Borders Flashcards
Doty (2014)
There is a fundamental difference between mobilities that are welcomed and those that are not; almost all industrialised countries have restrictive policies regarding undocumented or illegal migration.
Both citizenship and legality are complex concepts and practices- both of which determine how different people can move across the border. The ways in which these concepts change reflect to socio-political forms of struggle over meaning and identity.
EXAMPLE: US-Mexico border. The current migration crisis can be traced back to several events which are far removed from the border itself (1993 World Trade bombing and CIA assassination) which brought issues of immigration to the forefront. The US launched different programs to police the border (prevention via deterrence). Some citizens even took it upon themselves to police the border. These forms of border enforcement implicitly and explicitly make assumptions about states, nations, citizenship and identity.
There is a given assumption that there is a link between the state and its citizens. BUT, this does not always align with reality. E.g. 12 million undocumented migrants living in the US today. Citizenship is therefore problematic and always entails a form of exclusion.
The ways in which societies respond to the other entering territory says much about how it understands itself and others; race needs to be brought to the forefront of this discussion.
Johnson et al. (2011)
There is a need for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of borders; the trend over the last decade has been to consider the exercise of state sovereignty as great distances- from the border line itself.
BUT, most of the border work that marks bodies as (il)legitimate happens far from the border itself- document check, data monitoring, immigration raids and offshore detention centres.
Amoore (2009) describes this as “spatial stretching and temporal orientation” and urges us to interrogate the different material manifestations of the border.
Paasi (2009)
Borders are not neutral lines. They are spaces of emotion, fear and memory that can be mobilised for progressive or regressive purposes.
The politics of representation and identity come into play when considering borders- they simultaneously separate and bring together.
BUT, one grand theory that applies to all borders does not exist- each border is unique and complex, should be studies contextually.
Amoore (2006)
New, emerging border techniques (including the introduction of technology) brings new questions: where is the border located, where does it begin/end and what does crossing a border mean?
With new data-driven systems, border lines are drawn via the association rules between items of data: commercial techniques such as credit rating or life insurance risk scoring are deployed in the writing of contemporary border security.
The border is being ‘exported’ via mobile phones, data and objects.
Border geographies are also becoming pre-emptive (data collection before reaching the actual border).
Mountz (2010)
Borders are increasingly characterised by movement, rather than status; they are more diffuse and proliferating than ever.
BUT, recent changes in the actual boundaries of nation states reminds us that we should not forget the physical manifestations of the border.
Offshore facilities and sites inside sovereign territory are the two main focuses of academia.
Borders are proliferating in their contingent nature and the shift in enforcement practices: the border is increasingly popping up in new strategic locations (e.g. NHS checks).
Salter (2012)
The border can be understood as…
a) The primary institution of the contemporary state
b) The construction of a geopolitical world of many states
c) The primary division between the possibility of politics within a state and anarchy outside of it
Governments, citizens and other agents all perform the border; the enact and resist the dominant geopolitical narratives of the state. This is done as they cross, or are prevented from crossing, the border.
The border is essentially where identity claims are adjudicated. The idea of sovereignty divides the world into two: inside or outside of the state.
Anderson (2016)
International borders are commonly understood as filters: sorting the desirable/undesirable or legal/illegal.
However, we must recognise that borders are not simply territorial- they are intensely political. Borders and their associated practices produce (rather than reflect) different; they create different types of social, political and economic relations.
The politics of immigration reveals the unstable nature of migration categories; citizens and migrants define one another
Modern states present themselves as a “community of value”- a society composed of people who share universal ideals and patterns of behaviour. This is one of the ways the state claims legitimacy- the community of value is valued.
In this sense, the narrative arises that is needs protected from outsiders since these people do not share the same ideals. Immigration and citizenship are therefore not simply about legal status- they are fundamentally about status in the sense of worth and honour
Brown (2010)
What we know as a globalised world harbours fundamental tensions materialised as borders.
What is interesting about borders is that, even as they attempt to define nation-state boundaries, they are not build as defences against attacks from other sovereigns. Instead, these borders target non-state transnational actors (rather than military powers).
Over the past century, the monopoly and sovereignty of nation states has been challenged by transnational flows of people, capital, ideas and goods. Borders can be seen as a reaction to this: an attempt to control these flows that are outside of the state’s control
Borders are ideologically powerful; marking a difference between us and them
Newman (2006)
It is not possible to imagine a world which is borderless or de-territorialized. Much of border research suggests that they are becoming increasingly open and more flexible. BUT, after 9/11 there was the refocus of attention of the processes through which borders could become more rigidly controlled and closed (example: US Mexico border).
It is the bordering process, rather than the physical border, which affects our lives on a daily basis.
EXAMPLE: the physical barrier between N/S Ireland has been removed, but this does not mean that this does not affect the daily lives of citizens. People travel over the border to go to pubs where smoking is still allowed and then travel back over to where the last orders are later (the laws are different).
Borders equally need to be looked at from a bottom up perspective to understand the daily life practices of people that encounter the border.
EXAMPLE: for Palestinians to cross into Israel, the border is a difficult place to negotiate; when eventually crossed, the ‘other’ is made to feel inferior to the other and not belonging… these people cannot wait to get back to their ‘own’ side of the line. These daily practices demonstrate the continued impact of the bordering process- narratives of the unknown other (partial and inaccurate knowledges).
Jones et al. (2017)
Recent events have put human encounters with state sovereignty at borders under intense scrutiny. There are now almost 70 hard borders around this world; this is just the most visible manifestation of what is a much wider set of state practices to control movement.
These proactive and reactive exercises of power mirror nationalist political rhetoric that emphasises the right of citizens at the expense of non-citizens.
There is an emergence of new corridors…
A) People are using technology to subvert authority and survive transit through dangerous and unwelcoming places (GPS and social media in the movement from Turkey to Germany for example)
B) The use of informal camps on islands to refuse citizenship
Technology is also moving the border; practices of bordering are intimately linked with algorithmic analysis of data. Encounters with the border are increasingly mediated via digital devices.
EXAMPLE: buying a plane ticket; although a person might be present at a border, the interpretation of their identify might happen thousands of miles away, and the decision to grant access may be done elsewhere.
Amoore (2013)
It is precisely the gathering of life signatures that characterise contemporary sovereign decisions on the border line.
The ‘biometric border’ not only signals a turn to digital technologies, molecular techniques and data analytics in the politics of the border and its management. It also dissects bodies into granular degrees of risk and carry with them plural encoded border lines.
The life signature optimizes systems of difference in such a way that the sovereign decision on the border can remain open to the fluctuating processes of capital flows and labour migration.
The biometric border exhibits the capacity to write the lines of geopolitics bio-politically; finding novel ways to map and divide the cartographies of our world.
Reflecting Foucault’s argument that apparatuses of security have the tendency to expand with new elements being constantly integrated. The border line becomes a practice of discrimination and division; working by connecting the dots (lines of association, correlation and inference). The sovereign decision on the borderline can be invoked from anywhere, anytime for anyone.
Parker and Williams (2009)
The relationship between borders and territory is becoming ever more complex.
Borders are increasingly ephemeral: electronic, non-visible, and located in zones that defy a straightforward, territorial logic (i.e. biometric borders).
Rather than treating the concept of the border as a territorially fixed, static, line we need to begin thinking of it in terms of a series of practices.
We need to question the very logic that underpins borders: why epistemological imaginary of borders defies the violence that occurs on the ground, why we see borders as a fundamental element of any imagined world and how borders operate spatially and temporally.
