‘Sovereignty Entrepreneurs’ and the Production of State Power in Two Central African Borderlands

This article advances a subaltern geopolitics of sovereignty production at the borders of the DR Congo – the supposedly most fragile – and South Sudan – the youngest state in Africa. Moving beyond critiques of representing postcolonial statehood and sovereignty in terms of ‘lack’ and ‘failure’, we localise and ground analysis by drawing on Butler’s figure of the ‘petty sovereign’‘ to analyse the agency of border officials at the DR Congo/Rwanda and the South Sudan/Uganda border who we refer to as ‘sovereignty entrepreneurs’: officials who, tasked with managing and controlling the border, in constant face-to-face negotiations and closely linked to resource competition prescribe, set and decide on the terms and conditions of border crossing. It is argued that in the context of the DR Congo and South Sudan, where the states’ claims to territorial sovereignty face similar internal and external challenges, the border work of sovereignty entrepreneurs, characterised by the ability to tax, threaten and discipline with impunity, represents a form of sovereign power that renders the state’s capacity to act excessively visible at its borders.     

Geopolitics of the Northern Dimension: A Critical View on Security Borders

The Cold War geopolitical order has crumbled. As a consequence questions related to security, borders and identity have gained momentum in European politics as well as throughout the world. This article reflects the concept of security border both in the light of critical geopolitics and ideas of 'critical security thought', i.e. post-positivist security thinking (critical and postmodern orientations). The post-Cold War era means that the capability of the state to control security political space, and new border transgressing threats, is uncertain. Security borders are therefore becoming ever harder to define and draw. The empirical dimension of the article is the policy and process of creating the European Union's Northern Dimension (ND). The ND process is analysed, and particular attention is paid to the concept and practices of security borders. Critical geopolitics and 'critical security thought' serve as a theoretical framework. They provide a theoretical context and basis for the notion of security border. In this article critical geopolitics and post-positivist security thought constitute both an ontological and epistemological foundation for the study, while the notion of security border functions as an analytical tool for studying the ND. This article claims that the ND is an ambivalent (security) process. Second, it argues that the concept of security border is a useful analytical tool for geopolitical investigation.     

The Trans-Political Nature of Southwest China’s Energy Conduit,Yunnan Province

Transboundary flows of energy across Yunnan Province in China and to Southeast Asian states provide insight into the changing nature of borders and border areas. Rather than monolithic symbols of state sovereignty, China’s southwest borders in Yunnan can be more accurately characterised as zones of connectivity and exchange, serving a range of local, national and regional objectives. Energy production and distribution in and across Yunnan can be understood as functioning in a set of dynamic transnational processes that serve as economic and political bridges – increasing interaction and deepening regional integration – while also working to mitigate risk to China’s energy demands. In this article, energy projects in Yunnan and Southeast Asia demonstrate the ways border regions can respond to increasing globalisation, simultaneously strengthening national energy security while promoting regional interconnection and diplomacy. Thus, connections to and through a once peripheral region present an apparent contradiction: once rigid territorial borders are increasingly characterised by transboundary infrastructure development and exchanges of energy, capital and diplomacy, while promoting broader, diversified national energy security objectives – essentially strengthening national security through transnational energy projects. This article investigates how energy development works to shape Yunnan’s role as an “energy conduit,” while advancing both transnational and national geopolitical objectives, and thus, suggesting that these projects can be understood as trans-political in nature.     

Geopolitics of the Cosmopolis

Through an analysis of a speech held by Finnish Minister of Defence Jyri Häkämies at CSIS in Washington in 2007, the article scrutinizes the new emergence of “geopolitics” in international politics. Although its novelty is debatable, in this new geopolitical discourse the main focus is not related to the spatial borders of a nation state but instead to securing territory beyond these borders. It seems that “common values”, basically undefined but allegedly including such ideas like democracy, are related to this new form of “geopolitics”. In contrast to traditional geopolitics and identity politics, the global or cosmopolitical “us” defending common values seems to be a changing coalition and other countries appear only as objects of its operations. Only Russia, waking from its decade-long hibernation, emerges as a potential challenge to “us”. Curiously enough, its awakening also brings geopolitics back. The analysis of the speech reveals that the “new situation” requires choosing friends and enemies that are not clearly defined in the classical geopolitical sense. Even in the traditional sense of protecting the borders etc., the geopolitical security of Finland is best protected through acting for the geopolitical security of the whole world, no matter where or when that might require our presence. But from where does, for instance, the legitimacy of the operations of “us” derive? In the speech of minister Häkämies, many of the classical themes of political theory reappear, though in a new form. It is guided by geopolitical concerns, but the geopolitics it entails is rather different from the traditional way of thinking about it. This also creates a need to rethink some central concerns of political theory.     

From Sovereignty to Imperium: Borders,Frontiers and the Specter of Neo-Imperialism

Borders are changing in myriad and multifaceted ways. After 9/11, states redoubled efforts at shoring up their perimeters and building walls. But borders are not merely increasingly securitized, they are also becoming thicker and bi-national. This new ‘zonal’ border emerging worldwide radically shifts the debate about borders and sovereignty. If sovereignty is indivisible, unitary and final, how can it be shared between states at their mutual perimeters? Is this really evidence of sovereignty waning? In this article, I suggest we are stuck at this conceptual impasse because of two conflations. The first one involves two aspects of sovereignty: authority and control. Looking at borders as thin jurisdictional lines, we observe only their legal authority (de jure); instead, by examining changing modes of control, we can see how new securitized borders actually reinforce state strength. The second conflation revolves around the conceptual linking of borders, states and sovereignty. This article argues that as borders thicken, they start to resemble frontiers, and sovereignty starts to resemble imperium – a Roman designation for political authority that is territorially unbounded. This disrupts the border/state dyad and situates borders (lines) and frontiers (zones) on a continuum. In doing so, it reveals how sovereignty is not waning, but changing shape – a worrisome geopolitical conclusion given the possibilities of neo-Imperialism due to power asymmetries between neighbouring states.     

In the Space between Exception and Integration: The Kokang Borderlands on the Periphery of China and Myanmar

In 2015, the isolated border region of Kokang in Myanmar experienced armed conflict reported around the world. Most of the estimated 100,000 refugees from the conflict crossed the border to China, while hostilities continued for six months. Unlike other ethnic minorities fighting Myanmar’s government forces all along the extensive, mountainous border with China, the Kokang is largely of Han Chinese origin with a well established and nurtured relationship with China. Based on 458 questionnaires and interviews, media reports and official government releases, this article explores the varying imaginaries of territory, security and geopolitics of distant Kokang, from refugees now in China, Chinese from adjacent Yunnan and other provinces, as well as analysts viewing the conflict from afar. The study offers a lens for border studies to view the multi-scalar and extended geopolitics of nation states and their peripheral sub-national components. Specifically, the article addresses the changing role of the border under conditions of conflict and security enhancement and the malleable definition of borderlands territory. The study reveals how borders are utilised creatively by territorial inhabitants, their neighbours and their governments, how borders work in remote places, and how cross-border culture operates even in conflict situations to mediate borders. It enlarges our understanding of evolving borders in the space between exception and integration emerging in simultaneous globalisation and localisation.     

The Frontiers of the European Union: A Geostrategic Perspective

While state borders remain the pre-eminent frontiers within geopolitics, regional blocs are also acquiring frontier characteristics. How might we understand the function and identity of such frontiers? Taking the European Union as its focus, this article offers answers to these questions by developing the idea of geostrategy. Four geostrategies are identified: networked (non)borders, march, colonial frontiers and limes. Each corresponds with a particular way of territorialising the space of the border, as well as a certain idea of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, and of the risks and problems that the border is to govern. A geostrategic perspective uses contemporary social forms (such as networks) but also historical forms of borders (march, limes) in order to enhance the intelligibility of the frontiers of the EU. As such, this approach seeks to capture the multiplicity and plurality of borders.     

The Ephemeral Borders of Revolutionary Spaces

From the Paris Commune to the Red Shirt uprising in Bangkok, revolutionaries lacking the power to overthrow their states or depose unpopular politicians have captured parts of major cities and formed their own temporary enclaves of resistance. These groups create intraurban borders by building barricades, arming themselves, and fighting to protect their space. The borders, while temporary and usually ineffective, are powerful symbols as they separate a sphere of active resistance from territory under state control. While these borders stand, they are challenges to state power – lines marking the limits of what states can control. This essay looks at how these borders arise and how they relate to more familiar types of borders. Revolutionary borders are shaped by many of the same forces as national borders, most notably globalisation, but have a distinct character that is closely linked to the changing geography of urban areas.     

Geopolitics Teaching and Worldviews: Making the Future Generation in Russia

What worldviews are passed on to students in Russian universities? This question can be approached by studying teaching in a discipline known as Geopolitics, which is offered as part of many degree programmes in Russian universities. The article makes use of observations of geopolitics lectures and geopolitics textbooks to study worldviews, understood as ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions about the geopolitical ‘reality’, the reality of geopolitics as a discipline, and how this discipline can and should be ‘discovered’ and studied. Based on the primary data, a story of the birth and development of geopolitics is constructed, and three discourses are identified. These discourses – geopolitics as a science, geopolitics as context-dependent, and geopolitics as state-centric – tell us about worldviews that espouse a positivist epistemology but vary in their degree of essentialism. Worldviews also inform us about Russia's geopolitical culture, which is, in this context, closer to the Westernisers' position than that of (Neo)Eurasianism.     

Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders

The paper develops a non-state centric approach to the study of borders, building upon Balibar's ‘borders are everywhere’ thesis. It offers a critique of the assumption of consensus (mutual recognition of borders) in border studies. It is argued that borders do not have to be visible to all in order to be effective. The case for a multiperspectival border studies is then outlined: borders cannot be properly understood from a single privileged vantage point and bordering processes can be interpreted differently from different perspectives. A key dimension of a multiperspectival approach to border studies is examined in detail: borderwork, societal bordering activity undertaken by citizens. This is explored at several UK sites in order to demonstrate the ways in which borders are not always the project of the state, that they can exist for some (but not all), and can link people to the world beyond the ‘local’ border.     

Images and Imaginings of Palestine: Territory and Everyday Geopolitics for Palestinian Jordanians

In this paper, I delve into the complex ways in which Palestine is conceptualised as both a concrete and amorphous territory through an examination of the everyday practices of displaying images and imagining Palestine. Building from fieldwork conducted with Palestinian Jordanians, I analyse and contextualise images and maps of Palestine that they display in their homes and communities. I complicate what these images seem to represent with insights from interviews I conducted about how they spatially imagine Palestine. Throughout the paper I show that images and imaginings of Palestine are quite diverse and have various territorial meanings. Yet, as varied and seemingly different as these images and imaginings may be, they are nevertheless intimately linked through territorial discourses of displacement and rootedness, as well as through the everyday practices of remembering and resistance. Thus, I contribute to recent scholarship within geopolitics by highlighting (1) the value of examining images and imaginings of everyday geopolitics in tandem with one another, (2) the complex and fluid ways in which territory configures into everyday geopolitics, and (3) that amorphous notions of territory need to be integrated into work on territory more broadly.     

No man's land: ‘gender and the geopolitics of mobility in west Belfast,northern Ireland

It is the intent of this article to deconstruct the practices of border crossers, whereby the political identities of women have been relegated to the domestic/private sphere rendering them political innocents. However in West Belfast, women's designation to the home is what facilitated their ability to not only to transcend the borders of West Belfast but also to transgress women's confinement to the home. By contrast, taxi drivers are perceived as unrespectable wild men, cowboys and societal misfits who have been tainted by their border crossings. Interestingly, these groups would never be considered political subjects, as would an IRA volunteer, or resistance protester. However by way of their everyday practices of shopping and driving a taxi, these individuals are not only destabilising the boundary lines of West Belfast but also those of the nation. To this end, the sociospatial practices of these border crossers, which constitutes the expansion and restriction of public and private space, raises the possibilities of a new form of geopolitics determined between gender, politics and mobility.     

From Smart Borders to Perimeter Security: The Expansion of Digital Surveillance at the Canadian Borders

Since 2001, border security policy between Canada and the US has morphed from “smart borders” to the present “beyond the border” (perimeter security) agreement resulting in the expansion of new techniques of border surveillance including pre-emptive profiling of travellers and biometric data sharing. In this paper, we argue that these border agreements have increasingly resulted in a changing experience of sovereign power for those crossing the border. This is demonstrated through a discussion of: the major border policies between Canada and the US since 11 September 2001, developed under the influence of US hegemony; how these policies perpetrate a generalised state of exception; and how these policies affect refugees, migrants, and citizens. Reading Agamben’s insights from a sociological perspective, we argue that the presumption of security-through-surveillance erodes border crossers’ human rights, and that some people – those from disadvantaged race/class backgrounds – are more affected than others by the implementation of the evolving border regime. We also emphasise the contingencies and unintended consequences of the ongoing projects. The conclusion offers brief comments on the consequences of these developments on Canadian identity and points out the directions for future research in this domain.     

Signifying Boundaries: Detours around the Portuguese-Spanish (Algarve/Alentejo-Andalucía) Borderlands

This paper draws upon the Portuguese-Spanish border to consider the semiotics of boundaries. It argues that what is proper to such an inter-state border is that it is simultaneously a highly structured (demarcated, ratified, mapped and sometimes patrolled) space and a liminal (marginal, threshold, peripheral and sometimes transgressed) place. The 'detours' of the paper explore official documentation, maps, literature, treaties, local journalism, planning texts and discussions with inhabitants of border communities along the southern section of what is both the longest and most materially underdeveloped border between two European Union (EU) member states. The paper may also be read as an examination of the poetics of a border and therefore as an alternative 'method' for critical studies of borders. Such explorations lead to critical reflection on some contradictions of EU-directed integration and on the wider project of overcoming (internal) European Union frontiers.     

Geoeconomics,Globalisation and the Limits of Economic Strategy in Statecraft: A Response to Vihma

This paper is a response to Antto Vihma’s article ‘Geoeconomic Analysis and the Limits of Critical Geopolitics: A New Engagement with Edward Luttwak’. Taking issue with Vihma’s critique of the limits of critical geopolitics, it argues that it is instead the use of economic strategies in statecraft – Vihma’s state-centric vision of geoeconomics inspired by Edward Luttwak – that is really better understood as limited. To map these limitations, it is necessary to attend to three specific limits: first, the limits of conceptualising geoeconomics in simply instrumental terms as a tool of statecraft; second, the limits of capital and specifically the ways in which the geographical limits created by the on-going tensions between spatial fixity and spatial expansion in capitalism are refracted through the on-going entanglements of geopolitics and geoeconomics; and third, the limits of personal positionality and the emotional fears, hopes, dreams and passions that influence geostrategic discourse more generally. Reflecting on Donald J. Trump’s ascendancy to the US presidency, the paper concludes that it is now more necessary than ever to address how all these force-fields intersect to overdetermine the limits of economic strategy in statecraft.     

The Oldest Boundary in Europe? A Critical Approach to the Spanish-Portuguese Border: The Raia Between Galicia and Portugal

The boundary between Spain and Portugal is supposed to be one of the most – if not the most – fixed and stable borders in the world, with some authors stating that it has a history of almost a thousand years. However, this paper demonstrates that this is not the case by arguing that it has a mobile nature. After formulating a theoretical framework on borders and border studies, this contribution focuses on the raia between Galicia and Portugal as a specific section of the international Spanish-Portuguese border; several questions elucidating the mobile nature of the raia are answered, embracing historic, geographic, social, cultural, linguistic and economic issues. The paper finishes by considering the effects of the new period of European integration and by providing some concluding remarks.     

Graffiti,Art, and Advertising: Re-Scaling Claims to Space at the Edges of the Nation-State

Physical barriers are an increasingly popular political mechanism for central government control over the flows of goods and people at borders. This medium also, however, serves as a canvas for unsanctioned expressions of belonging. Just as graffiti and art are deployed in the urban landscape as unconventional means of claiming space, they are utilised on international border barriers to contest prevalent political winds and re-claim local and alternative senses of who belongs and what is deemed important in debates over border policy. This paper considers unauthorised text and visual imagery on the border barriers of the Arizona-Sonora section of the US-Mexico boundary as a therapeutic reaction to a state-dominated border policy which downplays local impacts. It is argued that such imagery serves to re-scale border space and thereby re-capture a sense of belonging by those whose roles are marginalised by national politics and the neoliberal global economy.     

‘Everyone Creates One's Own Borders’: The Dutch–German Borderland as Representation

When examining the internal borders of the European Union in the context of their purportedly official demise following European integration, structural obstacles to cross-border interaction are normally taken into consideration while ignoring borders in people's minds. Approaching this lacuna, the author proposes to understand borders as being constituted by imaginations and representations, and as undergoing a constant reconfiguring through social relations. This article explores the meanings of the Dutch–German border expressed in popular representations that commonly employ national stereotypes. Against the background of ‘popular geopolitics’, and applying semiotics as methodology, the author presents a theatre play on the Dutch–German border as a complex but popular representation. Analysis of the theatre play also focuses on its audiences and the reception of the play by children. This permits to address people's readings of popular representations in order to approach the question of why borders persist in people's lives.     

Bridging the Divide: Middle Eastern Walls and Fences and the Spatial Governance of Problem Populations

Building on a long history of spatial control through walling in the region, walls and fences have been built in the Middle East in recent years to undertake a range of practices. Gated communities, residential and security compounds, anti-migrant walls, separation barriers and counter-insurgency fences can all be found in the Middle East. These walls address and govern problems that take the population as their subject. These walls all share a common frame of viewing the populations they work to govern as ‘problematic’ in multiple ways. This paper explores how walls have been and continue to be used in governing populations through mobility and incorporating a combination of disciplinary and biopolitical techniques through a range of spatial and territorial repertoires. As such it works to bridge the divide in border studies and critical security studies between geopolitical/topographical and biopolitical/topological approaches to borders and governance.     

In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South

ABSTRACT

Carving up the world into Global North and Global South has become an established way of thinking about global difference since the end of the Cold War. This binary, however, erases what this paper calls the Global East – those countries and societies that occupy an interstitial position between North and South. This paper problematises the geopolitics of knowledge that has resulted in the exclusion of the Global East, not just from the Global North and South, but from notions of globality in general. It argues that we need to adopt a strategic essentialism to recover the Global East for scholarship. To that end, it traces the global relations of IKEA’s bevelled drinking glass to demonstrate the urgency of rethinking the Global East at the heart of global connections, rather than separate from them. Thinking of such a Global East as a liminal space complicates the notions of North and South towards more inclusive but also more uncertain theorising.