3-page 750-words (6 paragraphs) persuasive argument essay

Progress in Human Geography 30, 2 (2006) pp. 143–161

© 2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132506ph599xx

I No business like border business We live in a world of lines and compartments. We may not necessarily see the lines, but they order our daily life practices, strength- ening our belonging to, and identity with, places and groups, while – at one and the same time – perpetuating and reperpet- uating notions of difference and othering. For some, the notion of a ‘borderless’ and

‘deterritorialized’ world has become a buzz word for globalization (Kuper, 2004; Caney, 2005), but it is not possible to imagine a world which is borderless or deterritorialized. Even the globalization purists would accept that the basic ordering of society requires cate- gories and compartments, and that borders create order (Albert et al., 2001; van Houtum and van Naerssen, 2002).

The Progress in Human Geography lecture*

The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our ‘borderless’ world

David Newman Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel

Abstract: The study of borders has undergone a renaissance during the past decade. This is reflected in an impressive list of conferences, workshops and scholarly publications. This renaissance has been partly due to the emergence of a counternarrative to the borderless and deterritorialized world discourse which has accompanied much of globalization theory. The study of borders has moved beyond the limited confines of the political geography discourse, crossing its own disciplinary boundaries, to include sociologists, political scientists, historians, international lawyers and scholars of international relations. But this meeting of disciplines has not yet been successful in creating a common language or glossary of terms which is relevant to all scholars of borders. Central to the contemporary study of borders are notions such as ‘borders are institutions’, the process of ‘bordering’ as a dynamic in its own right, and the border terminologies which focus on the binary distinctions between the ‘us’ and ‘them’, the ‘included’ and the ‘excluded’. Borders should be studied not only from a top-down perspective, but also from the bottom up, with a focus on the individual border narratives and experiences, reflecting the ways in which borders impact upon the daily life practices of people living in and around the borderland and transboundary transition zones. In positing an agenda for the next generation of border-related research, borders should be seen for their potential to constitute bridges and points of contact, as much as they have traditionally constituted barriers to movement and communication.

Key words: border as institution, border as process, border narratives, borderlands, borders, boundaries, interdisciplinary discourse, power relations.

* This paper was presented as the Progress in Human Geography lecture at the Annual Meetings of the Association of American Geographers, Denver, April 2005.1

While it may not be possible to construct a single theory of borders, the contemporary study of borders has become a major growth industry during the past decade. A brief look at the bibliography at the end of this paper would indicate that in our so-called borderless world there is ‘no business like border busi- ness’. As geographers, we have traditionally understood borders (or boundaries) as consti- tuting the physical and highly visible lines of separation between political, social and eco- nomic spaces. Only more recently have we began to understand that it is the bordering process, rather than the border per se, which affects our lives on a daily basis, from the global to the national and, most significantly, at the local and micro scales of sociospatial activity (Newman and Paasi, 1998).

The study of borders and their contem- porary significance has moved beyond the often too rigid borders separating the tradi- tional academic disciplines, drawing together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, economists, international lawyers, philosophers and political scientists. The meaning of what constitutes a border for one is not always compatible for another, with the disciplinary semantics and terminologies remaining a significant barrier to a full fusion of ideas. Yet, as will be argued in this paper, there is sufficient common ground for a glossary of border-relevant language to be compiled. There is no reason why the study of the physical and territorial case study boundaries between states should not have relevance for sociologists and anthropolo- gists interested in notions of difference and othering, while equally there is no reason why some of the more abstract ideas and concepts posited by the non-geographic and planning disciplines should not be used to infuse a deeper meaning and understanding into the ‘hardcore’ boundaries which have become far more porous and permeable than in the past.

The study of borders has undergone a major renaissance during the past 15 years. Institutions, conferences and publications

dealing with a diversity of border-related topics are on the agenda of geographers, sociologists, political scientists, anthropolo- gists, international lawyers and a growing multidisciplinary community of scholars, although actual cross disciplinary research in this area has been less common (Megoran et al., 2005). The Association of Borderland Scholars (ABS) in the USA, the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) in the UK, along with a growing number of localized Centres for Cross Border Research,2 are insti- tutional indicators of this renewed interest in a topic which, even among geographers, was considered passé before the onslaught of the borderless world discourse in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The BRIT (Border Regions in Transition) network, drawing scholars from a wide range of social science disciplines, meets on a regular basis and has produced a wealth of published research on the changing dynamics of borders and border regions (Ganster et al., 1997; Eskelinen et al., 1999; Berg and van Houtum, 2004; Nicol and Townsend-Gault, 2005). Journals such as Geopolitics (2005), the European Journal of Social Theory (EJST) (2006), The European Legacy (The Journal of The International Society For The Study of European Ideas – ISSEI) (2006) and the SAIS Review (2006), to name but a few, are all dedicating special issues to the study of borders, while one academic publisher now has a book series dedicated to the study of border regions (Meinhof, 2002; Pavlakovich-Kochi et al., 2004; Berg and van Houtum, 2004; van Houtum et al., 2005).

It is somewhat ironic that it is the, largely non-geographic, globalization discourse of a borderless and deterritorialized world (Ohmae, 1990; Oommen, 1995; Welchman, 1996; Helliwell, 1998; Blatter, 2001) which has brought so many scholars from different disciplines together, to cross their own disci- plinary lines of separation, to search for a common language through which the phe- nomenon of borders can be understood (Shapiro and Alker, 1996; Newman and

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Paasi, 1998; Dittgen, 2000; Newman, 2006a). In the year spent preparing this paper, the author attended a diverse series of workshops dedicated to the border phenomenon, inter- disciplinary meetings in Jerusalem (BRIT VII) and Albuquerque (ABS), a meeting of his- torians in Glamorgan, French social scientists in Grenoble, and literary scholars in Corfu. Beyond the obvious David Lodge significance of this global tour de force, the growing number of disciplines displaying an interest in the study of borders speaks for itself.

But 10 years of joint discussions and deliberations have not necessarily brought us any nearer to the construction of a single theory of borders, a theory which uses com- mon terminology and which is of relevance to the diverse community of border scholars and practitioners (Newman and Paasi, 1998; Newman, 2003a; Brunet-Jailly, 2004a; 2005; Kolossov, 2005; Paasi, 2005a; 2005b). There is no single theory as such and it is futile to seek a single explanatory framework for the study of borders. But there are common terminologies from which border practition- ers from different disciplines can borrow, and enrich each other, in their attempts to broaden the study, and understanding, of the processes through which borders are created and are perpetuated.

II The state of the art: reviewing the literature The study of borders was, along with political geography in general, not an area of major research during the 1950s–1970s (Newman, 2002b). Not only was it tainted with the post-second world war geopolitics brush, but borders were also perceived as being physical and static outcomes of the political decision- making process, to be described rather than analysed. The geopolitical changes which took place in the international system from the 1980s onwards, the relegitimation of political geography, the focus on the dynamic nature of the bordering process, as contrasted with the physical border per se, and the desire to create a counter ‘borderless’ world narrative,

all served to bring about a new generation of border studies.

The content of border-related research has undergone a major change during the past two decades (Foucher, 1991; do Amaral, 1994; Paasi, 1996; Blake, 1999; Newman, 1999; 2002a). What can be termed classic studies of borders/boundaries are to be found in political geography and largely focus on descriptive analyses of boundaries, their loca- tion and the political and historical processes leading to their demarcation (Minghi, 1963; Prescott, 1965; 1987). Boundary typologies are a common theme in this genre of studies, focusing on the processes of boundary demarcation and delimitation, and the posi- tioning of the boundary in relation to the (physical) geographic environment (Holdich, 1916a; 1916b; Fawcett, 1918; Brigham, 1919; Hartshorne, 1933; 1936; Boggs, 1940; Jones, 1943; 1959; Fischer, 1948; Kristoff, 1959). This approach focused on the boundary as the physical and geographical outcome of the political and historical process and is largely static and deterministic. Its contemporary manifestation is to be found in the analyses of international boundaries carried out by the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) (Blake, 2000a; 2000b; Blake and Schofield, 1987; Schofield, 1994; Schofield and Schofield, 1994), the comprehensive encyclopaedic description of boundaries (Biger, 1995), and an analysis of the politico- territorial reconfigurations which have taken place as a result of global political changes, notably the break-up of the Soviet Union and the (re)emergence of new States as part of the international system (Waterman, 1994; Kolossov and O’Loughlin, 1998; Thomas, 1999). We are reminded that in our ‘border- less’ world there are over 300 land bound- aries, far higher than the actual number of States which make up the politico-geographic mosaic of the international system.

A major focus of studies during the 1980s and 1990s has been the analysis of trans- boundary cooperation and the functionality of transborder regions (Church and Reid, 1999;

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Scott, 1999; Anderson and Wever, 2003; Perkmann and Sum, 2002; Brunet-Jailly, 2004b). This has focused on Europe, and the role of transboundary regions in the opening of borders between countries in the expand- ing European Union (Perkmann, 1999; Scott, 2000; Blatter and Clement, 2001; Anderson et al., 2002). The literature on this topic is vast. It focuses on the mechanics of the border opening process, the notion of trans- boundary cooperation as a precursor to, and as indicative of, the transition from war to peace (Kliot, 2002). The border is trans- formed from a barrier, through which the other side is invisible, to a place where rec- onciliation, cooperation and coexistence take place (Gallusser, 1994; Galtung, 1994). The EU actively promoted the implementation of transboundary activity regions, straddling both sides of political and state boundaries, bringing about transboundary economic inter- dependency and strengthening the processes of mutual social and cultural awareness within cross-border regions and zones of transition. The interest in the role of bor- ders inside Europe is indicated in the website of the Association of European Border Regions (www.aebr.net), along with heavily EU-funded research projects, such as EXLINEA (Lines of Exclusion as Areas of Cooperation – reconfiguring the External Boundaries of Europe – www.exlinea.org), and the EUBORDERConf project, examin- ing the role of the EU intervention in border conflict regions (www.euborderconf.bham. ac.uk). The EU is faced with its own border dilemmas, at one and the same time opening its own internal borders and encouraging freedom of movement, while creating a new external Schengen border with those countries which are, as yet, excluded from the club (Berg and Ehin, 2006).

For geographers, territory remains a major focus in the study of borders (Agnew, 1994; 2000; Anderson, 1996; Paasi, 1996; 1998; 2002; Newman, 2006b). But, as our understanding of the functions and scales of territory changes in response to the deterritorialization

discourse (Agnew, 1994; Albert, 1998; Hudson, 1998; Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999a; Paasi, 1998; 1999b; Yeung, 1998; Toal, 1994; 1999), so too does our understanding of the role played by borders in determining and managing the multilayered territorial compartments within which we live. Our understanding of territories and borders is less rigid and less deterministic than in the past. Territory and borders have their own internal dynamics, causing change in their own right as much as they are simply the physical out- come of decision-making. They are as much perceived in our mental maps and images as they are visible manifestations of concrete walls and barbed-wire fences. But the latter have not disappeared altogether and, in many cases of existing ethnoterritorial and political conflict, borders are being constructed or moved – as a means of consolidating physical separation and barriers (Grundy-Warr, 1990; Lustick, 1993; Forsberg, 1995; Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999b; O’Leary et al., 2001; Newman, 2004; 2006; Blanchard, 2005).

The ‘borderless’ world discourse is both discipline- and place-specific. Economists and information scientists (cyber scholars) have taken on the role of ‘borderless’ purists, while geographers, political scientists, socio- logists and international lawyers are more sceptical. It is not surprising, therefore, that the multidisciplinary border workshops do not feature many economists. Do economists live in a state of denial? A great deal of the global economy focuses on the powerful trade tariffs and customs barriers which are still in place, not just the opening of bound- aries to the flow of global capital. In terms of place, the ‘borderless’ world discourse is western, more specifically western European. The fascination with the outcome of the colonial boundary superimposition in Africa remains a strong theme in the literature (Brownlie, 1979; Ramutsindela, 1999; Lemon, 2002; Asiwaju, 2003), as do the present territorial and border reconfigurations which are taking place in parts of Africa (Daniel, 2000; Griggs, 2000) and in Israel/Palestine

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(Falah and Newman, 1995; Newman, 1998; 2002c; Brawer, 2002). Borders are being constructed in as many places as they are being removed. It all comes back to first year Geography: why do some processes – even globalization processes – happen in some places and not in others? Why are some borders disappearing altogether while, at the same time, others are in the process of being constructed as physical manifestations of a volatile political landscape?

For political scientists, borders reflect the nature of power relations and the ability of one group to determine, superimpose and perpetuate lines of separation, or to remove them, contingent upon the political environ- ment at any given time (Ganster and Lorey, 2005). For sociologists and anthropologists, borders are indicative of the binary distinc- tions (us/them; here/there; inside/outside) between groups at a variety of scales, from the national down to the personal spaces and territories of the individual. For international lawyers, borders reflect the changing nature of sovereignty and the rights of States to intervene in the affairs of neighbouring politico-legal entities (Ratner, 1996; Lalonde, 2002; Castellino and Allen, 2003). For all disciplines, borders determine the nature of group (in some cases defined territorially) belonging, affiliation and membership, and the way in which the processes of inclusion and exclusion are institutionalized.

It is at the border crossing point between disciplines that abstract and non-spatial notions of border are introduced to the dis- course. The idea that cyberspace, itself used as the ultimate proof (sic) of the borderless and deterritorialized world, is full of commu- nities and affiliations for whom access is determined by strict border demarcation characteristics (such as access to a computer, knowledge of basic computer skills) is, for some geographers, hard to comprehend. But borders they are and, as in the case of inter- state boundaries, they assist in the reordering of global society into neat compartments and categories, distinguishing between those

who belong and those who do not. In all these cases, borders reflect existing differ- ence, while in some cases their construction serves to create a new set of ‘others’ which had not previously existed, thus perpetuating, rather than removing, the sense of ‘other- ness’ (van Houtum and van Naerssen, 2002).

Another major focus of border studies during the past decade is the relationship between borders and identity formation (Leimgruber, 1991; Falah and Newman, 1995; Paasi, 1995; 1996; 1999a; Berdahl, 1997; Ackleson, 1999; Wilson and Donnan, 1998; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; Knippenberg and Markusse, 1999; Klemencic, 2000; Albert et al., 2001; Brown, 2001; Agnew, 2002; Kaplan and Hakli, 2002; Meinhof, 2002; Migdal, 2002). The opening of bor- ders does not, automatically, result in the hybridization of ethnic and national identity. Separate identities are dependent on the existence of group categorization, be they religious, cultural, economic, social or ethnic. Ethnicity remains a key determinant of group affiliation, inclusion and exclusion, while the removal, or opening, of the borders does not necessarily or automatically trans- form a member of a national State into a European, or global, citizen. Even if we have become more mobile and find it easier to cross the boundaries that previously hindered our movement, most of us retain strong ethnic or national affiliations and loyalties, be they territorial-focused or group affiliations (Sigurdson, 2000). The global access to cyberspace and the unhindered spatial dissemination of information and knowledge has, paradoxically, engendered a national identity among diaspora populations which have previously been remote and - dislocated from their places (or parents’ places) of origin, but who are now possessed with more information, and greater ease of access, to the ancestral (sic) homelands, and identify with the causes and struggles of the ethnic or national groups in faraway places. Language remains the one great boundary which, for so many of us, remains difficult

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to cross, in the absence of a single, global, borderless form of communication.

Scale has also figured prominently in much of the recent border literature. There has been a geographical refocusing of the border away from the level of the State, down to internal regions, municipalities and neigh- bourhoods (Lunden and Zalamans, 2001). We live in a world of scale hierarchies, where different borders affects our daily life prac- tices at one and the same time (Blatter, 2001). Many towns and cities, which are normally perceived as constituting single functional entities, are divided along the national and State borders, the degree of transboundary coordination and integration contingent upon the nature of political and power relations between the two sides (Bucken- Knapp, 2001; Buursink, 2001; Matthiesen and Burkner, 2001). At the most micro of scales, anthropologists remind us of the personal, often invisible to the eye, borders, which determine our daily life practices to a much greater extent than do national boundaries – across which the majority of the global population do not even cross once in their lifetime (Alvarez, 1995).

III Border as process, border as institution There is a number of clichés currently in vogue in the study of borders. The most notable of these is to present borders as constituting ‘process’ (as contrasted to simply pattern) and as ‘institutions’ which have to be managed and perpetuated (as contrasted with physical lines which are simply the static and locational outcome of the social and political decision-making process). We are all cognisant of the fact that borders create (or reflect) difference and constitute the separation line not only between states and geographical spaces, but also between the ‘us’ and ‘them’, the ‘here’ and ‘there’, and the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. Borders retain their essential sense of sharp dislocation and separation, a sharp cut-off point between two polarities.

It is the process of bordering, rather than the border outcomes per se, which should be of interest to all border scholars. The process through which borders are demarcated and managed are central to the notion of border as process and border as institution. The demarcation and management of borders are closely linked to each other. The former (the process of demarcation) determines the way in which the latter (the management of borders) is put into effect. Demarcation is not simply the drawing of a line on a map or the construction of a fence in the physical land- scape. It is the process through which borders are constructed and the categories of differ- ence or separation created. Demarcation is the process through which the criteria of inclusion/exclusion are determined, be they citizenship in a country, membership of a specific social or economic group, or religious affiliation. The borders enabling entry to, or exit from, these diverse spaces and groups are normally determined by political and social élites as part of the process of societal ordering and compartmentalization.

These same élites determine the extent to which such borders are closed or open and the ease with which they can be traversed. Borders constitute institutions that enable legitimation, signification and domination, creating a system of order through which control can be exercised. Management proce- dures are central to this process, with border guards preventing the physical movement of people lacking the necessary visas or entry documents, much in the same way that reli- gious leaders prevent entry into the religion of people not professing the correct beliefs or not being born to the correct mother, and much in the same way as government officials prevent exit from social and economic cate- gories to people not possessing the correct income levels or educational qualifications. The institutions which are borders also enable control to be exercised within the specific social or spatial compartment which is thus delimited (Blatter, 2003). In many cases, they also provide the institutional

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frame within which revenue can be raised and taxation enforced, thus enriching the coffers of the State, or whichever group is respon- sible for the maintenance of the specific boundary. Crossing the border (the partial opening of the border) may serve the fiscal interests of the border managers, the politi- cal and economic élites, much more than the maintenance of a closed and sealed barrier.

IV Are borders opening or closing? As indicated in the literature review above, much of the border-related research has focused on the process through which bor- ders are opening and becoming more flexible and permeable. But the events of 9/11 have brought a new paradigm change in the study of borders, refocusing attention on the process through which borders can be more rigidly controlled, closing rather than opening in some cases almost being sealed. Nowhere is this more apparent than the two borders of the United States, with Mexico and Canada. The securitization discourse aimed at preventing the infiltration of terror activi- ties into the United States has made it much more difficult to cross into the United States, culminating in the tightening of border cross- ing procedures and, in 2005, new legislation requiring all United States’ citizens to have passports to cross into the neighbouring countries where, in the past, local ID and driving licence documents were sufficient (Anderson, 2002; Andreas, 2003). It is also reflected in the fact that, whereas during the 1990s the main sources of research funding for the study of borders came from NAFTA- related institutions, aimed at promoting cross- border trade and finding ways of easing the transboundary restrictions, in the post-9/11 period much of this funding has disappeared and has been replaced by research funded by the Bureau of Homeland Security. This fund- ing promotes studies aimed at finding more effective ways of closing the border in the face of perceived terrorist threats, and making it more difficult for ‘undesirable’ elements to cross the land boundaries into the country.

The USA-Canada boundary, traditionally seen as a ‘soft’ boundary, has now become much more difficult to cross, while the new restrictions have made it much more difficult for illegal migrants to cross the USA-Mexico boundary (Andreas and Snyder, 2000; Andreas and Biersteker, 2003; Brunet-Jailly, 2004c; Nicol, 2005). The self-appointed ‘minutemen’ vigilante activity which com- menced operations in 2005 demonstrates how the closing of borders has become as much a ‘bottom-up’ process as it has a ‘top- down’ process initiated by government, with the former feeding into the latter as part of a renewed sense of national self-defence and patriotic exclusiveness in the post-9/11 period (Ackleson, 2004; Olmedo and Sowden, 2005). Thus, contemporary studies are, once again, focusing on the implications of the border-closing process. This includes not only the mechanics of the process, but also the human and ethical implications of cutting off thousands of people from places of employment to the detriment of both the Mexican employees and the American employers on the other side of the border who have benefited from this source of cheap, unregistered, labour. The changing functional characteristics of the USA-Mexico boundary is a good example of the clash between the securitization and the economic discourse in relation to borders (Andreas, 2000; Nevins, 2002; Coleman, 2004; Laitinen, 2003; Purcell and Nevins, 2004). Economic interests of the past two decades have brought about an opening of borders, with the EU and NAFTA being the two major examples of this. In contrast, the securitiza- tion discourse has brought about the closing of borders because of the perceived and constructed fears of new threats from the outside. When the two discourses clash with each other (such as in the USA-Mexico example), it is generally the securitization discourse which predominates, bringing about a reclosing of borders. Nowhere is this more apparent at the local level than in Israel/ Palestine where the recent construction of

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the Separation Fence/Wall in the name of security, along with the physical withdrawal (disengagement) from the Gaza Strip, has prevented Palestinians from crossing into Israel to find employment as menial labourers, serving the basic subsistence needs of the Palestinian population.

The traditional function of borders has been to create barriers to movement rather than bridges enabling contact. Borders are normally perceived as institutional mecha- nisms aimed at protecting what is inside, by excluding whatever originates from the outside. The bridge functions, the mecha- nisms through which borders can provide the point of contact and transition between the ‘others’, is still perceived as the deviant, rather than the default, giving rise to the essential ethical question ‘why boundaries?’ (van Houtum, 2002). While the opening of boundaries is seen as a positive factor, point- ing to good neighbourliness between territo- rial and social entities, recent years have shown just how easily these bridges can be destroyed and the barriers reconstructed. This raises ethical questions concerning the construction and management of boundaries – for whom, by whom and in whose interests are some people excluded, or cut off, from their cultural, ethnic or eco- nomic living spaces? (Buchanan and Moore, 2003; van Houtum, 2002; van Houtum et al., 2005). Good fences do not automatically create good neighbours. Were there good neighbourliness in the first place, it is possible that fences would not be needed at all. But strong fences and walls do create, for the ruling élites, a manageable situation where the ‘us here’ and the ‘them there’ line of binary separation is easier to control.

V The borderland as transition space The notion of frontiers and borderlands as used in the geographic literature has a great deal of relevance for our increasingly complex lives and social interactions. Just as the scholars of territorial borders are increasingly examining the notion of transitional spaces

which cross the boundary and take in areas and people on both sides of the formal line of divide, so too our belonging to cosmopolitan social and cultural groups is increasingly becoming hybrid, in a sort of frontier/ transition world between, and across, the more rigid lines that separated us in the past. Borderlands do exist around borders, but they vary in their intensity and the extent to which they equally affect people on both sides of the border. The discussion concerning the nature of borders as bridges and points of interaction (as contrasted to their tradi- tional role of barriers) is of relevance in the sense that borders can become transformed into the frontiers (in the most positive sense of the term) where people or groups who have traditionally kept themselves distant from each other, make the first attempts at contact and interaction, creating a mix- ture of cultures and hybridity of identities (O’Dowd and Corrigan, 1995; Newman, 2003b). Not all such frontiers necessarily occur along the territorial border dividing States. Their sociospatial location may equally be found in the middle of the metropoli- tan centre (New York, London, etc) where cultural and ethnic residential ghettos enforce the notion of border on the one hand, but where daily mixing on the streets, in the subways, in workplaces and in apartment blocks creates the frontiers of cross-border and transboundary interaction on the other.

The classic border literature distinguished between the border or boundary on the one hand, and the political frontier or the border- land on the other (House, 1980; Rumley and Minghi, 1991). The latter constituted the region or area in relative close proximity to the border within which the dynamics of change and daily life practices were affected by the very presence of the border (Martinez, 1994a; 1994b). This would vary between closed and open borders, and it would also vary on each side of the line of separation. The impact of the border as a line which both reflects, and enhances, differ- ence is the key parameter to understanding

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change and diversity within the ‘borderland’ (Pratt and Brown, 2000).

Traditional ideas of borderland and fron- tier are related to notions of ‘transition zone’. In the EU the borderland has constituted the place for the emergence of transboundary border regions, where social, economic and cultural activities have come together across the border. This has been encouraged by the EU as a means of breaking down the tradi- tional barriers of national suspicion between the peoples on each side of the border, creat- ing the conditions for the eventual opening or removal of the border altogether. In many cases, the borderlands take on the charac- teristics of transition regions, enabling a gradual movement from one cultural norm to another, as contrasted with the rigid line understanding of the border as a distinct cut-off point. Within the transition zone, cultural, linguistic and social hybridity can emerge, resulting in the formation of a sub-cultural buffer zone within which move- ment from one side to the other eases up considerably – the person in transit from one place or group to another undergoes a process of acclimatization and acculturation as he/she moves through the zone of transition, so that the shock of meeting the ‘other’ is not as great as he/she feared. In some cases it can bring about the formation of transnational, transboundary, spaces with the emergence of new hybrid regional identities (Dobell and Neufeld, 1994; Cold-Rauvkilde et al., 2004; Smith, 2004; Chen, 2005).

At a recent seminar on ‘border discourses’ which took place at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, we heard two border-related papers from doctoral students. One was from a sociologist writing about the impact of globalization on the creation of high-tech complexes; the other was from a dancer turned anthropologist who has worked on the DCO areas which were created as joint Israel-Palestinian security exclaves in the period after the Oslo Agreements and operated until the outbreak of the second Intifada in 1990. Seemingly very different

presentations, the two papers were surpris- ingly similar in their use – conscious and unconscious – of notions of border. In partic- ular, they both focused on the way that new spaces are created and the way in which groups working or operating within these ‘spaces of transition’ negotiate their way through and across the new borders and lines which have been created at the very heart of these new spaces.

We tend to view transition zones as being akin to a sort of borderland space, strad- dling the line on both sides and constituting a place of contact where difference is diluted and reconstructed as a sort of borderland hybridity. But, as both presentations clearly demonstrated, transition zones can equally be places in which the contact between different groups (ethnonational in the case of the DCOs, socio-economic status in the case of the high-tech zones) strengthens the notion of border as barrier despite, and in spite of, the contact that takes place in these new spaces. They do not constitute transition between one side and the other, but rather exclaves of transition which them- selves are demarcated by the hard lines separating them from the external world around them. For Palestinians to cross into Israel, or for the blue-collar labourers to cross into the world of the high-tech pro- fessionals, the borders are very difficult to negotiate. When eventually crossed, the feeling of constituting the inferior other, the constitution of difference and the feeling of not belonging is so great that they cannot wait to finish their work and return to their ‘own’ side of the separation line, to the groups, cultures and homes within which they feel familiarity and safety.

Thus, not all borderlands provide the transition/hybridity milieux or the creation of harmonious landscapes where once there was conflict (Minghi, 1991). The experience of meeting the ‘other’ for the first-time, espe- cially after long periods of fear, suspicion and distrust, can in some cases heighten the mutual feelings of animosity. The first-time

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meeting place is transformed into a place of one-upmanship, where each side berates the other and justifies the self. The point of meeting becomes a place where the ani- mosity and dislike for the other which, in the past, may have been based on invisibility and lack of knowledge, now takes on a concrete form through the act of meeting. At what point does a borderland become transformed from a place of mutual antagonism to a place of transition? Often, the bricks constituting the wall have to be dismantled one by one, with the role of mediation agencies playing an important role in drawing the two sides together in common discourse. Where ter- ritorial borders separate groups displaying different social and economic standards of living, historical narratives and cultural norms, the transformation of the borderland into a space of transition cannot be taken as given just because the borders have undergone a process of physical opening.

VI Border narratives – the border experience It is at the level of narrative, anecdote and communication that borders come to life (Carli et al., 2002; Wastl-Walter et al., 2002; van der Velde and van Houtum, 2003; Sidaway, 2005). Border narratives reflect the diverse experiences and meanings which borders have for the individual – they remind us that humans are located ‘on the boundary and at the end of territory’ (Alvarez, 1995; Lunden, 2004) for different people. This is particularly the case where the physical borders have been ‘removed’, or ‘opened’, and are non-visible. It is at this point where we often delude ourselves into believing that we are living in a borderless world when, in effect, some of our more mundane daily life practices and activities demonstrate the continued impact of the bordering process on societal norms. Through narrative, we perceive the borders which surround us, which we have to cross on a daily basis and/ or are prevented from crossing because we do not ‘belong’ on the other side.

The narrative of the ‘unknown other’ resulting from the closed (or sealed) border is as important as is the narrative of border opening and removal. Most borders remain places where our movement is restricted. Traditionally, borders constitute barriers, their function being to prevent us from crossing from the ‘here’ to the ‘there’. As such, the other side of the border becomes partially invisible and unknown. Where borders are hermetically sealed before us, we may be totally ignorant of what lies on the other side. At the best, our knowledge of the other side is partial and often inaccurate. We tend to perceive invisible spaces as places that threaten us, as places within which our own normative practices are brought into question. Where societies, States or religious orders wish to perpetuate difference, the ability to create a sense of threat through the construction and perpetuation of sealed borders is a powerful tool.

When borders are opened, the unknown and the mysterious are encountered for the first time. Shortly after the temporary opening of the border dividing North and South Cyprus in 2003, an article in the New York Times described the experience of a resident of the southern section of Nicosia visiting the ‘other’ side for the first time. He wants to see what lies at the other end of the street in which he has lived for the past 20 years but which has been invisible because of the concrete wall in the middle of the road. His parents were refugees from the northern section of the island follow- ing the Turkish invasion in 1974. He has heard stories about the ‘other’ side and he wants to go and see for himself. His crossing experience brings the mystique of the ‘other’side back into reality – allowing for some obvious cultural and religious differences, life on the other side is not greatly different to life on his own side. The unknown was not, should not have been, as mysterious and threatening as he had always thought it to be, or as he had been socialized into thinking it was.

Four additional localized border narratives demonstrate this point. The first of these

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takes place in Ireland, an island still divided into two political entities, but wherein the physical border separating the north from the south has been removed in the light of the political rapprochement which has taken place in recent years. Travelling by car, one no longer has to stop at the border to produce documents, and one is hardly aware that one has crossed from one side to the other. That is until one comes to realize that, despite its socio-economic development during the past decade, the roads in the Republic of Ireland are far worse than those in the north and that the currency in use (the Euro) is different to that being used in the north (the pound sterling). During the past year an additional interesting border curiosity has sprung up. Citizens of the Republic will make the short five-minute trek over the (non-existent) border each evening so that they can drink in a pub where smoking is still allowed (until, that is, the UK introduces its own laws to ban smoking in restaurants and pubs serving food). When, because of the drinking laws in the UK, the pubs in the north call out their last orders, citizens of the north can always make their own five-minute sojourn over the (non- existent) boundary to continue drinking in the (smokeless) pubs and bars of the south.

At the end of the 1980s, the BBC pro- duced a series of short documentaries entitled Frontiers. They selected 10 frontier regions (frontier in this sense denoting the geographical region in close proximity to the border between two countries) and asked a well-known artist, poet or author who had grown up in each of the particular frontier regions to write a script depicting what the concept of frontier meant to them. In all of these documentaries, the impact of the border was most apparent in the small, seem- ingly insignificant, impacts on daily lives, rather than in the obvious fences and border guards of the more politically sensitive cases. What particularly springs to mind is the case of a village in the Pyrenees, straddling both sides of the French-Spanish border.

The writer of the script, a childhood resi- dent of the Spanish side of the border, recol- lects that once a month his parents decided they needed a ‘good’ meal and, as a result, traversed the border into the French side of the village for that purpose.

It would be pleasant to think that the only significant ‘difference’ across these borders is that of drink (Ireland) and food (Pyrenees). But some borders remain unfriendly, threat- ening places, whether or not a physical fence or wall is in place. Long before the Israeli government decided to build its unilateral separation fence, the Green Line boundary separating Israel from the West Bank had become a point of no travel for most Israeli citizens. True, their government told them after the 1967 war that the Green Line had been erased and it was no longer depicted on any official map or in any school textbook. Once the violence of the first Intifada broke out in the late 1980s, however, most Israelis recreated their own mental maps of where the border was, where it was safe or unsafe to travel, as the geography of fear impacted on the spatial perception of the travellers. If, prior to 1987, Israelis would cross into the West Bank and into East Jerusalem on Saturdays (when most shops were closed inside Israel) to shop in the markets, and drink coffee at the coffee houses, of the neighbouring townships, this activity ceased altogether. The famous water-melon stand outside the Damascus Gate, where Israelis and Palestinians would do nothing more serious than buy a water melon and sit down next to each other while they consumed the product, rapidly went into decline and ultimate extinction.

The final narrative concerns a tension- filled border, that of India-Pakistan, a few kilometres outside the Sikh Holy City of Amritsar. We are there as part of a previous BRIT (Border Regions in Transition) confer- ence which has taken place at the University of Punjab in Chandigarh. As scholars of borders, we are taken on a field trip to visit this famous border crossing point where,

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three times a week, the gates are flung open and shut as soldiers on both sides perform their ritual of almost perfect simultaneity as they outstare each other with their vicious gazes. How, we ask, do they perform this cross-border ritual in such perfect unison? That, we are told, is the easy part. Twice a week, the area is closed off to outside visitors, the border gates are opened and the two groups of soldiers undergo joint training in order to perfect their technique.

The absurdity of the border, as displayed in narrative, is summarized in a short Belgium film, entitled Le Mur (The Wall), produced in 1998. Located in bilingual Brussels, a French speaker spends the night of millennium with his Flemish-speaking girlfriend, only to wake up to the bright new world of a new era and to find that a concrete wall has been constructed between the two parts of the city. He is unable to cross back to the French side and, together with all other aliens, is hunted down by the Flemish police/militia. Only when he is reminded (in a conversation with his dead father) that many borders are no more than social constructions and that they are often more imagined than real, does he escape through the wall, while his pursuers, lacking this deeper understanding of borders, crash into the hard concrete wall and are killed. On the other side of the Wall, his French girlfriend now finds herself in exactly the same situation that he had been in previously so, together, they decide to flee the city altogether. At the train station, they are reminded by the train guard that Europe is now a borderless region and that ‘only here in Belgium do we have a small problem’. The even greater irony that the story takes place in Brussels, the location of the EU beauracracy, cannot be lost on the viewer of this excellent border narrative.

The stories are countless. One of the challenges of border theorizers is to collect these narratives and to put them together in such a way that the different types of bar- rier or interaction functions of the border – be they visible in the landscape or not – are

understood at this local level of daily life practices. The extent to which all borders are social constructs, partly imposed from above and, even more so, evolving from below, is played out through these border scenes. If we really want to know what borders mean to people, then we need to listen to their personal and group narratives. Bringing these case study narratives together at an aggregate level should help us under- stand the notions of ‘difference’ and ‘other’ in the real daily lives of people, rather than as abstract sociological constructs.

VII Border terminologies and semantics While many geographers are unable to grasp the idea that a border can be a non-territorial construct, many sociologists and psycholo- gists are equally unable to fathom why terri- tory should play such a dominant role in our contemporary understanding of borders, as though the only unit of societal ordering which requires categorization and compart- mentalization is the physical space in which we reside. Hardcore geographers understand borders as constituting the physical lines separating States in the international system and, in some cases, the administrative lines separating municipalities and planning regions. Sociologists and anthropologists understand borders as being the abstract lines of sepa- ration between the ‘us’ and the ‘them’, the ‘here’ and the ‘there’, and as constituting the very essence of difference. Between these two contrasting approaches, there lies a range of definitions and terminologies which remain exclusive and specific to a particular discipline and understanding of borders – with economists, historians, inter- national lawyers and others all having their own specific disciplinary narratives.

Border scholars need to make a leap forward, to move beyond the opening of the disciplinary barriers and the creation of a transition zone, a meeting place and point of interaction for scholars from diverse back- grounds, to the creation of a shared space

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where we no longer feel the need to explore each other’s use of language, concept or ter- minology. We need to accept the existence of difference in our use of the border/boundary construct, and examine ways in which our respective understandings of diverse termi- nologies can be put to use by the ‘other’. Remaining with our exclusive disciplinary specific use of border notions, and simply having a ‘feel-good’ factor about having met the border ‘other’, is no longer sufficient if we wish to make a contribution to the evolving debate concerning the social and political ordering of society. The globalization argument of a ‘borderless’ and ‘deterritorial- ized’ world has challenged us in a positive way, has enabled the opening of some of the disciplinary boundaries which had previously separated us, but we have been treading the same ground for some time.

The creation of a common, or shared, discourse space in the study of borders requires a common glossary of relevant terms (Newman, 2006a). This applies not only to the use of cross (disciplinary) border termi- nologies, but also to the need to adapt terminologies of old, which are sometimes perceived as being passé by a younger and more socially critical generation of scholars, to the contemporary understanding of borders and the bordering process. We should not automatically presuppose that the terminolo- gies of the ‘old’ or ‘classicist’ discussions of borders and boundaries have no significance for the contemporary discourse (Paasi, 2005b; Schofield and Grundy-Warr, 2005; van Houtum, 2005). We have a tendency to automatically dismiss these generalized typologies as being descriptive, non-analytical and highly deterministic. They relate to the pattern rather than the process, to the border as the static outcome of political events, rather than as dynamic phenomena in their own right which feed into the decision-making process as much as they are an outcome of it. Yet a closer look at some of these terminologies would suggest that they are singularly appli- cable to contemporary notions of bordering

as much as they were of significance to the geographers of (not so) bygone years.

Rather than continually seeking a totally new language, some of the older terminolo- gies can be adapted, maintaining their rele- vance as part of our contemporary discourse. A good example of this would be the termi- nologies and typologies which were used by geographers over 50 years ago in their attempt to categorize border types and to create typologies which would neatly slot different borders into separate compartments explaining the way in which they evolved over time and were demarcated. A student of borders/boundaries as part of an undergrad- uate course on political geography would, until just a decade ago, have read the bound- ary demarcation typologies of such scholars as Hartshorne (1933; 1936), Boggs (1940) and Jones (1943; 1959). Such typologies would focus on notions of territorial ‘alloca- tion’, border ‘delimitation’ and the eventual ‘demarcation’ of the borders on the ground. They would also read about the nature of ‘antecedent’, ‘subsequent’ and ‘superim- posed’ boundaries, referring to the relation- ship between border demarcation and the extent to which the territory in question had been settled or was perceived as consti- tuting virgin and unsettled land. The superim- posed borders of the colonial and imperial powers in Europe of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were of great interest to these scholars, with both explicit and implicit analyses of the way in which such borders have been responsible for much of the intertribal warfare, genocide and ethnic cleansing in Africa, Asia and other parts of the colonized world.

It is not difficult to transpose most, if not all, of these terminologies to the contem- porary border discourse which deals with issues of identity, ‘othering’ and difference, just as it is not difficult to transpose these latter functional, somewhat abstract, notions to the hard physical and territorial lines sepa- rating States in the international system. It should be obvious that the construction of

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borders reflects existing ethnic, group and territorial differences (subsequent) just as it is often responsible for the creation of those differences in the first place (antecedent). Equally, many of the borders within which our personal and group lives are compart- mentalized and regimented have been super- imposed upon us by the decision-making élites, despite the fact that in many cases they do no reflect the true cutting points and edges of intergroup difference and separation – not least because there is rarely (if ever) such a clean line of division or separation.

VIII Conclusion It is passé to continue to spend our time discussing whether the world is becoming borderless or not. Globalization has had its impacts on some cross-border flows, such as cyberspace and the flow of capital, but it is clear to all scholars of borders that we live in a hierarchical world of rigid ordering and that borders – be they territorial or aspatial – are very much part of our daily lives. In the space of a short six weeks last year, I attended two international meetings on border-related topics. The first took place in Glamorgan, Wales, and the second in Jerusalem, Israel: from the relative peace and calm of the Anglo-Welsh border to the harsh reality of the unresolved and conflictual Israel- Palestine. Two such contrasting environ- ments for the holding of major international meetings of border scholars are harder to imagine. But the basic discourse is the same – the mechanics through which difference is created, exists and is perpetuated, sometimes through the sealing and the closing of the lines, sometimes (paradoxically) through their opening and the creation of the frontier zones of interaction and transboundary contact and cooperation. The latter is always pre- ferable to the former but it is the latter which really challenges us, since it is easy to under- stand why difference and animosity exist across the contemporary Israel-Palestine divide, much less so across the peaceful Anglo-Welsh divide. But difference across

and around the line of separation there is, and such difference, while reflecting a long politi- cal history of tensions, animosities and processes of othering, is part of an ongoing dynamic process which tells us much more about the spatial and social ordering of society than the mere existence of the lines, be they visible or invisible to the human eye.

Our study of borders has, ironically, been given a boost by the ‘borderless world’ glob- alists. It has enabled us to cross our own disciplinary borders, opening them as part of a postmodernist attempt to share the discourse. Creating a single theory is not possible, nor is it necessary. But a common understanding of terminologies and the creation of a shared glossary is a challenge we are well prepared to deal with. At the risk of ending with a cliché, we currently occupy a common research borderland which straddles boundaries between disciplines and between practitioners and theoreticians, but we now need to transform this border- land (or frontier) into a common and shared space. The transition spaces which are cre- ated may indeed result in hybridity and mixing; equally the meeting of the other may serve to strengthen notions of difference and animosity. As the lines of separation become more fluid and flexible, so too will the challenge become more difficult, but equally more intriguing.

Notes 1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented

at the following conferences: Crossing Borders: Histories, Theories and Identities, the Centre for Border Studies, University Of Glamorgan, December 2004; Border Regions in Transition: Crossing Disciplines, Crossing Scales, Crossing Cultures, BRIT VII, Jerusalem, January 2006; the Annual Conference of the Association of Borderland Studies, Albuquerque, April 2005; and Borders and Borderlands, Durrell School of Corfu, September 2005. I am grateful to the many constructive comments which were received by conference and workshop participants.

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2. Centres for Border Studies Include: Association of Borderlands Studies (www.

absborderlands.org); Association of European Border Regions

(www.aebr.net); California Centre for border and Regional

Economic Studies, San Diego State University, California (www.ccbres. sdsu.edu);

Centre for cross-Border studies, Armagh, Northern Ireland (www.crossborder.ie);

Centre for Inter-American and Border Studies, University of Texas at E1 Paso (http:// academics.utep.edu/Default aspx);

Centre for International Border Research, Queen’s University of Texas EI Paso (http://academics.utep.edu/default. aspx);

Centre for Latin American and Border Studies, New Mexico State University (www. nmsu.edu);

Centre for Regional and Transboundary Studies, Volgograd State University, Russia (email:[email protected]);

Danish Institute of Border Region Studies. Aabenraa, Denmark (www.ifg.dk);

Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre, University of London (www.soas.ac.uk/Centres/GRC);

International Boundaries Research Unit, University of Durham, UK (www. ibru-dur.ac.uk);

Nijmegan Centre for Border Research, University of Nijmegen, The Nehterlands (www.kun.nl/ncbr);

Peipsi Centre for Transboundary Cooperation, Tartu, Estonia (www.ctc.ee);

Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, California (www.sandiego.edu/ tbi).

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