Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept

AbstractThe conceptual evolution of borders has been characterised by important changes in the last twenty years. After the processual shift of the 1990s (from border to bordering), in recent years there has been increasing concern about the need to critically question the current state of the debate on the concept of borders. Within this framework, this article explores the critical potential of the borderscapes concept for the development of alternative approaches to borders along three main axes of reflection that, though interrelated, can be analytically distinguished as: epistemological, ontological and methodological. Such approaches show the significant potential of borderscapes for future advances of critical border studies in the era of globalisation and transnational flows, thereby contributing to the liberation of (geo)political imagination from the burden of the ‘territorialist imperative’ and to the understanding of new forms of belonging and becoming that are worth being investigated. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThank you to Elena dell’Agnese for organizing the wonderful Borderscapes conference series at which the first ideas for this paper were discussed. I am grateful to Martin Lemberg-Pedersen for stimulating conversations on the critical potential of borderscapes to inquire into the Euro/African border nexus. Holger Pötzsch is thanked for a lively chat on the issues of in/visibility and (audio-visual) borderscapes. I am grateful to Olivier Kramsch for inspiring conversations on postcolonial borderscapes and critical border studies. I would also like to gratefully thank the three anonymous reviewers for critically challenging and inspiring me with their thought-provoking comments.My research for this text has been conducted within the framework of EUBORDERSCAPES funded by European Commission FP7-SSH-2011-1 (290775).Notes1. K. Ohmae, The Borderless World. Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (New York: HarperCollins 1990).2. D. Newman and A. Paasi, ‘Fences and Neighbours in the Post-Modern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography’, Progress in Human Geography 22/2 (1998) pp. 186–207.3. J. Scott, ‘Euroregions, Governance and Transborder Co-Operation within the EU’, European Research in Regional Science 10 (2000) pp. 104–115.4. H. van Houtum, ‘The Geopolitics of Borders and Boundaries’, Geopolitics 10 (2005) pp. 672–679.5. H. van Houtum, O. Kramsch, and W. Zierhofer (eds.), B/Ordering Space (Aldershot: Ashgate 2005).6. On the processual shift from borders to bordering, see among others A. Paasi, ‘Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows’, Geopolitics 3/1 (1998) pp. 69–88; H. van Houtum and T. van Naerssen, ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 93/2 (2002) pp. 125–136; D. Newman, ‘Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue’, European Journal of Social Theory 9/2 (2006) pp. 171–186.7. See É. Balibar, We, the People of Europe. Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003).8. For a careful summary and critical reflection on the main features of border studies following their ‘renaissance’ at the end of the last century, see the contributions in the special issue of European Journal of Social Theory on ‘Theorizing Borders’ 9/2 (2006) edited by Chris Rumford.9. On dis-locating and re-locating borders, see open access working papers and other materials of ‘Relocating Borders: A Comparative Approach’, Second EastBordNet Conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, 11–13 Jan. 2013, available at , accessed Oct. 2013. See also: S. Green, ‘Borders and the Relocation of Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013) pp. 345–361.10. On borders as a social institution see P. Vila, Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and Narrative Identities on the US-Mexico Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press 2000).11. N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams et al., ‘Lines in the Sand: Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics 14/3 (2009) pp. 582–587. As noted by James Sidaway, it is relevant to mention the fact that Geopolitics was founded in 1996 under the name of Geopolitics and International Boundaries Studies, precisely in order to focus on the study of international borders. See J. Sidaway, ‘The Return and Eclipse of Border Studies? Charting Agendas’, Geopolitics 16/4 (2011) pp. 969–976. Also of interest are: V. Kolossov, ‘Border Studies: Changing Perspectives and Theoretical Approaches’, Geopolitics 10/4 (2005) pp. 606–632; and E. Brunet-Jailly, ‘Theorizing Borders: An Interdisciplinary Reflection’, Geopolitics 10/4 (2005) pp. 633–649.12. Sidaway (note 11).13. C. Johnson, R. Jones, A. Paasi, L. Amoore, A. Mountz, M. Salter, and C. Rumford, ‘Interventions on Rethinking ‘the Border’ in Border Studies’, Political Geography 30 (2011) pp. 61–69.14. D. Wastl-Walter (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (Farnham: Ashgate 2011); T. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.), A Companion to Border Studies (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing 2012).15. Another contribution to this debate is a recent article by Nick Megoran, ‘Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Boundary’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102/2 (2012) pp. 464–481.16. Parker and Vaughan-Williams et al. (note 11).17. Ibid., p. 582.18. See Y. Lapid, ‘Introduction: Identities, Borders, Orders: Nudging International Relations Theory in a New Direction’, in M. Albert, D. Jacobson, and Y. Lapid (eds.), Identities, Borders, Orders: Re-Thinking International Relations Theory (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001) pp. 1–21. Lapid (p. 8) cites Neil Brenner’s argument on ‘territorialist epistemology’: ‘By mid-twentieth century each of the conceptual building blocks of modern social science – in particular the notion of state, society, economy, culture, and community – had come to presuppose this territorialization of social relations within a parcelized, fixed, and essentially timeless geographical space. The resultant territorialist epistemology has entailed the transposition of the historically unique territorial structure of the modern interstate system into a generalized model of sociospatial organization, whether within reference to political, societal, economic, or cultural processes’. See N. Brenner, ‘Beyond State-Centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies’, Theory and Society 28 (1999) pp. 39–78.19. Parker and Vaughan-Williams et al. (note 11) p. 583.20. Ibid., p. 586.21. N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams, ‘Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012) pp. 727–733.22. Parker and Vaughan-Williams et al. (note 11).23. J. Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory’, Review of International Political Economy 1 (1994) pp. 53–80. Agnew’s conception of the ‘territorial trap’ draws attention to three geographical assumptions of international relations theory that are crucial to be overcome towards an agenda of critical border studies: states are fixed and secure territorial units of sovereign space; the domestic/foreign polarity based on which domestic and foreign spaces are distinct and separable spheres; the territorial sovereign state is the appropriate container of society that is subordinated to the existence of the territorial state. On the territorial trap concept, also interesting are the contributions to the special symposium, ‘Geopolitics Roundtable: New Thinking on Territory, Sovereignty and Power’, Geopolitics 15/4 (2010) pp. 752–784. See S. Reid-Henry, ‘The Territorial Trap Fifteen Years On’ (pp. 752–756), which introduces the roundtable providing an overview of the most significant reflections in the other contributions. Also see J. Agnew, ‘Still Trapped in Territory’ (pp. 779–784) that closes the symposium giving a response to the other contributors on ‘moving on’ with the territorial trap.24. Parker and Vaughan-Williams (note 21).25. Sidaway (note 11) p. 972.26. Ibid., pp. 973–974.27. Ibid., p. 974.28. Johnson et al. (note 13).29. Ibid., p. 62.30. Ibid., p. 62.31. P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr, ‘Introduction’, in P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr (eds.), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2007) pp. ix–xl.32. See S. Perera, ‘A Pacific Zone? (In)Security, Sovereignty, and Stories of the Pacific Borderscape’, in P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr (eds.), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2007) pp. 201–227.33. Parker and Vaughan-Williams et al. (note 11) p. 586.34. Brenner (note 18) p. 40.35. This approach is close to the use of the term borderscapes given by the cultural geographer Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary in her recent contribution, ‘Walls and Border Art: The Politics of Art Display’, Journal of Borderlands Studies 27/2 (2012) pp. 213–228.36. Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (note 31) p. x.37. E. Dell’Agnese and E. Squarcina (eds.), Europa. Vecchi confini e nuove frontiere (Torino: UTET 2005).38. It is worth clarifying that the etymological reflection on the term borderscapes proposed in this article addresses only the use of the word in the international academic debate on borders and does not consider the way in which it is used in the wider context of the English language.39. To be precise, dell’Agnese had already used the term borderscape a year before at the AAG pre-conference (Political Geography Specialty Group) at the University of Colorado at Boulder (3–5 April 2005). She presented a paper entitled ‘Bollywood’s Borderscapes’. For the abstract, see , accessed Oct. 2013. Also of interest is the way in which Josh Kun introduces the ‘border(audio)scape’ concept in his essay ‘The Aural Border’, Theatre Journal 52 (2000) pp. 1–21.40. See: ; , accessed Oct. 2013.41. A. Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border (Chichester: John Wiley 1996).42. The term borderscapes is used in a similar way by Anke Strüver in her book Stories of the ‘Boring Border’: The Dutch-German Borderscape in People’s Minds (Berlin: LIT 2005).43. See J. R. V. Prescott, The Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries (London: Hutchinson University Library 1965); D. Rumley and J. Minghi (eds.), The Geography of Border Landscapes (London and New York: Routledge 1991).44. See S. Mezzadra and B. Neilson, ‘Borderscapes of Differential Inclusion: Subjectivity and Struggles on the Threshold of Justice’s Excess’, in É. Balibar, S. Mezzadra, and R. Samaddar (eds.), The Borders of Justice (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2011) pp. 181–203.45. N. De Genova, ‘Migrant Illegality and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002) pp. 419–447.46. See P. Guichonnet and C. Raffestin, Géographie des Frontières (Paris: PUF 1974) pp. 147–218.47. A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996).48. See C. Brambilla and H. van Houtum, ‘The Art of Being a ‘Grenzgänger’ in the Borderscapes of Berlin’, Agora 4 (2012) pp. 28–31.49. C. Brambilla, ‘Borders Still Exist! What Are Borders?’, in B. Riccio and C. Brambilla (eds.), Transnational Migration, Cosmopolitanism and Dis-Located Borders (Rimini: Guaraldi 2010) pp. 73–85.50. See Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (note 31) p. xxx; C. Brambilla, ‘‘Pluriversal’ Citizenship and Borderscapes’, in M. Sorbello and A. Weitzel (eds.), Transient Spaces. The Tourist Syndrome (Berlin: argobooks 2010) pp. 61–65; C. Brambilla, ‘Shifting Italy/Libya Borderscapes at the Interface of EU/Africa Borderland: A ‘Genealogical’ Outlook from the Colonial Era to Post-Colonial Scenarios’, ACME – An International E-journal for Critical Geographies (forthcoming, 2014).51. Actually, although embracing a quite different perspective, Rumley and Minghi have already considered in the Introduction to The Geography of Border Landscapes the problems that could be caused by inserting the reflection on borders within the wider context of the studies on landscape.52. L. Bonesio, Paesaggio, identità e comunità tra locale e globale (Reggio Emilia: Diabasis 2007) p. 17; see also J. Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1984) pp. 1–55.53. K. Olwig, ‘Performing on the Landscape versus Doing Landscape: Preambulatory Practice, Sight and the Sense of Belonging’, in T. Ingold and J. L. Vergunst (eds.), Ways of Walking. Ethnography and Practice on Food (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008) p. 83.54. Ibid., p. 82. See also A. Turco, Paesaggio: pratiche, linguaggi, mondi (Reggio Emilia: Diabasis 2002).55. Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (note 31) p. xxiv.56. J. Rancière, Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. by S. Corcoran (London: Continuum International Publishing Group 2010) p. 149.57. Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (note 31) pp. xi–xii.58. Philosophy has traditionally distinguished between the study of being and the study of becoming since the time of Plato’s dialog the Timaeus: Plato, Timaeus and Critias (London: Penguin Books 1977). G. Deleuze and F. Guattari write extensively on becoming in A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2008).59. Parker and Vaughan-Williams (note 21) p. 728. Also see S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006).60. D. Reichert, ‘On Boundaries’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10/1 (1992) pp. 87–98.61. P. Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques: sur la théorie de l’action (Paris: Seuil Galliard 1994); M. Foucault, Il faut défendre la société (Paris: Seuil Galliard 1997).62. See W. D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000).63. See U. Beck and E. Grande, Das kosmopolitische Europa (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2004).64. A. Mol and J. Law, ‘Guest Editorial – Boundary Variations: An Introduction’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23 (2005) pp. 637–642.65. Ibid., p. 637.66. Parker and Vaughan-Williams (note 21) p. 730.67. Sidaway (note 11) pp. 973–74.68. Brambilla, ‘Borders Still Exist!’ (note 49) p. 75.69. W. D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2006) p. 15.70. C. Rumford, ‘Toward a Multiperspectival Study of Borders’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012) pp. 887–902. Similar arguments are used in: O. T. Kramsch and C. Brambilla, ‘Transboundary Europe through a West African Looking Glass: Cross Border Integration, ‘Colonial Difference’ and the Chance for ‘Border Thinking’’, Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaft 17/4 (2007) pp. 95–115.71. Parker and Vaughan-Williams et al. (note 11) p. 586.72. On the search for an alternative ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in ‘postinternational’ society can be grasped, see N. Parker, ‘From Borders to Margins: A Deleuzian Ontology for Identities in the Postinternational Environment’, Alternatives 34 (2009) pp. 17–39.73. In this regard, see: R. Kitchin and M. Dodge, ‘Rethinking Maps’, Progress in Human Geography 31 (2007) pp. 331–344. Kitchin and Dodge (p. 335) call for an ‘ontogenetic’ approach to mapping, arguing that we need to shift from ontology ‘(how things are) to ontogenesis (how things become)’. Hence, the ontogenetic approach to mapping is close to what I have called processual ontological approach to borders.74. See N. Glick-Schiller, L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton (eds.), Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne: Gordon and Breach 1994).75. See A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, ‘‘Beyond Culture’: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference’, Cultural Anthropology 7/1 (1992) pp. 6–23.76. S. Mezzadra and B. Neilson, ‘Between Inclusion and Exclusion: On the Topology of Global Space and Borders’, Theory, Culture & Society 29/4-5 (2012) pp. 58–75.77. C. Rumford, ‘Guest Editorial – Global Borders: An Introduction to the Special Issue’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (2010) pp. 951–956.78. C. Brambilla, ‘Shifting Italy/Libya Borderscapes’ (note 50).79. Sidaway (note 11) p. 973. An interesting example of interdisciplinary methodological approach – which contributes to finding the complementarities between different social sciences and humanities approaches, thereby looking for ways of bridging them together in contemporary border studies debate – is the work of the ‘Border Aesthetics’ research project (2010–2013) under the Research Council of Norway KULVER programme, initiated by the Border Poetics Research Group at the University of Tromsø. See: and , accessed Oct. 2013. Also of interest: J. Schimanski and S. Wolfe (eds.), Border Poetics De-Limited (Laatzen: Wehrhahn Verlag 2007); J. Schimanski and S. Wolfe, ‘The Aesthetics of Borders’, in K. Aukrust (ed.), Assigning Cultural Values (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2013) pp. 235–250.80. See H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1958); M. Borren, ‘Towards an Arendtian Politics of In/Visibility: On Stateless Refugees and Undocumented Aliens’, Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network 15/2 (2008) pp. 213–237.81. H. van Houtum, ‘Mapping Transversal Borders: Towards a Choreography of Space’, in B. Riccio and C. Brambilla (eds.), Transnational Migration, Cosmopolitanism and Dis-located Borders (Rimini: Guaraldi 2009) pp. 119–137.82. See J. Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’, South Atlantic Quarterly 103/2-3 (2004) pp. 297–310.83. J. W. Crampton, ‘Cartography: Performative, Participatory, Political’, Progress in Human Geography 33/6 (2009) pp. 840–848.84. Strüver (note 42) p. 170.85. J. Butler, Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (London: Routledge 1993) p. 2.86. Strüver (note 42) p. 167.87. Also see N. Megoran, ‘For Ethnography in Political Geography: Experiencing and Re-imagining Ferghana Valley Boundary Closures’, Political Geography 25 (2006) pp. 622–640.88. See: B. De Sousa Santos, ‘Toward an Epistemology of Blindness. Why the New Forms of ‘Ceremonial Adequacy’ neither Regulate nor Emancipate’, European Journal of Social Theory 4/3 (2001) pp. 251–279.89. S. Mezzadra and B. Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Durham: Duke University Press 2013) p. 17.90. Ibid., p. 17.91. Ibid., p. 18.92. Arendt (note 80).93. J. Derrida, ‘A Word of Welcome’, in J. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1999) pp. 13–123.