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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]

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]

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]