engages the concept of mobility capital as well as the work of feminist scholars on the capital investment strategies of women and minorities to reveal the more limited capacity of Palestinian citizens to cross the Green Line as well as the defensively-oriented mobilising strategies which they have adopted not only to move but to maintain their presence, access their rights, and secure their future livelihoods in Israel. Arguing that these cross-border student mobilities should be seen as both a counter-hegemonic and 'stacked' form of capital accumulation that is heavily reliant on the bridging work of informal networks, this paper seeks to advance recent calls to centre settler colonialism within the field of mobilities while drawing attention to the more complex interconnections that exist between mobility and capital in the everyday life struggles of indigenous communities. [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]

In the following paper, we aim for an extended understanding of the most crucial phenomena itself, the generation of meaning in the interaction with—what we describe as reality. The cultural psychological core principles are re-introduced and connected to a new more holistic construction, elaborating the generation of new meaning. In the same context, new terminology will be introduced, crucial for the understanding of the from phenomenology generated perspective toward cognitive processes and their interrelation with the everyday life. Borders not only as separator but also as deep connector of meaning are for this purpose explored and reintroduced. A procedure that led to central understandings that go far beyond the simple definitions accessible in dictionaries. As significant organic metaphor the river and the meadow (Towards a wholistic model of identity: Why not a meadow? Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 55(1), 112–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09588-3) will be used and extended by the rabbit hole, a triggered process extending the imagination of individuals by the central counter movement against streams and Gegenstände. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of two recent studies on gender, labour and mobility on the borders between Morocco and Spain. Industrial relocation and the feminised labour market was the first focus of our attention. Subsequently, we integrated research on cross-border labour markets, such as the small-scale commercial activity carried out by women. The objective of these studies is to understand the impacts of globalisation processes, such as industrial relocation and border dynamics, on the daily lives of women. Therefore, we consider theoretical approaches to female participation in emerging economic circuits in developing countries as a macro-vision that enables contextualisation at a micro-social level. At the micro level, our analysis draws from the notion of lived precariousness as a perspective that allows us to examine the testimonies and the meaning they give to their experience. The results not only indicate that the complexity of border life and its precariousness represent a challenge for women – who develop different ways of dealing with structural and cultural limits as they strive for more substantial autonomy and empowerment – but also provide a glimpse of a broader trend in female economic participation in these circuits that appears to reproduce gender inequalities and pose new obstacle [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]

Along the internal EU border between Germany and Poland, border discourse has increasingly turned to issues of crime and insecurity, with voices speaking up for more controls and border closures. This paper analyses the way in which such border-related statements show features of populist communication by contextualizing this example within a wider discussion on the issues of populism in relation to emotions and space. The argumentation supports the use of concepts of populism in political geography as it has a high potential of analysing discourses of othering, reordering and re-bordering and of highlighting the emotions within these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is the white researcher perceived by the border apparatus? What does this interaction say about the border itself? Ethnographic research has framed such questions as a debate on 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in fieldwork. This is problematic, as it assumes that a researcher can really be 'external' to the social worlds they investigate, as if the field site existed in isolation from transnational processes of racialised extraction. This paper challenges such an assumption by arguing that the white researcher cannot be an 'outsider' to the North African border: they approach it as the beneficiaries of a system of colonial and capital extractivism that feeds itself through migration control. I build on Ahmed's work on white phenomenology to analyse how various border workers perceived, made sense of and reacted to my presence as a white European woman at three different sites on the Spanish–Moroccan border. I argue that the white researcher is an expected presence at the border, as the accumulated history of (post)colonial encounters leads them where others have been before. Although whiteness opens doors, only a certain kind of performed whiteness remains welcome in the borderscape. The white researcher who appears not to be aligning with or supporting the premises of migration control is perceived by border workers as a potentially disruptive presence, and contained in different ways. [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]

Abstract This study reveals a distinct pattern of extensive residential development in China’s minor towns and counties that are close to some of the country’s largest cities. We stress that understanding the housing development and its dynamics at the transboundary interface requires a border viewpoint. By mobilising conceptualisations from the field of border studies, we unpack the meanings and functions of sub-national borders in the Chinese setting. According to the border theory, sub-national borders in China take on a range of functions beyond serving as simple demarcation lines that separate administrative territories, including points of interaction, indicators of difference, and signs of affirmation. Further, borders might have varying and opposing impacts, such as positive/negative and diminished/persistent roles. Consequently, the combined influences result in the dynamic development of the cross-border area. Drawing evidence from a case study of housing development in the border region surrounding Beijing, the paper sheds light on the role of borders as well as its implications on the dynamics of cross-border housing development in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the meaning of ribāṭ in the Palestinian context. The term ribāṭ has been attributed meanings that vary according to period and place. It has often been studied in relation to medieval structures around the Mediterranean coastline and is generally defined as connected to the defence of Muslim lands. However, my research, conducted in Israel-Palestine, indicates that the term also has a very contemporary existence and constitutes an intrinsic part of the Palestinian repertoire of resistance. By scrutinising the Palestinian ribāṭ, in this article I seek to contribute to the wider debate around the meanings attributed to the term, both by tracing its historical continuity and by demonstrating its regional specificity, as a practice imbued with a fundamental territorial dimension. While Palestinians include many elements of the traditional meaning in their use of ribāṭ, such as the idea of defending the land, they have also adapted it to the regional context. For the Palestinians, ribāṭ is by definition linked to three embedded holy spaces – al-Aqsa, Jerusalem and Palestine – considered sacred for both religious and political reasons. This article engages with the dual process of territorialisation and bordering implied by the concept of ribāṭ in the Palestinian context, revealing how it brings together the idea of a life on the frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin American Integration Route (RILA), also known as the Bioceanic Route, is an initiative with the potential to promote the development of the Brazil-Paraguay border zone. The creators of RILA aim, since the creation of the proposal in 2006 (which would be made official in 2015), to boost logistic activities, with the goal to increasing exports of commodities (grains, ores and meat) and, secondly, to boost regional tourism activity. In this sense, this article aims to analyze the potential and obstacles that involve the governance of tourism at the border between Brazil and Paraguay, specifically between the twin cities of Porto Murtinho (BR) and Carmelo Peralta (PY). Regarding the methodology, the present work configures a qualitative research, based on bibliographical and documentary approach, under an interdisciplinary perspective, anchored in the references of Tourism and Political Geography. The theoretical-empirical results correspond to the conceptual delimitation of what configures the governance of tourism in international border territories and the organization of the institutional matrix that will support the understanding of the organization of tourism and its governance in the researched territory. Furthermore, maps were created that demonstrate the intersection between the main tourism development policy in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul and the RILA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on a lecture given as a result of the Catherine D. Ennis Outstanding Scholar Award 2021, presented by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) special interest group for Research on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education. It is a reflection on the field of physical education, beginning with an argument that issues of low status continue to impact practices, even while the wellbeing agenda intensifies. I then reflect on research in the field of physical education and argue that inquiries can be thought of as broadly belonging to one or more of three different areas: intervention research, pedagogical research and critical research. I argue that these areas have different agendas and different ontologies, which produce particular responses to the issues of low status and the wellbeing agenda. I draw on some of my own current work in mental health education to argue that we need to keep an educative approach to the fore if we want to continue to contest the low status of physical education, and respond to the wellbeing agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No term defined the last U.S. presidency, and public discourse accompanying it, more so than "the Wall" and, with it, the U.S.-Mexico border more broadly. That discourse, however, has mostly been characterized by an a-historic, unproblematized, and under-theorized notion of "border." Our experiences as curriculum scholars and teacher educators have illustrated that a similar stance about the border has taken place in public education. We begin from the assumption that the border is very real, but it is socially constructed and maintained, and impacts different groups differently. Borders are thus not only geographic markers but political, cultural, economic, and psychological disruptors of places and those living in them. In order to better understand these complex dimensions, we engage in an extended analysis of two cases, the U.S.-Mexico border and the internal displacement of the Rohingya of Myanmar, building upon prior theorizing by considering both the discursive and affective dimensions of each and implications for curriculum and pedagogy. The paper concludes with suggestions for applying these considerations in practice and questions for future inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We take into account the problem of identifying the repeated structure in a given pword v◊ of length l. We show that a pword v◊ is a cover of a pword u◊ if every letter of u◊ lies within an occurrence of v◊ in u◊ and v◊ is a border of u◊. Here, we examine string issues that are concerned with identifying recurring patterns in a given total word x. The total word's period p, a common regularity, captures x's repetition, since x is a prefix of a string created by concatenating p. We think about a challenge developed by expanding the scope of this repetitiveness idea by permitting overlaps between the segments that are repeated. We focus on a key issue in string processing: the compact representation of a word by its most frequent factors. The frequency cover, or the longest repeating factor, is a useful and simple form of quasi-periodicity in words that is proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge emerging from research funded by the European Union (EU) through its Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation and other funding streams is significantly shaped by different forms of epistemic control exerted by the EU itself. Through the promotion of industry-research-policy cooperation in EU-funded research, and in light of the growing importance attached to 'impact,' this knowledge will often contribute to bureaucratic decisions taken by the European Commission, Frontex, the EU Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems (eu-LISA), and other agencies tasked with border security and control. The circular dynamics surrounding knowledge production, from the calls for proposals to the results of the research, are intrinsically political and contribute to exposing the limits of the EU-promoted principle of Responsible Research and Innovation. Additionally, and due to the centrality of EU funding in the research outlook in contemporary Europe, these processes raise wider questions about the sociology of the academic fields that this article relates to: critical border studies, critical security studies, and science and technology studies. How can we interpret the interplays between the EU's policies fostering development and integration of border security technologies, on the one hand, and the Union's broader principles for free and open research and innovation? Through the use of autoethnographic vignettes, and mediated by an expanded Foucauldian understanding of circulation as a technology of control with performative effects, the article sheds light on the dynamics surrounding knowledge production in the field of border technologies in an EU context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Conflicts adversely affect psychological well-being and are associated with mental disorders. Aim: The study aims to assess the levels of perceived stress, anxiety and depression and their association with demographic factors among the youth in the border villages of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among youth aged 18 to 25 years. The sample consisted of 300 individuals from the border villages of J&K. Of these, 150 individuals were from the villages located near the International Border (IB) in the Jammu district, and 150 individuals were from the villages near the Line Of Control (LOC) in the Rajouri district. Perceived Stress scale (PSS), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD7), and Public Health Questionnaire (PHQ9) scales were used to determine the levels of perceived stress, depression, and anxiety. Mann Whitney, Chi-square and Odds ratio analysis were performed to assess the levels of the indicators and their association with demographic factors. Results: 94% of the respondents had perceived stress, 34.46% anxiety and 31% depression. Perceived stress, anxiety and depression were significantly higher among the LOC youth than IB youth (p <.00*). The LOC youth with an educational status below graduation level were found to be more anxious (p =.034) and more depressed (p =.003) than those with the educational status of graduation and above. The youth whose main activity was that of a student were found to be more depressed than the employed and unemployed youth (p =.000). Conclusion: Perceived stress, anxiety, and depression were prevalent among the youth in border villages. These were found to be significantly higher among youth in border villages on the LOC. The findings suggest that education level has a significant impact on the mental health of the youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border management has, on the one hand, grown beyond the conceptual limit that is the terminological definition of borders as lines separating countries to also factor in their development as areas. On the other, it should aim to strengthen state sovereignty and improve the welfare of its citizens. These often lead to the dichotomy between security and prosperity in border management approaches. Regionalism is an approach used to create regional integration across national borders, but this concept is strongly influenced by the interests of states on each side of the border. Therefore, this research explores if spatial interaction between border communities is controlled by the regionalism concept introduced by the state or, instead, grows organically as part of regionalization due to livelihoods that require border crossings. It used a case study of Sebatik Island in the Indonesia-Malaysia border area. The qualitative research design applied exploratory principles on the spatial interaction pattern formed between border communities and then synthesized the identified units of information on transboundary activities while considering government-issued policies on border management. Results showed that regionalism was only minimally implemented in managing the border area. It means that border landscapes in Indonesia are organically formed on the micro-scale even though the perspective of regionalism has long been adopted at the regional level, i.e., ASEAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A steady decline in the number of cases of malaria was observed in the 2000s in French Guiana. This enabled regional health policies to shift their public health goal from control to elimination. To include inhabitants in this strategy, the main objective of this study was to describe knowledge about malaria, and related attitudes and practices in persons living in the French Guiana border. Methods: We conducted a survey in people over 15 years old living in the twelve neighbourhoods of Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock with the highest malaria incidence. It comprised a 147-item questionnaire which collected data on socio-demographic characteristics and included a Knowledge Attitude and Practices survey on malaria. Knowledge-related data were studied using exploratory statistical methods to derive summary variables. A binary variable assessing level of knowledge was proposed and then assessed using exploratory approaches. Results: The mean age of the 844 participants was 37.2 years [15.8], the male/female sex ratio was 0.8. In terms of nationality, 485 (57.5%) participants were Brazilian and 352 (41.7%) French. One third (305, 36.1%) spoke Brazilian Portuguese as their native language, 295 (34.9%) the Amerindian language Palikur, 36 (4.3%) French. The symptoms of malaria and prevention means were poorly known by 213 (25.2%) and 378 (44.8%) respondents, respectively. A quarter (206, 24.4%) did not know that malaria can be fatal. Overall, 251 people (29.7%) had an overall poor level of knowledge about malaria. Being under 25 years old, living in a native Amerindian neighbourhood, having an Amerindian mother tongue language, having risk behaviours related to gold mining were significantly associated with a poor level of knowledge. Conclusions: This study is the first to describe the poor level of knowledge about malaria in populations living in the malaria endemic border area along the Oyapock river in French Guiana. Results will allow to reinforce, to diversify and to culturally adapt prevention messages and health promotion to increase their effectiveness with a view to quickly reaching the goal of malaria elimination through empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A road being built in north-western Western Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), addresses local desires for mobility, for development, and for establishing materially beneficial relationships with people living west of the border in the Indonesian province of South Papua. This road is explicitly intended to reach beyond the nation and, like all routes to border-crossings, exposes differences even as it connects. On the Indonesian side a new sealed road reaches the border at Yetetkun, which is being established as a third official Indonesia–PNG cross-border post. More resources are committed to the Indonesian project than to the PNG project, a difference that is materially apparent at the border. The potential exists that the construction of roads and cross-border posts of these kinds, in combination with triggers arising elsewhere in PNG, may fuel persistent dissatisfactions within Western Province and tempt realignment to the west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical scholarship can be a way of enacting insurrections against entrenched and enduring dogmatisms of the nation-state and its inalienable right to systematically deploy violence against selective Others. This article focuses upon the violent bordering practices of the nation-statist system, their connexion to the bordering of knowledges, and their impact upon specific kinds of bodies at the border, which together enforce a systemic vulnerability that is tied to legacies of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism. In the first part, I reflect upon the violence of bordering practices in the nation-statist system, foregrounding how those who predominantly receive this violence in the form of death and debility are the racialized Others. I put forth four specific implications of these violent bordering practices: they enable a cascade of interlinked dehumanizations of people within the nation-state borders; they occlude from view how any nation-state is not homogeneous over time in terms of what one might see as national culture; they allow economic processes to be perceived as scientific and abstract rather than as embedded in the realms of contested political jurisdictions; and they render and sustain the nation-state itself as a racialized construct that both produces and profits from class inequality in contemporary capitalism. In the second part, I argue for the need to perceive the link between violent bordering practices and bordered knowledges, highlighting and synthesizing insights from across disciplines that can aid in asking counter-hegemonic questions. In conclusion, and as part of necessary anti-national scholarly enquiry, I call for a multidimensional and sustained critical stance towards the nation-states' rights to enforce borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born of the fratricidal Korean War (1950-1953), Korea's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) endures as the oldest continuous frontline of the Cold War. It is also a sealed heritage site, replete with accumulated emotions, trauma, and tension. Given the strict restrictions to access, until recently the DMZ has remained largely imaginary to the public, yet it has been attracting growing interest. The appeal of the Paju DMZ is that it provides the only public window through which the North can be glimpsed from the South. First opened to international visitors in the 1970s through a so-called "security DMZ tour" it was from 2000 increasingly promoted to both domestic and international visitors under the new name "peace and security DMZ tour." Tracing the tour route in Paju, this study examines the formation of the Cold War heritage-scape to understand the role of border heritage in Korea today. We pay particular attention to the heritagization of the Paju DMZ from 1953 to the present. This study also assesses the degree to which the heritage-scape of the Paju DMZ contributes to the representation of peace and reconciliation that the tour aims to convey. We argue that Korea's border heritage acts as a bellwether for the broader inter-Korean relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the fall of the USSR, the newly established republics had to finish negotiating the bilateral border issue with China. These states chose to have the talks as a joint delegation of post-Soviet states. They also each experienced pressure from domestic constituencies. Viewing the entire negotiation process as a three-level game, the paper argues that in all four post-Soviet states the national governments believed the cost of 'no agreement' with China on the border issue to be so high that they chose to risk dealing with complex issues at home over passing up the opportunity to settle the border with their strongest neighbour. They did so with little regard for domestic opposition or the restrictions posed by the previous commitments on the supranational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Over the past decade, implementation of multiple malaria control strategies in most countries has largely contributed to advance the global malaria elimination agenda. Nevertheless, in some regions, seasonal epidemics may adversely affect the health of local populations. In South Africa, Plasmodium falciparum malaria is still present, with the Vhembe District experiencing an incidence rate of 3.79 cases/1000 person-years in 2018, particularly in the Limpopo River Valley, bordering Zimbabwe. To elucidate the complexity of the mechanisms involved in local regular malaria outbreaks, a community-based survey was implemented in 2020 that focused on the relationship between housing conditions and malaria risky behaviours. Methods: The community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted among the population of three study sites in the Vhembe District, which were selected based on malaria incidence rate, social and health characteristics of inhabitants. The household survey used a random sampling strategy, where data were collected through face-to-face questionnaires and field notes; to described the housing conditions (housing questionnaire), and focus on individual behaviours of household members. Statistical analyses were performed combining hierarchical classifications and logistic regressions. Results: In this study, 398 households were described, covering a population of 1681 inhabitants of all ages, and 439 adults who participated in community-based survey. The analysis of situations at risk of malaria showed that the influence of contextual factors, particularly those defined by the type of habitat, was significant. Housing conditions and poor living environments were factors of malaria exposure and history, regardless of site of investigation, individual preventive behaviours and personal characteristics of inhabitants. Multivariate models showed that, considering all personal characteristics or behaviours of inhabitants, housing conditions such as overcrowding pressures were significantly associated with individual malaria risk. Conclusions: The results showed the overwhelming weight of social and contextual factors on risk situations. Considering the Fundamental Causes Theory, malaria control policies based on health behaviour prevention, should reinforce access to care or promoting health education actions. Overarching economic development interventions in targeted geographical areas and populations have to be implemented, so that malaria control and elimination strategies can be efficiently and effectively managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist research has illustrated how ideas of the family have been central to projects of border and immigration enforcement, including practices of detention, separation, resettlement, and reunification. This work considers how discourses of family are used to categorize immigrants and refugees, determining access to or exclusion from national territory. Drawing on a comparative study of government-led public information campaigns (PICs) in the United States and Australia, we expand on this research to explore how the family is framed and mobilized in PICs to produce emotional and affective attachments intended to influence migration-related decisions. We argue that PICs function as a form of affective governmentality, working to tether potential migrants to place and render them immobile through the strategic circulation of family-based narratives and images grounded in grief, guilt, shame, and familial responsibility. In doing so, PICs obscure the geopolitical and geoeconomic complexities undergirding transnational migration by rendering migration-related decisions as individual and familial. In tracing how the family is framed and mobilized in PICs, we contribute to existing research on the family in border and immigration enforcement and theories of emotional and affective governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When anti-lockdown protests erupted in the United States during the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many right-wing women crudely appropriated the feminist slogan "my body, my choice" in defiance of liberal fears and in support of Donald Trump. Looking at the widely shared image of a young woman holding a sign with the phrase at a rally in Texas, I discuss the communal charge of what I call tough girl affect—a politically saturated vibe, touting a notably youthful, right-wing femininity that is deliberately feisty, fun, and provocative, yet compliant with the hetero-patriarchal agenda of Trump's neoliberal macho politics. I am interested in the way body and choice evoke white femininity as affective strategy, negotiating a public feeling of privileged belonging to the nation. The article works through the tenets of body, border, and nation as central to this investment, suggesting that the tough girl image mobilizes femininity to affectively strengthen conservatism, whiteness, and homeland in the face of the pandemic. Staging a fantasy of impunity, the tough girl intimates the invincible conservative body in opposition to the porous emotionality of feeble liberals. At the same time, the spectacle of white femininity necessarily fuels national fears of permeability and hence charges negative (even fatal) attachments to fantasmatic sovereignty. While mobilizing vulnerability to energize femininity, whiteness, and borders, the image ultimately exposes the compromised bargains of living and dying in (Trump's) America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adolescents experience a host of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges, with detrimental SRH and socio-economic consequences. These include early sexual debut, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, and early childbearing. Parent-adolescent communication about SRH has significant potential to reduce adolescents' risky sexual behaviors. However, communication between parents and adolescents is limited. This study explored the facilitators and barriers to parent-adolescent communication about sexual and reproductive health. Methods: We conducted a qualitative study in the border districts of Busia and Tororo in Eastern Uganda. Data collection entailed 8 Focus Group Discussions comprising of parents, adolescents (10–17 years), and 25 key informants. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and translated into English. Thematic analysis was conducted with the aid of NVIVO 12 software. Results: Participants acknowledged the key role parents play in communicating SRH matters; however, only a few parents engage in such discussions. Facilitators of parent-adolescent communication were: having a good parent-child relationship which makes parents approachable and motivates children to discuss issues openly, a closer bond between mothers and children which is partly attributed to gender roles and expectations eases communication, and having parents with high education making them more knowledgeable and confident when discussing SRH issues with children. However, the discussions are limited by cultural norms that treat parent-child conversations on SRH as a taboo, parents' lack of knowledge, and parents busy work schedules made them unavailable to address pertinent SRH issues. Conclusion: Parents' ability to communicate with their children is hindered by cultural barriers, busy work schedules, and a lack of knowledge. Engaging all stakeholders including parents to deconstruct sociocultural norms around adolescent SRH, developing the capacity of parents to confidently initiate and convey accurate SRH information, initiation of SRH discussions at early ages, and integrating parent-adolescent communication into parenting interventions, are potential strategies to improve SRH communication between parents and adolescents in high-risk settings such as borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how smartphone videos produced by migrants during border crossings challenge Eurocentric visualizations of borders. Implementing video analysis and iconographic interpretation, I explore three interrelated aspects of the smartphone videos: (1) By circulating videos via digital platforms, migrants create a countervisuality of border crossing that destabilizes the visual politics that shape current border regimes. (2) Unlike journalistic, humanitarian, or surveillance-oriented visual images produced from above, from a safe distance, from rescue or patrol ships, migrants' smartphone footage puts their own narratives at the center of visualization. (3) Whereas Eurocentric visualizations of migration and borders aim to elicit affects and emotions such as pity, empathy, fear, or panic, migrants' smartphone videos depict emotions such as joy and happiness after successful border crossings. These affective visualizations of individual migration stories confound binary representations of migrants as either victims or invaders. I argue that the shaky smartphone videos with their wandering focus and disordered mode of vision create a productive vantage point for seeing and sensing a world that is unimaginable for the normative, focused lens that structures views projected by journalism, humanitarian appeals, political mobilization, and surveillance technologies. [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]

Critical scholarship can be a way of enacting insurrections against entrenched and enduring dogmatisms of the nation-state and its inalienable right to systematically deploy violence against selective Others. This article focuses upon the violent bordering practices of the nation-statist system, their connexion to the bordering of knowledges, and their impact upon specific kinds of bodies at the border, which together enforce a systemic vulnerability that is tied to legacies of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism. In the first part, I reflect upon the violence of bordering practices in the nation-statist system, foregrounding how those who predominantly receive this violence in the form of death and debility are the racialized Others. I put forth four specific implications of these violent bordering practices: they enable a cascade of interlinked dehumanizations of people within the nation-state borders; they occlude from view how any nation-state is not homogeneous over time in terms of what one might see as national culture; they allow economic processes to be perceived as scientific and abstract rather than as embedded in the realms of contested political jurisdictions; and they render and sustain the nation-state itself as a racialized construct that both produces and profits from class inequality in contemporary capitalism. In the second part, I argue for the need to perceive the link between violent bordering practices and bordered knowledges, highlighting and synthesizing insights from across disciplines that can aid in asking counter-hegemonic questions. In conclusion, and as part of necessary anti-national scholarly enquiry, I call for a multidimensional and sustained critical stance towards the nation-states' rights to enforce borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located in the heart of Montreal's Quartier des Spectacles, the Habitations Jeanne-Mance is a vast social housing scheme that contrasts starkly with the Quebec metropolis's cultural showcase. However, despite their differences, these urban projects have been subject to similar beautification practices. Both have drawn on public art and culture as resources, but the two beautification processes have taken different forms. In the Quartier des Spectacles, they have been aimed at attracting audiences, while in the Habitations Jeanne-Mance, they have sought to reinforce a sense of belonging. In this article, we analyse how these symbolic recoding processes have interconnected and overlapped. [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]

This work examined the security implications of the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALWs) in Nigeria laying more emphasis on Kaduna State. The work relied on both primary and secondary data. For the primary data, they were obtained through an in-depth interview with key stakeholders who are abreast with issues of the subject matter, this included all three arms of the armed forces, the police, customs, immigration, and those who have been victims of attack and culprits who were arrested with SALWs. While secondary data were sourced from textbooks, journal articles, seminar papers, and newspapers, among others on the subject matter. The work adopted the relative deprivation theory as a framework of analysis. Findings of the work show that there were serious security implications of the proliferation of SALWs for Kaduna state which has led to an increase in crime rate, political violence, conflicts, and disruption of economic activities within the period under review. The study, therefore, recommends inter-agency and bilateral cooperation on border patrol, adequate equipment and training of security personnel, proper remuneration for security agents, improved government policies and framework to grow the economy and create jobs, strict adherence to prescribing laws and regulations governing the possession and use of small arms and light weapons among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borders have significant potential as tourist attractions, and there are many aspects of unique border locations capable of attracting people's attention. One such attraction would be the tripoint, i.e. a place where the borders of three different countries meet physically at a single point. One of the newest such features in Europe – where the borders of Poland, Slovakia and Czechia meet in the Beskid Mountains – provides an example of far-reaching border-related changes in the EU, the creativity of local authorities as supported by EU funds, and the creation of a new transboundary meeting space with a strong integration-related identity. It also exemplifies the concept of a new tourist space beyond traditional tourist destinations. The development of tourism at tripoints is modelled ideographically. Spatio-temporal analysis with scalar dimensions shows the spatial relationships between tripoints and tourism development: the central point, the immediate vicinity, the proximal neighborhood (or local zone) and the regional zone. The tripoint examined here supports a proposal for a spatial planning model at tripoints in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to locate globality in Basel's urban society during the emergence of capitalism (1670–1780). It seeks to globalize patrimonial historiography and local history by "inverting the telescope" as micro-historians have suggested. It analyzes how the leading actors in a Swiss city situated on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire participated in the new capitalism and positioned their society within a new global geography increasingly shaped by an Atlantic beyond the empires. To do so, it asks how the city's cosmopolitan elite bonded locally and acted globally in times of accelerated economic and social transformation. Exploring people who capitalized social, economic, and political borders deepens our understanding of the multi-layered process of early globalization and contributes to the new history of capitalism. The micro-global focus on Basel's specific locality illuminates the conceptual potential for global history in the nexus between war capitalism and global capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conveys the power of place in global history through the multiple perceptions of space and possession in one small remote locality – Nootka Sound on the Northwest coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This space was, for a brief period between the 1770s and 1790s, connected with many parts of the world. Microhistorical methodologies applied to the texts of traders and explorers and turned to the study of a locality such as Nootka Sound reveal the close global connections of agents and events and help us to challenge the frameworks of global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language of one community has always been a form of individualization in relation to another community. It has always been a form of creating a consciousness of community belonging, of solidarity of individuals with the group. It is no wonder, therefore, that it has been used by certain states or political regimes to create and support identity disputes inside or outside a state, inside or outside communities. Language was then a political tool used by some states to create new forms of ethno-national identity that would justify membership/claiming territories or individualizing a population in relation to the main ethno-linguistic group. The purpose of this study is to identify and establish relationships between linguistic individualization and the political act or the political interest of the difference of opinions promotion of „ new" linguistic realities to justify or challenge certain state borders or ethno-national constructions. The space under analysis is that of Eastern and Balkan Europe, in particular that of the Republic of Moldova and Northern Macedonia. Methodologically, the focus of our analysis lies primarily on the identity boundaries generated by the specific ethno-religious, linguistic or cultural, but also by the nature of the mental specific to the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]