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The Multiscalar Production of Borders

Article  in  Geopolitics · July 2016

DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2016.1195132

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The Multiscalar Production of Borders: an Introduction
Jussi Laine, University of Eastern Finland

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article publishedin Geopolitics 2016, VOL. 21, NO. 3, 465–482:
To cite this article: Jussi P. Laine (2016) The Multiscalar Production of Borders, Geopolitics, 21:3, 465-482,
DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2016.1195132

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2016.1195132

Abstract
The present geopolitical situation has made the debate on borders and their functions, changing significance,
and symbolism more prominent than at any time since the end of the Cold War. While the various processes
of globalisation have challenged the traditional border concept, the scalar model of identity and society remains
primarily anchored in national space. The understanding of the state as a multiscalar construction, constantly
negotiated and reconfigured by its actors at different levels, allows us to broaden the scope of our analysis and
rethink and transform the spatial formations previously taken for granted in assessing the impacts of
globalisation more regionally. State borders continue to have considerable relevance today, yet as the articles
brought together in this special section will demonstrate, borders must be understood as complex, multiscalar,
multidimensional, yet dynamic entities that have different symbolic and material forms, functions, and
locations. With examples from Europe, Southeast Asia and the global south, this section aims to advance our
knowledge of the multiscalar dynamics of border politics. The articles investigate how borders are negotiated
vis-à-vis questions of identity, belonging, political conflict, and societal transformation, and how they are re-
and deconstructed through various institutional and discursive practices at different levels and by different
actors.

The Multiscalar Production of Borders: an Introduction

This special section aims to shed light on how the once common discussions of global de-bordering, supported
by optimistic notions of globalisation and the new post-Cold War world order, have succumbed to the reality
of the increasing complexity and instability of the world system. Growing global inequalities;
renationalisation; state-led development patterns and energy infrastructure; the rise of new economies as global
players; the creation of new states; securitisation and increasingly restrictive visa regimes and border controls;
pragmatic and protectionist behaviour and policies; assertive power politics; territorial disputes and their
associated crises; the surge of refugees and displaced people; the rise of national populism: these are but a few
examples that demonstrate that we continue to live in the world of borders, and that the state’s allure has not
faded, in spite of the fact that many contemporary social processes are clearly beyond its scope. Territorial
logic still leaves its mark on the way space is organised, and the nation-state continues to be the principal
reality for the worlds’ inhabitants, ‘trapped by the lottery of their birth’.1
This section draws the focus back to state borders, but accentuates the fact that, far from merely existing as
political state-led creations, state borders are complex and dynamic multiscalar entities that have different
symbolic and material forms maintained by a multiplicity of bordering processes and practices. Borders are
territorial in nature, but increasingly understood as multi-perspectival 2 and complex assemblages, 3 as has
recently been most convincingly captured in the concepts of borderities4 and borderscapes.5 Far from mere
static manifestations of state power and territoriality, borders are multiscalar social constructions, part of the
political, discursive, symbolic, and material orders that reflect the transformation of space into territory by
various social groups and actors, and not only by the state.6
Instead of focusing only on the supranational policy initiatives and global scale dynamics of integration which
downplay the role of borders or on the implications of the enduring nation-state system and the national-level
endeavours that sustain their existence, this section argues that these perspectives must be combined, because
the processes of de- and rebordering are not exclusionary, but occur simultaneously. The processes of
bordering and cross-border integration interact with each other in the midst of several contextual factors that
intervene and influence the dynamics and processes taking place within the cross-border space.7 The territorial
rearrangements implied by globalisation force us to rethink our layered analysis and seek to understand how
borders contribute to a nested system of territoriality produced by various actors on different scales: at the
global (through globalisation), national (through the rules established by the state system), or regional and
local levels (through the geographical characteristics of territories and societies).8
The section’s four articles9 address the study of borders in relation to the notions of scale and territory. They
seek to explore the growing disjuncture between the increasing complexity and differentiation of borders on
the one hand and the apparent simplicity and lack of imagination with which they continue to be treated on the
other.10 Focusing on the emerging epistemologies of how state borders are understood, perceived, experienced,
and exploited as not only political but also social resources, this section suggests that one of the main reasons
state borders have endured in spite of the global pressures is that they reflect, and thus help us interpret, both
the tensions and points of connection within intercultural and interstate relations. Studying the tenacious and
at times paradoxical endurance of state borders helps us to better understand the new forms of territoriality
emerging from globalisation and the multiplicity of actors involved in the management and maintenance of
borders.
This introduction calls for a more nuanced and critical understanding of borders and bordering practices,
needed to better understand the broad sociopolitical transformations affecting borders in the contemporary
geopolitical reality. It discusses, first, borders as a globalisation backlash, suggesting that while the various
processes of globalisation have certainly caused an institutional crumbling of borders and intensified cross-
border flows, the scalar model of identity and society remains primarily anchored in national space, and state
borders continue to have considerable relevance today. Second, it argues that borders can have multiple
configurations and that different forms of territoriality may coexist and be projected onto the same spatial
object, the border.11
The nation-state in itself is a multiscalar construction, and its borders are constantly negotiated and
reconfigured by its actors at different levels. As the contributions included in this section variously indicate,
the idea of territorial space is far from defunct or redundant but is rather a continuously relevant form of social
spatiality, complementary to networked and fluid spaces. Despite the apparent variability of border
configurations, the state still appears to play a crucial role in these interwoven territories and networks. The
understanding of the state as a multiscalar construction, constantly negotiated and reconfigured by its actors at
different levels, allows us to broaden the scope of our analysis and rethink and transform the spatial formations
previously taken for granted in assessing the impacts of globalisation more regionally.

State Borders and the Globalisation Backlash

The current era of heightened globalisation and geopolitical tension has made the debate on borders and their
functions, changing significance, and symbolism more prominent than at any time since the end of the Cold
War. In the midst of the post-Cold War ‘disorder’ the nature of borders has been changing, and it is important
to understand the complex roles and realities of borders in the 21st century to address both how they are
changing and their strategic, economic, and cultural implications. The increased velocity and volatility of
globalisation have shaken the previously stable border concept. The global primacy of state borders endures,
but they are now commonly understood as multifaceted social institutions rather than as solely formal political
markers of sovereignty. Borders are products of a social and political negotiation of space: they frame social
and political action; help condition how societies and individuals shape their strategies and identities; and are
re- and deconstructed through various institutional and discursive practices at different levels and by different
actors.
Global megatrends are changing the nature of borders just as we need to acknowledge the evidently different
regional responses and counter tendencies to these trends in our work. All borders are unique, and each is
related in different ways to local, regional, state-bound, and supranational processes – the geosociologies of
political power.12 Through regional responses to globalisation borders are often reproduced in situations of
conflict where historical memories are mobilised to support territorial claims, to address past injustices, or to
strengthen group identity. At the same time, however, it is important to remember that through new
institutional and discursive practices contested borders can also be transformed into symbols of cooperation
and common historical heritage. In order to better understand the complexity of the present situation, it is also
necessary to pay more attention to changes in the governance of borders and border regions, as well as to the
regional responses that are linked with such development. Although throughout the world most borders are
prone to precisely the same global phenomena, there are various context-specific responses to these trends,
meaning that generalised border narratives obscure more than they illuminate.
While globalisation has certainly caused an institutional crumbling of borders, a compaction of cross-border
social relationships, an increased interdependence of cross-border activities, and an intensification of flows,
the scalar model of identity and society remains primarily anchored in national space, both at the theoretical
and popular levels.13 Indeed, as O’Dowd argues, an over-emphasis on the novelty of contemporary forms of
globalisation and an incapacity to recognise the distinctiveness of contemporary state borders deceptively
underestimate the extent to which we continue to live in a world of diverse states.14 Despite the forces of
globalisation, we remain located somewhere, and this has an impact on how we perceive our surroundings.
Newman’s notion that the longer borders remain in situ the harder they are to remove or change15 continues to
be valid, challenging the assumption that the significance of borders might be expunged by political decision.
O’Dowd makes another valid point in arguing that while much of the contemporary analysis of borders and
globalisation insists on escaping from state-centric thinking and advocates grasping the novelty and promise
of the new world order ‘beyond the nation-state’, even those social scientists most critical of state-centric
approaches continue to use the territorially bounded state as a reference point.16 The ‘borderless world’ debate,
fuelled by the acceleration of new forms of economic, political, and cultural globalisation, has been replaced
by an increased focus on the ‘world of borders’.17 It goes without saying that state borders are only one type
of border among many, and the recent surge of studies on, inter alia, cultural, religious, mental, identity,
ideological, and gender borders has been very timely. We have witnessed the emergence of new borders, new
border functions, and novel borderings that go beyond traditional notions of state territoriality in the face of
an increasing interpenetration of national societies by global processes. State borders have, however, endured,
and continue to be reconstructed and effectively utilised as markers of sociopolitical organisation and for the
various processes of nation-building. Understanding borders is still inherently about understanding how states
function and how borders can be exploited to both mobilise and fix territory, security, identities, emotions and
memories, and various forms of national socialisation.18
The state-centred perspective does not per se condone or reify the state as historically inevitable, but as
historically contingent.19 Nationalism(s), however, allows people to forget this contingency.20 It continues to
have an important influence on people’s opinions and views as well as their actions, or lack thereof, based on
them. The significance of nationalism in its various forms lies in its power not only to uphold the belief systems
that people have about their own country and its neighbours – thus preventing people from re-examining their
assumed opinions and perspectives. It moulds a territory into a ‘national space’ and maintains borders with
other comparable units, affecting not only the people living within the territory but also those in neighbouring
territories who must reconceptualise and reconstruct the adjoining spaces, and either accept or reject the
national assertion others make upon them.21
Nationalisms, like other ideologies, and are not necessarily right or wrong, but they help construct meaning in
a given context and are often emotionally charged. While the processes of globalisation may have
overshadowed the concept and prominence of the nation-state, they have done little to dim its role in people’s
minds. In this process a border tends to become a marker of difference, on the opposite side of which different
modes of belongingness are acted out in the frame of the respective nation-state. Such a collective ‘practice of
nation’ also affects political behaviour by relocating the emphasis from powerful social actors, official
institutions and mechanisms, important policy decisions, and ‘critical junctures’ to the everyday repetition of
national ‘rituals’ typified by, and enshrined in, popularly resonant myths, memories, and symbols. 22 The
ensuing territorial imagination built on the Westphalian sovereignty concept remains so profoundly etched in
the minds of many that its relevance has not faded, in spite of the fact that many contemporary social processes
clearly lie beyond its scope.
Geographical borders continue to function as physical manifestations of state power, but they also serve as
symbolic and mental representations of statehood for citizen and non-citizen alike. In trying to determine the
actions and behaviour of people at and within state borders, borders themselves are no longer seen merely as
territorial lines in the sand23 at a certain place in space but as symbols of the processes of social binding and
exclusion that are both constructed or produced in society. Our understanding of this localised impact is
gleaned from localised border narratives, grassroots empiricism creating border stories, and representations
where even governments may argue that the border has been removed and no longer has any relevance.24
Despite growing centrifugal forces and alternative understandings of space challenging territorial sovereignty,
the nation-state has endured as the dominant mode of social organisation and the pre-eminent spatial construct
within the world system to which political, cultural, and social identities are tied and on the existence of which
international relations are still largely based. The rhetoric about the death of the nation-state has undoubtedly
backfired, and the globalised world has not resulted in a borderless world. Quite the contrary: globalisation
depends on the partition of space between states, and increasingly between regions and cities, because capital
can circulate only between competing legal spaces created within states and/or regions and with the support of
their guaranties. 25 Indeed, Western nation-states have themselves been especially active in promoting
globalisation by catering to corporate capital and big business to strengthen their economic advantage. The
world system thus needs inequalities, and the political borders that perpetuate them and these borders in turn
are inconceivable without specific legitimising identities.26
While globalisation continues apace, the nation-state remains the primary agent in this process. Globalisation
actually enhances the autonomy of nation-states, not so much vis-à-vis other countries, but from their own
people, for it provides a legitimising discourse that allows nation-states and governments to impose policies
on the grounds of international pressures.27 Sassen suggests that globalisation is actually partly endogenous to
the national rather than the external, and that the ‘global’ can be conceptualised as partly inhabiting the
‘national’ and the ‘local’.28 While national territories remain bounded by traditional geographical borderlines,
globalisation is causing novel types of borderings, cutting across traditional borders and becoming evident
both globally and within national territory, to multiply.29
Instead of assessing the nation-state (with its associated ideology nationalism) and globalisation as
fundamentally opposed to each other, it might be worthwhile to consider their relationship as a sort of
synthesis. Globalisation has reinforced different forms of nationalism as different localities, minorities, and
nationalities have awoken to and reacted against its homogenising nature. Increasing mobility and migration
have cultivated xenophobia, while mixed and newly hybrid cultures have increasingly prompted people to turn
towards their own culture in search of their identity and nationality. 30 Although in the dynamics of
globalisation borders create constraints for interaction and integration, their functions as filters of flows,
constructs guiding and obstructing activity, denotations of ‘we-ness’ and ‘otherness’, and as symbols of power
and order remain imperative for many. The relationship between globalisation and nationalism is not,
therefore, a zero-sum game in which one is destined to emerge as the winner and the other as the loser. Instead,
it is a mutually beneficial coexistence of two compatible tendencies.31 Indeed, one might say that it was the
processes of globalisation that spread the nation-state ideal around the world in the first place.
The world remains very much compartmentalised into states and regions, and such compartmentalisation
requires borders.32 Nation-states have been famously depicted as ‘bordered power containers’,33 if not also
wealth, cultural, and social containers.34 As Anderson once stated, nation-states appear drawn on the political
map of the word in such a permanent manner that, at times, they may even seem to be ‘natural’ formations.35
While many aspects of globalisation challenge territorial sovereignty, it has remained one of the leading
principles upon which international relations are based even today. As Moisio and Paasi explain, geopolitics
as a practice has for a long time been associated with the territorialisation of political space, ‘building’ and
performing states as definitive bounded territories, constructing domestic order through different methods of
government, and constituting the ‘international’ as the ‘inter-state’.36
The global primacy of state borders cannot but be taken as a sign of the hegemony of the nation-state ideal.
The enduring importance of borders is not so much an indication of resistance to globalisation but an
historically and socially situated process that necessarily happens because small countries need to delineate
space that they can claim as ‘theirs’ to confirm their identities’ continuity.37 For example, the rise of nationalist
politics and populism in many European countries suggests that far from the nation-state and national identity
being overshadowed by the EU, for many their importance has grown and become more valued because of it.
There are nearly 200 independent countries in the world, about 300 international land borders, and at least
double the narratives: the different sides of a border tend to perceive it differently.38
Our lives are still largely defined by our place of birth and where we choose to live. In most cases these two
coincide, because, despite increased mobility, surprisingly few people live outside the country in which they
were born. While there are many reasons for this, it is clear that belonging to a certain nation has a certain
appeal. As Eva suggests, human beings, both individually and collectively, are victims and perpetrators not
only of the ongoing process of caging, but also self-caging, as they seek to form and maintain ‘cultural islands’
based on a set of shared memes (words, symbols, behaviours, opinions, values, etc.) that are perpetuated by
customs and relationships in real physical spaces.39 The territorial trap thus endures because people prefer
confined and familiar spaces. However, many lack the opportunity to cross borders even if they want to.

Borders and the Multiscalar Nation-State

A central feature of this special section is the question of state territoriality, its constitution, and its contestation.
While the nation-state is a social construction, it often comes with a clearly defined territory and borders. The
idea of territorial space is far from defunct or redundant, but continues to be a relevant form of social spatiality
complementary to networked and fluid spaces.40 State borders continue to be deeply constitutive of the way in
which social change, mobility and immobility, inclusion and exclusion, the domestic and the foreign, the
national and the international, and the internal and the external, as well as the ‘us’ and ‘them’, are considered.41
These long-term social processes, together with the collective memory of borders, are embodied in everyday
life experiences and remain continually present immediately under the surface of new policies.42 While there
are clear interests at both the governmental and non-governmental levels to promote cross-border cooperation,
the reality of this cooperation often demonstrates the persistence of state borders.43
Newman argues convincingly in this regard that territory constitutes a trap, especially if we view the spatial
ordering of society through the limited paradigm of the fixed and the absolute.44 However, by breaking out of
this trap we may better understand contemporary territorial ordering and re-ordering through the multifocality
of spatial complexity. Although the trapdoor may now be open and the territory may have escaped from the
(perceived) fences that have surrounded much of its analysis, the construct remains and its significance has
only increased.45 The apparent move from geopolitically ‘closed’ to more open state territories46 allows us to
broaden the scope of our analysis and rethink and transform spatial formations that have previously been taken
for granted in assessing the more regional impacts of globalisation.
In the midst of globalisation the nation-state has endured, yet the constant focus on the state downplays the
role of other scales in the production of borders. While the bounded and very tangible territorial space now
occupied by nation-states has no clear alternative when it comes to the organisation of the state’s juridical and
administrative powers thanks to, most notably, the changes in governance modes, the state is no longer
necessarily the primary actor, nor is the nation-state the only conception of space to be applied in explaining
human interaction. Borderland dwellers are able to jump scales and construct the scale of the border for
themselves. 47 The national border is not necessarily experienced only as an immediate limit, but may be
perceived as a local phenomenon, the edge of a nation-state, a transnational staging post, or it may be
reconfigured as a portal.
If we accept that borders only came into existence with nation-states, it is also logical to suppose that as the
role of the nation-state crumbles so will that of its borders. There has, however, been no clear-cut development
towards post-national borders; instead, state borders prevail, even if in reconfigured form. While we have
witnessed only a partial dissolution of state sovereignty and its associated territoriality, this post-national turn
has been fuelled by new forms of territorial sovereignty based on shared political responsibilities between
states and the emergence of new borders, new border functions, and/or new methods of territorial control that
go beyond traditional notions of state territoriality in the face of an increasing interpenetration of national
societies by global processes.48 It allows us to focus on the sub- and supranational logic of political interaction
which transcends the jurisdictional and conceptual limits of the ‘national’ by creating new political functions
of cross-border cooperation.
As McGrew and Held suggest, the concept of the post-national would be better understood as the way
globalised power involves a hybridisation of national and international political spaces.49 The state and its
territoriality per se are not disappearing, but the traditional state model is being reconfigured through the
dispersal of political power, the emergence of transnational political communities, the conditioning of state
sovereignty by interdependencies and interrelations that crisscross state territories, the new boundary problems
resulting from globalisation processes, and the increasingly blurred distinctions between domestic and foreign
policy concerns. The emergence of new political and economic units that partly incorporate, but also operate
beyond, the context of the nation-state, such as communities of states, networks of cities, or cross-border
regions, is another example of post-nationalisation.50 European integration has promoted perhaps the most
concrete notions of post-national polities and borders proposed to date 51 in concrete forms of shared
sovereignty and community policies, the support of local and regional cross-border cooperation, and the more
subtle discursive and ideational forms of Europeanisation.52
These are just some examples of the multiscalar process by which the state’s organisation is changing. In the
spatial sense this process is often referred to as reterritorialisation.53 Reterritorialisation cannot be seen as
separate from deterritorialisation, 54 an outcome of globalisation whereby culture, politics, and economies
become untethered from a national territory. The resultant multiplication of extranational channels for
subnational political activity has fuelled in particular the development of various institutional designs and
strategies of cross-border cooperation framework consisting of a myriad of systems operating at various spatial
levels, involving both state and non-state – and even supranational – actors that contribute to regionalisation
processes.
The evolution of regionalism and cross-border cooperation can be taken as a consequence of the rescaling
processes caused by contemporary globalisation. Globalisation has also boosted the rise of supralocality55 and
polycentricity, 56 which in turn has fostered the processes of political decentralisation and cross-border
regionalisation. In the increasingly global economy borderlands located at the connection between the cultures
and economic spaces of neighbouring countries become the locomotives of economic growth and innovation,
and focuses of supranational regional politics. 57 The competences of special authorities created for
coordinating the development of a cross-border region typically evolve with time from the purely
monofunctional to the multifunctional and from the economic to the political, leading to the emergence of
government-like institutions that challenge the sovereignty of neighbouring states over their border
territories.58
The endurance of the nation-state/territorial model has oversimplified the border concept and reduced it to
geographical events and the immediate institutional apparatus through which they are controlled, protected,
and generally governed.59 Although globalisation has made the world smaller and few places seem immune to
the global megatrends that are changing the nature of borders, it may also be viewed as a tool that helps to
disaggregate ‘the’ border – actually and heuristically – and, in doing so, articulate its multiple components.
The globalisation of a broad range of processes demonstrates that borders can extend deep into national
territory, that they are constituted through many more institutions than simply the nation-state, and that they
have many more locations than standard geographical representations suggest. 60 It is these more regional
responses to globalisation that this section seeks to unravel in illustrating that globalisation has many impacts
which manifest themselves in various ways in different contexts and locations.
While – as has been discussed above – the primacy of state borders cannot be denied, bordering is not the
exclusive concern of the state. As the nation is inevitably a social construction, so are its borders. As they can
be constructed, they can also be erased. Following ideas suggested by Rumford, the contributors to this section
maintain that the focus should be shifted from the state towards borders that are woven into the fabric of
society.61 It is borders, not necessarily the states they define, that are the key to understanding networked
connectivity. Borders are no longer at the edge. They have become important spaces, where questions of
identity, belonging, political conflict, and societal transformation are discussed and acted out. This is why they
have found their way into the heart of politics. Rumford argues that changes in borders are in fact more far-
reaching than can be captured either by the idea that ‘borders are everywhere’ or by a security-driven
rebordering thesis. Borders exist not only at the borders: bordering processes permeate everyday life; borders
exist ‘wherever selective controls are to be found’.62 Nor do borders necessarily always work in the service of
the state: if the border of the nation-state is perceived as ineffectual, border-workers may be encouraged to
engage in local bordering activities designed to enhance its status.
The changes underway are shifting the meaning of borders, and these changes expose the multiple ways in
which the border can be articulated and acted upon by diverse contexts. The idea here is not to remove or
replace the nation-state but to open and adapt it to be more responsive to new global conditions. Ultimately,
the state is not a domain distinct from the entity called society, but is a dynamic process and assemblage of
practices and discourses spread both inside and outside state territory, and put into action by competing societal
forces and processes within and beyond the state’s jurisdiction.63 State spaces are thus being ‘recalibrated’,
which has made regional–central government relations more horizontal, competitive, and developmentalist.64
State-centred border regimes have therefore undergone significant changes with the rise of globalisation, and
we have arrived at a fluid geographical imagination that incorporates a polyvalent perspective and
acknowledges the relational nature of space. We are witnessing the emergence of complementary forms of
state border that depart from the norms of territorial linearity by becoming embedded into flows that can travel
and be monitored continuously across space.65
The novel borderings associated with the multiplication of subnational global scalings discussed by Sassen
entail the partial denationalising of what historically has been constructed as national, a process that unsettles
the meaning of geographical borders.66 Critical to her argument is the proposition that global processes also
take place at subnational levels, thereby disrupting the notion of mutual exclusivity between the national and
the global. When we conceive of globalisation as enacted on subnational scales and in institutional domains,
we can posit the proliferation of borderings within national territories. Focusing on these bordering capabilities
allows us to see something about territory and space that is easily obscured in the more prevalent analyses,
which assume the mutual exclusivity of the national and the global.

Overview of the Special Section

The four articles in this section analyse borders in relation to the notions of scale and territory. They depict
borders as dynamic social processes spread across society, the management of which is renegotiated,
transformed, and reappropriated by a variety of agents operating across multiple scales. The articles provide
evidence that the relative significance of each of these scales may only be captured through contextual
analyses. While borders attempt to shape space along state-centred scales of discourse and practice, the socio-
spatial context providing the conditions for borders’ emergence, existence, and transformation is both situated
and place-specific, and it extends across national, transnational, regional, and global scales.67 Borders are the
product of, and reproduce, social relationships that unfold across both state- and non-state-centred scales of
discourse and practice, expressing a scalar tension between their active and productive dimensions. 68 The
processes of de- and rebordering are not exclusionary, but rather dimensions of the same scalar tension, the
outcomes of which cannot be assumed a priori, but must instead be examined as they actually unfold.
The national metanarrative has endured, but it is increasingly challenged and also complemented by a
multitude of more regionally and locally based narratives and discourses that also raise the voices of border
citizens or crossers who enter, adapt to, or challenge the readymade worlds of the practices and discourses
regarding ‘us’ and the ‘other’. Borders afford a unique vantage point for the study of the intersection of the
different scales and it is at this juncture that the analytical insights to be garnered may best be grasped. The
following four articles approach the multiscalar nature of borders from their own vantage points. The articles
reveal various regional and local responses to the ongoing supranational dynamics, providing evidence that
borders remain a fundamental spatial feature at all scales. We can identify the global megatrends that are
changing the nature of borders, yet, as the articles demonstrate, there is a myriad of contextually specific
phenomena at stake that reproduce borders at various scales. The articles engage with these scalar concerns as
they investigate this complex spatiality through the prism of borders in the era of globalisation.
In the first article of this special section Paolo Novak disentangles the multiplicity of scales and directions in
which borders, bordering, and the development process intersect. His article makes an important contribution
to the discussion of the multiscalar production of borders, because placing borders in development facilitates
the identification of the multiscalar and multi-directional social processes that shape such interventions and
that are, at the same time, shaped by them. Novak locates borders at the scalar intersection of development
processes that unfold within as well as beyond and across states. In offering evidence of a backlash against
globalisation, he identifies state borders as an insightful analytical perspective for the study of development’s
spatiality and argues that development remains inextricably related to the state-centred cartography borders
define. He explains how both development and borders have been key institutional sites of negotiation,
contestation, co-option, and cooperation, weaving together global, regional, national and local social forces,
and social groups from colonial times to the present. Development and borders articulate across a variety of
spatial and temporal scales and in a multiplicity of directions across them. His study offers valuable insights
into the multiscalar social forces shaping inherent processes of structural transformation and intentional
development intervention, and into the ways in which borders and border management practices selectively
and heterogeneously shape social experiences, positions, and prospects as they are being shaped by them.
The second article, by Estelle Evrard, examines the significance of the European Grouping for Territorial
Cooperation (EGTC) as a cross-border governance tool with the potential to facilitate the emergence of a
supraregional scale of governance. She illustrates the multiscalar production of borders in suggesting that
EGTCs are primarily interpreted in the light of each (sub-)state authority’s positioning within the multilevel
governance setting, whereby the legal features and application of the EGTCs mediated through the member
states contribute to a reshuffling of power-bargaining across the various scales of governance. Her empirical
analysis refers to the persistence of the national metanarrative in that the EGTCs have been unsuccessful in
developing a political legitimacy of their own, yet the more open conception of state spaces has allowed them
more capacity to act on behalf of the state. The case study confirms that a region’s construction is a complex
multifaceted process involving a wide range of actors. Both cross-border practices and the manifold cross-
border functional interdependencies demonstrate the need for further institutional cross-border cooperation,
yet at the same time the very existence of this cooperation is indicative of the persistence of borders. The
EGTCs analysed thus provide a concrete example of the multiscalar process by which the state is becoming
organised differently and reterritorialised.
Stanislaw Domaniewski and Dominika Studzińska’s article also takes a regional approach in assessing the role
borders play in a wider multiscalar context. They testify that not all borders conform to a traditional or
rationally coherent set of norms, and nor do fixed policies apply to them. Rather, the impacts of globalisation
depend on contextually nuanced circumstances. They argue that the processes of globalisation can
simultaneously reinforce borders’ barrier and bridge functions, evidence that the processes of de- and
rebordering are indeed not necessarily irreconcilable. In evaluating the impact of the Small Border Traffic
(SBT) zone between Poland and the Kaliningrad Region (Russia) on local communities, Domaniewski and
Studzińska demonstrate that the role a border may play shifts over time in accordance with the changes in the
underlying power structures that maintain it. They conclude that the state border between Poland and Russia
still clearly exists, but the SBT scheme has made the border more permeable for local interaction, which in
turn has lessened its blockading effect. However, the SBT has created a new border barrier in the regions not
included in the scheme.
The special section’s last article moves the discussion to Southeast Asia. In it Thomas Ptak and Demian
Hommel use transnational energy projects as examples of multiscalar responses to globalisation that are at the
same time key components of an evolving national energy strategy. Instead of monolithic symbols of state
sovereignty, Ptak and Hommel depict China’s southwestern borders as sites of flows and connectivity, serving
a range of local, national, and regional objectives. These transnational energy projects, which often come with
cross-border infrastructure integrating local, national, and regional economies previously divided by a border,
effectively illuminate how forces of globalisation complicate traditional static notions of borders, sovereignty,
and security. The authors demonstrate how energy networks, and especially the diplomatic effort required to
negotiate their complexity, may actually serve as bridges between provinces and states that are often otherwise
seen as geopolitically adversarial. They argue that these projects support the need to rethink territorial
sovereignty, while simultaneously demonstrating state rescaling initiatives that may ultimately advance
China’s broader geostrategic objectives.
In all, the articles in this collection underline that despite the apparent challenges to state sovereignty and
alternative conceptions of space both within and beyond the nation-state, the national outline still has a great
impact on how society is ordered and bordered. The idea of territorial space continues to be relevant to
networked and fluid spaces, just as the national metanarrative has endured in the midst of a multitude of more
regionally and locally based narratives and discourses. National belonging is at stake everywhere in today’s
multiscalar production of borders, yet borders are products of a social and political negotiation of space at the
intersection of scales. As the articles in the section insinuate, the ‘national’ is not only maintained by the state,
but the nation-state in itself is a multiscalar construction and its borders are constantly negotiated and
reconfigured by actors on different scales. State borders are not only political or administrative, but continue
to be deeply constitutive of the ways in which various symbolic, social, and cultural lines of difference are
conceived.

1
P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question (Cambridge: Polity Press 1996); L. Perrier Bruslé, ‘The Border as a Marker of
Territoriality: Multi-Scalar Perspectives and Multi-Agent Processes in a South American Borderland Region’, Geopolitics 18/3
(2013) p. 584.
2
C. Rumford, ‘Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders’ Geopolitics 17/4 (29012) pp. 887–902.
3
C. Sohn, ‘Navigating Borders’ Multiplicity: the Critical Potential of Assemblage’, Area 48/2 (2016) pp. 183–189.
4
A.-L. Amilhat Szary and F. Giraut (eds.), Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders, (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan 2015).
5
C. Brambilla, J. Laine, J. W. Scott and G. Bocchi (eds.), Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making (Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate 2015); C. Brambilla, ‘Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept’, Geopolitics 20/1 (2015) pp.
14–34.
6
A. Paasi, ‘Boundaries as Social Practice and Discourse: The Finnish-Russian Border’, Regional Studies 33/7 (1999) p. 669; D.
Newman, ‘The Lines That Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our ‘borderless’ World’, Progress in Human Geography 30/2 (2006);
P. Novak, ‘The Flexible Territoriality of Borders’, Geopolitics 16/4 (2011); H. van Houtum, ‘The Geopolitics of Borders and
Boundaries’, Geopolitics 10/4 (2005).
7
F. Durand, ‘Theoretical Framework of the Cross-Border Space Production - the Case of the Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai’,
EUBORDERSCAPES Working Paper 9.
8
Ibid; Perrier Bruslé (note 1) p. 598; A-L. Amilhat-Szary, ‘Identités Collectives à La Frontière’, Civilisations 60/1 (2012) p. 84
9
This special section reflects the theme of and the discussions emanating from the Association for Borderlands Studies First World
Conference held in Joensuu, Finland and St. Petersburg, Russia in June 2014. The research for this introduction has been done within
the framework of the EU FP7 project EUBORDERSCAPES (290775) project, which is funded by the European Commission under
the 7th Framework Programme (FP7-SSH-2011-1), Area 4.2.1: The evolving concept of borders.
10
As called for by N. Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press 2012) p. 7.
11
Cf. Perrier Bruslé (note 1); J. Anderson and L. O’Dowd, ‘Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory
Meanings, Changing Significance’, Regional Studies 33 (1999); J. Häkli, ‘Regions, Networks and Fluidity in the Finnish Nation-
State’, National Identities 10/1 (2008).
12
J. Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005) p. 47.
13
T. Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg 2002) p. 1; C. Sohn and B Reitel, Le rôle des
Etats dans la construction des régions métropolitaines transfrontalières en Europe. Une approche scalaire’, CEPS/INSTEAD
Working Papers 42 (2012) p. 24; T. Wilson and H. Donnan, ‘Borders and Borders Studies’ in T. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.), A
Companion to Border Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2012).
14
L. O’Dowd, ‘From a “Borderless World” to a “World of Borders”: “Bringing History Back In”’, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 28/6 (2010) pp. 1032–1034.
15
D. Newman, ‘Boundaries’, in J. Agnew, K. Mitchell and G. Toal (eds), A Companion to Political Geography (Oxford: Blackwell
2003) p. 130. For a more detailed discussion, see C. Del Biaggio, ‘Territory beyond the Anglophone Tradition’; A.-L. Amilhat Szary,
‘Boundaries and Borders’ and A. Jonas, ‘Scale’, in J. Agnew, V. Mamadouh, A. J. Secor and J. Sharp (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell
Companion to Political Geography (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 2015); A.-L. Amilhat Szary, ‘Boundaries and Borders’.
16
O’Dowd (note 14) p. 1034.
17
Ibid.
18
A. Paasi, ‘Commentary. Border Studies Reanimated. Going Beyond the Territorial/Relational Divide’, Environment and Planning
A 44/10 (2012) p. 2307.
19
V. Kolossov (ed.), EUBORDERSCAPES State of the Debate Report I, available at:
<http://www.euborderscapes.eu/index.php?id=project_reports> [Accessed 28 Feb 2015].
20
G. Jusdanis, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
1991) p. 165.
21
J. O’Loughlin and P. F. Talbot, ‘Where in the World is Russia? Geopolitical Perceptions and Preferences of Ordinary Russians’,
Eurasian Geography and Economics 46/1 (2005) pp. 28–29.
22
J. Githens-Mazer, Ethno-Symbolism and the Everyday Resonance of Myths, Memories and Symbols of the Nation. Paper
presented at conference on Everyday Life in World Politics and Economics, 11 May 2007, Centre for International Studies, LSE,
London.
23
N. Parker, L. Bialasiewicz, S. Bulmer, B. Carver, R. Durie, J. Heathershaw, H. van Houtum, et al., ‘Lines in the Sand? Towards an
Agenda for Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics 14/3 (2009) pp. 582–587; N. Parker and R Adler-Nissen, ‘Picking and Choosing the
‘Sovereign’ Border: A Theory of Changing State Bordering Practices’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012) p. 774; Rumford (note 2) p. 887.
24
J. Sidaway, ‘The Poetry of Boundaries: Reflections from the Spanish-Portuguese Borderlands’, in H. van Houtum, O. Kramsch
and W. Zierhoffer (eds.), B/ordering Space (Aldershot: Ashgate 2005); D. Wastl-Walter, M. Varadi and F. Veider, ‘Bordering
Silence: Border Narratives from the Austro-Hungarian Border’, in U. Meinhof, (ed.), Living (with) Border: Identity Discourses on
East-West Borders in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate 2002).

25
V. Kolossov and J. Scott, ‘Selected Conceptual Issues in Border Studies’, BelGeo 4 (2013) pp. 9-21
26
V. Kolossov and J. O’Loughlin, ‘New Borders for New World Orders. Territorialities at the Fin-de-Siecle’ GeoJournal 44/3 (1998)
pp. 259–73.
27
M. Gritsch, ‘The Nation-State and Economic Globalization. Soft Geo-politics and Increased State Autonomy?’, Review of
International Political Economy 12/1 (2005) pp. 1–25.
28
S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006)
29
Ibid.
30
T. Kuzio, ‘Nationalism, Identity and Civil Society in Ukraine: Understanding the Orange Revolution’, Communist and Post-
Communist Studies 43/3 (2010) pp. 285–296; S. Natalie, Globalization and Nationalism: The Cases of Georgia and the Basque
Country (Budapest: Central European University Press 2010), p. 181.
31
S. Natalie, ‘Globalization and Nationalism: The Relationship Revisited’, in N. Sabanadze (ed.), Globalization and Nationalism:
The Cases of Georgia and the Basque Country (Budapest: Central European University Press 2010) pp. 169–186.
32
See D. Newman, ‘Territory, Compartments and Borders: Avoiding the Trap of the Territorial Trap’, Geopolitics 15/4 (2010) pp.
773-778.
33
A. Giddens, Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press 1985).
34
P. J. Taylor, ‘The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern World-System’, Progress in Human Geography 18/2 (1994) p.
152.
35
J. Anderson, ‘The Exaggerated Death of the Nation-State’, in J. Anderson, C. Brook and A. Cochrane (eds.), A Global World?
(London: Oxford University Press 1995) p. 79.
36
S. Moisio and A. Paasi, ‘Beyond State-Centricity: Geopolitics of Changing State Spaces’, Geopolitics 18/ 2 (2013) p. 256.
37
I. Shklovski and D. Struthers, ‘Of States and Borders on the Internet: The Role of Domain Name Extensions in Expressions of
Nationalism Online in Kazakhstan’, Policy & Internet 2/4 (2010) p. 113.
38
A. Paasi, ‘A Border Theory: An Unattainable Dream or a Realistic Aim for Border Scholars?’, in D. Wastl-Walter (ed.), The
Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (London, Ashgate 2011) p. 13.
39
F. Eva, ‘Caging/Self-caging: Materiality and Memes as Tools for Geopolitical Analysis’ Human Geography 5/3 (2012) pp. 2–3.
40
J. Häkli, ‘Regions, Networks and Fluidity in the Finnish Nation-State’, National Identities 10/1 (2008) pp. 5–20.
41
O’Dowd (note 9) p. 1034.
42
G. Bucken-Knapp and M. Schack, ‘Borders Matter, but How?’, in G. Bucken-Knapp and M. Schack (eds.), Borders Matter:
Transboundary Regions in Europe (Aabenraa: Danish Institute of Border Region Studies 2001) p. 16.
43
Ibid.
44
Newman (note 32) p. 777.
45
Ibid.
46
Moisio & Paasi (note 36) p. 256.
47
W. van Schendel, ‘Spaces of Engagement: How Borderlands, Illicit Flows, and Territorial States Interlock’, in W. van Schendel
and I. Abraham (eds.), Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press 2005) pp. 38–68.
48
cf. Kolossov (note 19) pp. 15–16
49
A. McGrew and D. Held, Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity 2002).
50
Kolossov (note 19) p. 16.
51
P. Joenniemi, ‘Re-Negotiating Europe’s Identity: The European Neighbourhood Policy as a Form of Differentiation’, Journal of
Borderlands Studies 23/2 (2008) pp. 83–94.
52
L. Bialasiewicz, S. Elden and J. Painter, ‘The Constitution of EU Territory’, Comparative European Politics 3/3 (2005) pp. 333–
363.
53
R. D. Sack, ‘Human Territoriality: A Theory’, Annals of American Geographers 73/1 (1983) pp. 55–74; G. Popescu, ‘The
Conflicting Logics of Cross-Border Reterritorialization: Geopolitics of Euroregions in Eastern Europe’, Political Geography 7/4
(2008) pp. 418–438.
54
G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
1987).
55
B. Hooper, ‘Ontologizing the Borders of Europe’, in: O. Kramsch and B. Hooper (eds.), Cross-border Governance in the European
Union (London: Routledge 2004) pp. 209–229.
56
C. Hein, ‘European Spatial Development, the Polycentric EU Capital, and Eastern Enlargement’, Comparative European Politics
4/2 (2006) pp. 253–271.
57
Kolossov (note 19) p. 34.
58
E. Brunet-Jailly, ‘Toward a Model of Border Studies: What Do We Learn from the Study of the Canadian-American Border?’
Journal of Borderlands Studies 19/1 (2004) pp. 1–12.
59
S. Sassen, Keynote Address: Bordering Capabilities versus Borders: Implications for National Borders, available at
<http://www.columbia.edu/~sjs2/PDFs/Bordering_capabilities.pdf> [Accessed 7 May 2015].
60
Ibid. p. 575.
61
C. Rumford, Citizens and Borderwork in Contemporary Europe (London: Routledge 2008).
62
E. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (London: Verso 2002) pp. 84–85.
63
Moisio and Paasi (note 36) p. 257.
64
N. Brenner, New State Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005).
65
Popescu (note 53).
66
Sassen (note 59) p. 587.
67
See Novak in this section.
68
Novak (note 6) pp. 741–767.

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