EU-Russian Border Crossing: The Dialogical Perspective

Mainstream post-positivist approaches to Border Studies typically represent national borders as losing their importance or blurring. This insight usually fails to grasp the perspective of those who have to cross ‘hard’ borders, for whom these borders are primarily ‘hard facts’ quite precisely restricting territorial limits of their movement. Aiming to take this perspective and practical problems experienced by such border crossers into account, the author proposes an approach focusing on communication between those who cross ‘hard’ borders and those who protect these borders. The case of the EU-Russian border shows that border crossers have an increasing range of options to make themselves heard by their own country's officials, though it is much more difficult for them to reach gatekeepers and public on the other side of the border without resorting to intermediaries (such as their states or business actors). The author suggests that border crossers could be heard better if cross-border cooperation initiatives would prioritise this purpose thus making the EU's external borders not only ‘friendly’ or ‘blurred’ but also ‘dialogic’.     

Resiliency or Change? The Contemporary Canada—US Border

The developed states of North America have not experienced transnational integration to the same degree as those of the European Union. Indeed, some scholars have argued that North American States and the border functions which define their territorial limits, are essentially unchanged in the face of globalisation, hardening rather than softening, and remaining unabashedly archaic and state-centred. This article suggests that although there has been considerable change in the border functions and geopolitical discourses which mediate transnationalism among the highly developed North American states – namely Canada and the United States – the nature and structure of transnational integration has remained more limited than that of the EU. It argues that the reasons for this more limited international integration agenda lie in the specific geopolitical discourses which sustain cross-border institutions and national identity before and after 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’). The Canadian state, for example, has demonstrated considerable resistance to greater levels of integration with the United States, at the same time that it has became increasingly open to cross-border trade under NAFTA. This resistance is based upon a national-identity discourse that relies upon distancing the Canadian state from its larger neighbours to the south. At the same time, however, the national security discourse which has emerged in the Canada and the United States following from 9/11, has failed to close borders to increasing levels of economic integration, and must accommodate the need for a degree of openness to the heightened levels of cross-border trade under NAFTA. As a result, there has been considerable reorganisation and reorientation of borders within North America. It is simply inaccurate to view the continent as a place where borders have remained unyielding to the broader forces of globalisation. If the role of borders in maintaining security while facilitating trade has resulted in an increased awareness of, and concern with the Canada-US border, the latter is not simply a continuation of ‘old-fashioned state-centred geopolitical concerns’ but is instead a newly-fashionedpost-9/11 response to the ramifications of globalised trade and terrorism.     

Everything All Right at the Internal EU Borders? The Ambivalent Effects of Cross-Border Integration and the Rise of Euroscepticism

ABSTRACT

The policy of the European Union, which promotes a vision of Europe without borders and has fostered the development of cooperation across borders over 25 years, has led, in some parts of Europe, to the emergence of so-called integrated cross-border regions. Thus far, the increase of cross-border flows and interactions has always been a normative and almost unquestioned policy paradigm. However, tendencies of re-bordering and signs of growing Euroscepticism can also be observed nowadays in these border regions, which show the importance of investigating the negative externalities that can be generated by cross-border integration. This article attempts to do this by focusing on three case studies usually considered as among the most integrated ones in Europe because of cross-border flows related to work: the cross-border metropolitan regions of Basel, Geneva and Luxembourg. Our findings show that if several decades of cross-border integration have led to the reinforcement of the functional linkages between the border regions, some effects of the cross-border integration process have also created a functional specialisation of space that relies on social and economic inequalities. Such a situation contradicts the ideal of cross-border territorial cohesion and helps to better understand the rise of Euroscepticism in some of the border areas.     

The Border as a Marker of Territoriality: Multi-Scalar Perspectives and Multi-Agent Processes in a South American Borderland Region

The ambivalence of borders, as both bridges and barriers, is analysed in the South American borderlands, in the cross-border region between Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. The main hypothesis behind this work is that borders not only refer to the state but they are also a result of a social construction. Through their practices and narratives, the actors involved shape the border configuration. Through a multi-scalar approach (from a continental to a local level) and by collating practices and representations of various social agents (from continental organisations to the complexity of social groups on the border), I show that different territorial complexes converge on the border and I explain the spatial dialectic of the latter. Two ideas emerge as a conclusion to this study: the co-existence of territorialities that are not so exclusive and the key role played by the state despite the changes it undergoes.     

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.     

‘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.     

Border Narratives at Work: Theatrical Smuggling and the Politics of Commemoration

This paper discusses how cultural and artistic work constitutes a powerful means for mediating the collective memory of state borders. The empirical case study concerns the commercialisation of a borderland culture in the form of a ‘Smuggling Opera’ in a cross-border project on the Finnish-Swedish border region where border crossing has been unrestricted for decades. This theatrical performance constructs a particular local narrative which contests the authorised representation of borders in the discourse of the nation-state. The narrative analysis method is applied to this popularised border narrative and its interpretation among local participants, leading to the conclusion that the understanding of state borders differs between authorised border narratives and the stories of borderland people for whom it represents part of the everyday surroundings, although both serve to fix the meaning and moral justification of the border or argument for its rejection. The narratives of people living in the ‘borderless’ Finnish-Swedish border region show the continuing significance of the border in people's lives as both a barrier and a place of contact.     

‘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.     

“We are Sitting on a Time Bomb”: A Multiperspectival Approach to Inter-National Development at an East African Border

Recent discussion in critical border studies has reaffirmed the validity and necessity of multiperspectival approaches which move beyond state-centric outlooks to include diverse viewpoints of people at or on borders. One understudied aspect of everyday border life involves how international development organisations fit within wider dynamics of cross-border activities. Drawing upon experiences of development projects at a key border crossing between Kenya and Uganda, I explore (1) how perceptions of risk and danger contribute to constructions of the border towns as places in need of development interventions, and (2) how this border also adds to practical and logistical concerns already held by development organisations as they deliver these interventions. I argue that the place-based mix of location, material forms, and perceptions or practices impacts how ‘inter-national development’ is rationalised in border regions.     

Transborder Regional Alliances in Europe: Chances for Ethnic Euroregions?

This contribution deals with obstacles to development of ethnic transborder regional alliances in Europe. It includes some theoretical considerations as well as case studies of three European border zones with so-called ‘interface minorities’. These are the Belgian–German border zone, the Basque Country and the former Habsburg Kronland of Tyrol. From a perspective that European integration and regionalism are phenomena related to state decline, the dynamics of transborder regional alliances or ‘euroregions’ can be considered to take place relatively independent of the confines and institutional structures of the states. However, critical evaluations of the phenomena of regionalism indicate that we should be careful not to assume that regional actors in a border zone with interface minorities are self-evidently inclined and able to create an ethnic euroregion. Instead, it is more realistic to assume a more complex situation with a heterogeneous field of actors and constraining conditions emanating from the structural and social institutionalisation of the states. In all cases the different positions of regional populations in the different state contexts have brought about asymmetries in the complex of elements that constitute ethnoregional dynamics. The cases seem to confirm that the principle obstacles to the formation of ethnic euroregions are related with institutional differences between the states and heterogeneity of actors.     

LOCAL RESPONSES TO GLOBALIZATION IN CHINA: A TERRITORIAL RESTRUCTURING PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract. This paper argues that the formation and transformation of local entrepreneurial governances can be understood as a process of local responses to challenges presented by global economic restructuring. Two kinds of local responses are theoretically identified. At the structure level, local entrepreneurial governances happen when places are embedded in the situation of competition between cities and regions. At the agent level, the emergence of local entrepreneurial governances requires local actors who pursue their own political and economic interests. The theoretical framework, what I term ‘territorial restructuring process’, is empirically explained by the context of the West and China.     

Deconstructing border practices in the Estonian‐Russian borderland

The Estonian‐Russian borderland is a relatively fragile, fairly contested and highly politicised arena in which a number of vital issues for both countries meet and are negotiated. This fact makes the borderland a part of the (geo)political process, including bargaining over social space and resource access, where one can find actors located on different spatial levels and situated among various interests groups. The present article attempts to study how borders with a multitude of meanings and roles can be understood and crossed in time, scale and from different geographical settings. It illuminates the conflicting visions and asymmetric interests among the local borderland population, regional authorities, central governments and international actors. Lastly, it will be argued that border negotiations are unlikely to succeed or intensify where conflicting visions and asymmetric interests dominate, different actors talk ‘different languages’, or boundary‐producing practices simply prevail over border‐crossing practices.     

The So-Called 2015 Migration Crisis and Euroscepticism in Border Regions: Facing Re-Bordering Trends in the Danish–German Borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of Euroscepticism on regional cross-border cooperation between Germany and Denmark. It demonstrates that Euroscepticism, while absent from local mainstream politicians, had already caused civic unrest in the 1997 attempts to construct a return to history Euro-region Schleswig. It resulted in a re-scaling of the Euro-Region to Region and Schleswig to “Sønderjylland/Schleswig”, omitting any reference to Europe, European identity or a commitment to a closer European union in the relevant agreements. Border controls, on the agenda in 2011 and again since 2015, have demonstrated the institutional weakness of cross-border politics when faced with determined initiatives from the national center. Furthermore, the Eurosceptic Danish People’s Party had its best results in the border precincts both at the latest European and Danish national elections. Euroscepticism, even though difficult to measure on a regional level, seems to have been an ever present underneath current despite a political rhetoric of successful cooperation and cross-border reconciliation. The Danish-German case’s development might be more distinct, but nonetheless representative for European border (and cross-border) regions. While European metropolises develop into thriving cosmopolitan post-nation state societies, this is not necessary the case at Europe’s borders, where categorization and bordering remain common social practices by the large majority of national borderlanders with only a small portion of transnational borderlanders or ‘regionauts’ getting involved in border crossing social practices on a larger scale.     

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.     

Deterritorialisation and the Transformation of Statehood: The Paradox of Globalisation

Since the end of the Cold War, states and civil societies face a radically different security situation. In addition to state-to-state threats, transnational security issues have risen to previously unknown relevance. I will argue that – in order to create effective counter-policies against transnational threats – states must transform fundamental principles of traditional statehood according to the logic of global deterritorialisation. To develop this argument, the nature of changed security will be analysed which itself can be found in de-territorialisation: transnational actors withdraw from the territorial principles of traditional security, as best epitomised by transnational terrorism. Consequently, ‘national security’, developed according to the territorial ‘inside’-‘outside’-logic of the state, no longer counters those actors. States must elaborate deterritorial strategies. This development causes a transformation of the state since territoriality is the basic principle of modern statehood. Thus, the reassertion of the state in global security unveils a paradox: to react to deterritorialised security and to reassure their power in global politics, states must overcome their traditional principles of territorial politics and further the development of deterritorialisation.     

Reflections on EU Geopolitics: Consolidation,Neighbourhood and Civil Society in the Reordering of European Space

Civil society observations of the EU's geopolitical impacts on its immediate neighbourhood provide a nuanced ‘ground-up’ perspective that eschews historically deterministic interpretations of the EU's role in the world. While this article is limited to Eastern Europe, it nevertheless highlights some of the challenges facing the EU's visions of ‘Neighbourhood’ as multilateral and multilayered regional co-operation. After a brief theoretical introduction, the article first characterizes the EU's geopolitics as a dual project of consolidation and ideational projection; that is as two projects of re-ordering – re-territorializing – interstate relationships. It then addresses three specific and interrelated questions with regard to civil society: 1) how do the EU and its policies affect civil society co-operation agendas and practises, 2) to what extent does civil society participate in the co-development of Neighbourhood Policy and 3) how do civil society actors perceive the role of the EU in promoting cross-border and regional co-operation within the ‘Neighbourhood’? One central issue in developing these questions is that of establishing ‘common’ European values as a condition for successful co-operation. Civil society actors must simultaneously operate within different, often competing, socio-political contexts. A balance between situational ethics and more generally accepted notions of (European) values is thus essential.     

The Maas-Rhine Euroregion: A Laboratory for European Integration?

The transborder and trilingual Maas–Rhine Euroregion is often presented as a laboratory for European integration. The authorities in the region promote the image of a region that has ‘always’ been a unity, but which is divided by artificial boundaries – ‘scars of history’ – as a result of power politics. In this essay this image is confronted with the reality of the cross-border interactions and identities of the people involved. This confrontation leads to the conclusion that although there is political, economic and cultural cooperation in the region, the region is not at all politically, economically and culturally integrated. The national border as a physical barrier may have been removed, but the economic, social, juridical and cultural barriers are still there. The unification and integration of the citizens living in the region is being impeded by conflicting national systems of law and regulations, by communication and information media focused on national issues, by nationally oriented infrastructure, and especially by strongly different national cultures and identities. The consequences for European integration in general are analysed by comparing this regional integration with the national integration and nation-building policies of the past.     

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.     

Sloterdijk in the House! Dwelling in the Borderscape of Germany and The Netherlands

1. The order of the authors is alphabetical. It is almost a truism to say that people increasingly dwell in a transnational context, that is, in-between societal systems and together with multiple nationalities. Increasingly, people are living in a different nation in which they were born. The nation-states people dwell in cannot be equated with territorial container-boxes anymore, if this ever could. The uniform and straight lines in the sand, that borders once were thought to be, are now better understood as a complex choreography of border lines in multiplied lived spaces. This article zooms in on a specific kind of dwelling with multiple borders. It tries to get a conceptual hold of contemporary dwelling places of short-distance migrants across a EU inner border, in this case the Dutch-German border. In recent years, much facilitated by EU cross-border cohesion policies, a substantial number of Dutch people have bought or built a house just across the border in Germany. This has created an interesting new phenomenon of cross-border dwelling, in which the new location of the house is just across the border and the living largely still goes on in the country of origin. This living in two nations at the same time at such a short distance is what we wish to understand better conceptually in this article. We argue that two fundamentally opposed philosophical dwelling conceptualisations could be distinguished. On the one hand one could distinguish a philosophical view in which dwelling is a form of a Heideggerian nest, where people open a space of being, an intimate and secure bordered place, sheltering themselves for the outside world. On the other hand then, a philosophical view could be distinguished in which dwelling is driven by a Deleuzian need to free oneself from a binding b/order of home, through a constant be-coming and estrangement, hence by constantly othering oneself. We argue that in order to understand the borderscape dwellings of Dutch migrants in German borderlands, there is a need to relate these two ends of the dwelling continuum. The argument that we bring forward is that a borderline necessarily moves between total (self-)imprisonment and total escapist openness, making borders in an ontological sense intrinsicially and unavoidably always a shifting line in the sand. In our view, Peter Sloterdijk's imaginative Sphären (Spheres) trilogy could help as a conceptual stimulus to create that much needed bridge between the bordering efforts of nesting and the debordering desire to escape from it. Using Sloterdijk's spherical concepts, the dwelling can be seen as a place which is constantly changing from a secure bubble-like place into a multidimensional foam-like place and back again. With this spherical understanding of the house we argue that this conceptual ‘spheric’ stimulus could help to rethink the complex and ambivalent character of cross-border dwelling places in an increasingly transnational world.