and documents.
The boundary is a looser term,
Borders, boundaries, and
borderlands
David Newman
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Geographers have traditionally viewed bound-
aries as lying at the very heart of their discipline.
Since geography is concerned with the study
of areal and spatial differentiation, the existence
of territorial boundaries is taken as normative
in the sense that the compartmentalization of
social, economic, and cultural spaces assumes
the presence of lines that separate these spaces
from each other. The geographic literature in
general, and the political geographic literature in
particular, is replete with the study of boundaries
as a category, building on numerous boundary
case studies. While the bulk of this literature
has focused on the international dimension
of boundaries, the existence and functions of
administrative, municipal, planning, and other
forms of localized boundaries have also been
studied. Notwithstanding, it is the international
boundary that has traditionally been seen as
the most distinct of geographic demarcators,
separating the sovereign state from its neighbor
and, as such, determining the nature of the
political and economic development on either
side of the boundary (Newman 2006).
Political geographers have traditionally dif-
ferentiated between the concepts of borders,
boundaries, and frontiers. The border is a polit-
ical concept, which identifies the territorial
limits of the state and beyond where movement
is limited to those with the necessary permits
The International Encyclopedia of Geography.
Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg1039
which signifies the territorial margins of the
state, reflecting other social and ethnic charac-
teristics of the population on either side. Recent
literature has tended to downplay any significant
difference in the use of these two concepts.
The frontier is a zone, rather than single line,
and signifies the area on each side of a border
or boundary within which human activity is
impacted by the presence of the border. This
impact may change significantly depending on
whether the border is “open” or “closed,” or
whether it is a border between friendly countries
or those at war with each other. Frontiers, also
known in the recent literature as “borderlands”
or “transition zones,” are those areas straddling
both sides of the boundary where peoples
from both sides can interact as part of the border
opening process, and where, over long periods of
time, ethnic and political hybridity may emerge.
Prior to the 1960s, political geographers
focused on a descriptive analysis and categoriza-
tion of international borders and the processes
through which such borders have been delimited
and demarcated. It was common for scholars to
typologize the different types of border, based
on the way in which they had been demarcated,
during a period of major reterritorialization
that took place, particularly in Europe, after
each of the world wars ( Jones 1959; Rankin and
Schofield 2004). The classic border typology that
appeared in many of the introductory political
geography texts was that of Richard Hartshorne.
Borrowing terms from fluvial geomorphology,
he classified boundaries as antecedent, subse-
quent, and superimposed, the last describing
the many colonial boundaries that had been
drawn up by European powers in their division
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
of territories in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East
(Hartshorne 1936).
As with political geography and geopolitics
in general, the period immediately following
World War II lacked any significant border
analysis, notable exceptions being Pound’s work
on natural boundary ideologies (Pounds 1951)
or Julian Minghi’s seminal overview of global
boundaries and their categorizations in the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
in the early 1960s (Minghi 1963).
The renaissance of border studies was spurred
on by the globalization narratives of the late
1980s and 1990s (Ohmae 1990; Newman and
Paasi 1998; Paasi 1998), which posited a “border-
less” world as a result of structural cross-border
processes such as the emergence of cyberspace
and the global flow of capital, along with the
historical and political contingencies of the fall
of the East−West divide, along with the collapse
of the Berlin Wall, the expansion of the Euro-
pean Union, and the removal of intra-European
borders between the member states. While
recognizing the impact of such processes on
the function and significance of contemporary
borders, scholars rejected the notion of a bor-
derless, de-compartmentalized world, and began
to meet across the disciplinary boundaries to
examine the border phenomenon in greater
depth and to provide a counter narrative to
the idealized borderless world scenario. This
collaboration included a deeper understanding
of border management, power relations at the
border, vertical, cultural, and social borders,
invisible and perceived borders, and the spaces
around the border that created borderlands,
zones of transition, and spaces of hybridity.
Emerging initially as a counter narrative to
the globalization theses of a “borderless world,”
border studies have become transformed into a
distinct subdiscipline within the world of polit-
ical geography in its own right (Brunet-Jailly
2
2005; Kolossov 2005; Paasi 2005), drawing
together scholars from diverse disciplines beyond
the limited scope of geographers and political
scientists. This has become evident in a growing
number of research networks, conferences and
workshops, and publications. These include
ABS (Association of Borderland Studies), IBRU
(International Boundaries Research Unit),
BRIT (Border Regions in Transition Network),
ABORNE (African Borders Research Net-
work), all of which hold annual conferences
and workshops. In addition to an exponen-
tial growth of border-related papers that have
been published in both political geography and
geopolitics, the Journal of Borderland Studies has
emerged as an important outlet for such research
in recent years, moving from a case-study ori-
ented approach to a higher number of theoretical
and conceptual contributions. Major research
funding projects have, during the past decade,
focused on border related topics, recent examples
including the European funded research consor-
tia, such as the FP5 EUBorder Conf and the FP7
EUROBORDERscapes, the Canadian funded
Borders in Globalization (BIG) project, and the
Finnish Academy funded RELATE Centre of
Excellence for the study of Bordering, Identities,
and Transnationalization.
A disproportionate amount of recent research
has focused on case studies, especially those
which describe the processes through which
previously closed borders have opened and
across which residents of one side undertake
their journey of discovery to meet the other
side. The subject of cross-border regions has
been the focus of intensive discussion, especially
throughout the expanding spatial sphere of the
European Union. The process through which
borders have opened and become more porous
has been accompanied by a growing interest in
the reclosing of borders, which has accompanied
the securitization discourses of the post-9/11
 BOR D ER S, BOU NDAR IES, A ND B OR D ER L A ND S
era and a return to a renewed focus on border
control, management, and surveillance.
There has not been the creation of a single
border theory as such, bringing together dif-
ferent types and scales of border, but there has
been a cross-disciplinary discussion (itself an
interesting example of the ways in which borders
are negotiated and crossed within the academic
world and through which both scholars and
practitioners with different experiences meet
each other in cross-disciplinary transition zones)
of a common glossary of terms of relevance to all
types of border scholars (Newman 2006, 2011).
These, as will be discussed in the remainder of
this entry, bring together borders as a functional
and dynamic process, boundary producing prac-
tices discussed within critical geopolitics in the
1990s, and the process of bordering as aptly coined
by one of the leading border theorists, Henk
van Houtum, from the University of Nijmegen,
rather than simply as a physical and unchanging
spatial outcome of a political or social process
(van Houtum 2005). The common use of terms,
albeit in different contexts, such as demarcation
and delimitation of borders, the management
and control of borders, power relations, the ways
in which borders are represented, and border
zones as spaces as contrasted with borders as
lines, have been found to constitute common
terms of interest to the growing diversity of
border scholars.
Themes in contemporary border studies
Opening and closing of borders: parallel
discourse
As the nature of the territory–state discourse
has changed in recent years, so too has the role
and function of boundaries. The end of the
nation-state brought with it a parallel argument
relating to the disappearance of boundaries.
The impact of economic globalization, the
dissemination of information and knowledge
through cyberspace, and the firing of ballistic
missiles over long distances paying scant regard to
the physical existence or location of borders have
greatly reduced the significance of boundaries in
their traditional function of constituting barriers
to the movement of people, weapons, goods, or
ideas. The opening of borders was contingent
upon the structural changes of globalization in
such areas as the free flow of global capital, the
cross-border cyberspaces that enabled informa-
tion and communication to bypass the traditional
border barrier controls, along with the political
and historical changes, such as the fall of the
iron curtain on the one hand and the removal
of internal borders within the ever-expanding
European Union on the other.
Notwithstanding, a brief glance at the map
of the world shows that, despite the discourse
of new world orders, the basic territorial com-
partmentalization of the globe remains strongly
based on the existing pattern of sovereign states.
Reterritorialization (as contrasted with the prob-
lematic notion of deterritorialization) continues
to impact the world political map, even if the
functions and significances of the borders – not
least the disappearance of many of the physical
and visible elements of the border fence – are
constantly changing. The opening of borders and
the easing of cross-border physical movement in
some places have brought about new suprastate
and intrastate geopolitical interactions, in many
cases ignoring the state altogether. But while
some boundaries were opened up to movement
and became more permeable, many countries
have created new fences of separation in an
attempt to strengthen their own senses of iden-
tity and control mechanisms, not least in areas of
continued ethnic or national conflict. In short,
the processes affecting borders and boundaries
in the contemporary world are geographically
3
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
differentiated, opening in some places, closing in
others, contingent upon the constant dynamics
of political and geopolitical change.
Nowhere is this process more apparent today
than in parts of the Middle East where, in
addition to unresolved problems of territorial
demarcation for an independent Palestinian State,
much of the region has been thrown into tur-
moil through the emergence of the Islamic State,
which controls territories beyond the boundaries
that emerged almost a hundred years ago follow-
ing the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the
Sykes−Picot arrangements, and the imposition
of boundaries by the European powers.
Following the events of 9/11 and the emer-
gence of global terror and violence, there has
been a move toward the resealing and reclosing
of borders as a means through which states
prevent “alien” and “illegal” elements from
crossing into the territories and the space of
the homeland. This securitization discourse is
itself a counter-narrative of the open border
and has been, to a limited extent, shunned by
critical scholars who see the border opening
process as an idealized position that reflects the
“good” as contrasted with the closed and the
controlled as the “bad.” Notwithstanding, the
number of closed and sealed borders as reflected
in the large number of new fences and walls that
have been constructed by states during the past
decade as a means of preventing terrorism and
violence from crossing the border is of major
significance. This has become even more marked
in the immediate aftermath of the mass flows of
refugees and migrants escaping the ravages of war
and famine in the Middle East (especially Syria)
and Africa, and the inability of the European
Union to deal with the humanitarian problem
that has emerged. New fences have been con-
structed, but unlike those of previous eras, they
are proving to be largely ineffective in providing
barriers to the mass flow of people seeking to
4
cross the borders at all costs. In one respect,
new borders are more sophisticated in terms of
the highly sophisticated surveillance and control
techniques, well beyond the limited capabilities
of a border guard, at a specific location along the
border (such as in the US or Israel and its neigh-
bors), while in other areas (such as the outer
frontiers of the EU along the Schengen line),
governments are unable to deal with the sudden
mass movement of refugees, again reflecting the
contrasting dynamics of contemporary border
management.
The use of the securitization narrative has
also been manipulated by those states that
desire to prevent the continued transboundary
movement of illegal immigrants from poorer
countries seeking employment and life improve-
ment opportunities. While in the past states
could deal with the cross-border movement
of migrants, remote from the public eye and
the mass media, in whatever way they chose,
such is no longer the case. Human rights
groups, border ethics, and a wider focus on
multiculturalism have prevented states from
undertaking the sort of anti-immigrant actions
that were common in the past for as long as
the reason for crossing borders was to seek
life improvement opportunities. The use of
the securitization discourse by departments
of homeland security, appealing to the base
instincts of the public by highlighting the phys-
ical threat from terrorism and violence if the
border remains uncontrolled, has proven to be a
powerful means to enforce greater surveillance
and more stringent controls over those who
desire to cross borders from one side to the
other.
The contemporary study of borders and
boundaries reflects ongoing political practice of
states and lobby groups, negotiating between two
parallel border narratives: that of the borderless
world, which brings about the opening and
 BOR D ER S, BOU NDAR IES, A ND B OR D ER L A ND S
eventual removal of borders, as contrasted with
that of securitization, which brings about the
closing and resealing of borders (Newman 2015).
This is not a binary distinction as each has its
backers, a powerful economic lobby promoting
unrestricted movement of people, goods, and
capital, and a powerful securitization lobby pro-
moting a return to stringent border control and
management techniques. Both are considered
important for the state as they seek to promote
economic transactions and flows and to reduce
the security threats (real or perceived) from the
emergence of global violence and fundamentalist
ideologies. There is not therefore a return to the
previous notions of closed boundaries protecting
the homeland population from the neighboring
state, but an attempt to reshape the function
of borders as barriers to threats that are them-
selves part of the way in which globalization
has impacted and enabled the dissemination of
knowledge – including knowledge that assists
terrorism and violence – across borders.
In the North American example, NAFTA
(Northern American Free Trade Agreement) and
related economic agencies promote global trade
and commerce and endeavor to create porous
borders for the flow of people, labor, goods,
and capital, as contrasted with the role of the
US Department of Homeland Security, which
endeavors to retain as tight control of borders
as possible. In the eyes of Homeland Security,
workers crossing the border are perceived as
potential terrorist threats unless and until proven
otherwise and this perception often enables gov-
ernments to control the flow of labor migration
under the guise of securitization – a discourse
more acceptable to public opinion for justifying
the stringent and, in some cases, less than ethical
means used by border guards and security agents
to prevent people from crossing the border from
the “out” territory to the “in” territory.
Border diversity and scale
Borders may have common functions but they
are diverse in nature. This point is as relevant
to the spatial scale of those borders that impact
our daily lives as it is to the non-geographic societal
borders, the vertical constructs, through which
society is compartmentalized and ordered.
Equally, borders do not have to be visible to be
effective. The perceived borders, the lines in the
imagination, which prevent us from crossing
from one place or one group into another, do
not require the physical dimensions of fences
and walls in order for them to impact upon our
daily life patterns.
The decreasing significance of territorial bor-
ders between some states has served to highlight
the increased importance of spatial borders at
other spatial scales of analysis, which may affect
our lives in a more powerful way than do the
lines that separate one state in the international
system from its neighbor. The analysis of scale in
border studies is of major significance. We reside
within urban, municipal, and other functional
spaces, which impact our daily life patterns to
a much greater extent than does the occasional
crossing of the border between states. The
provision of public services, the payment of
property taxes, the registration of our children
to schools or to health providers are but a few
of the major life activities that are contingent
upon the arbitrary demarcation of local borders
by planners, bureaucrats, and municipal officials.
Once demarcated, they can be difficult to change
even if the dynamics of life change the nature of
the urban segregation and stratification process
much more speedily than the relatively slow,
albeit sudden, changing of state borders. The
establishment of municipal boundary commis-
sions, with the object of resynchronizing urban
and municipal boundaries in line with residential
change and metropolitan expansion, is accom-
panied by much political intervention and spatial
5
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
engineering and gerrymandering. The determi-
nation of electoral districts or constituencies by
redrawing borders is perhaps the most blatant of
all boundary demarcation exercises, reflecting
spatial change on the one hand and engineering
political change on the other.
Most of us live within a highly fragmented set
of spatial and social compartments. Society is too
complex for all of the local borders to correspond
with each other. Some borders, such as those that
contain the municipalities to which people pay
taxes or the school districts within which they are
allowed to register their children for education,
are more apparent than others. People are aware
of many of the borders that determine their lives
only on the few occasions when they are in need
of them – a police or a fire district – and when
these do not correspond with the other local bor-
ders with which they are familiar, they become
unable to function with the same efficiency
and certainty that they do in other spheres.
Thus local borders are only of importance when
the life function they demarcate is necessary;
however, the fact that they play no significance
in people’s daily lives for most of the time does
not mean that they do not exist or that they do
not play a role in the way in which society is
spatially compartmentalized or socially ordered.
While such borders are mostly invisible to
the eye and are not reflected in walls, fences,
or security guards, their impact is of major
significance. Most of the world’s population have
never crossed an international border and do not
possess the documentation to do so. Such is not
only the case of the less developed world. When,
in the 2000s, as a result of increased fear within
North America from the flow of terror across the
country’s borders, US citizens were obliged to
have passports instead of relying solely on driv-
ing licenses to cross the border to Mexico or to
Canada, it emerged that no more than 15% of the
country’s citizens had ever taken out a passport
6
or moved beyond the lines separating the United
States from any other country in the international
system. The most significant border crossing for
much of the US population is that which sep-
arates the internal states from each other within
the federal system of states, which may have
different rates of local taxation, laws relating to
liquor, or highway speed limits. These borders
are geographical in nature – they significantly
impact daily life patterns, but are vastly different
in the ways that they are managed and controlled
as contrasted with the borders that separate the
United States from its neighboring countries.
The study of scale differences is also of impor-
tance in terms of the borders that separate one
individual from the other – the self-spaces that
we create, or are created for us, around the
body, and in our relations with our neighbors.
This entry does not address this scale of border
analysis, other than to remark that a deeper
understanding of personal spaces also requires
another layer of understanding how such borders
are created (demarcated) and what mechanisms
are used (border control and management) to
defend such personal spaces from the intrusion
of others, while allowing loved or trusted ones
to enter the space of the self.
A second form of border diversity is con-
cerned with the vertical and societal borders,
not all of which are spatial or geographical
although their dispersion throughout space may
have major geographical implications. Many
socioeconomic or cultural groups cross borders
in terms of a single fixed territorial location and
their boundaries as such are movable or to be
found in multiple locations at one and the same
time. The emergence of a cross-disciplinary
interest in borders has highlighted the common
functional concerns with the way that borders
are demarcated and controlled, no less in the
way that people are compartmentalized within
social or cultural categories than they are within
 BOR D ER S, BOU NDAR IES, A ND B OR D ER L A ND S
geographical districts. The hegemony with
which geographers traditionally understood the
concept of borders as being an essential spatial
concept has been replaced by an understanding
that borders create order in a complex world
not only between geographic spaces, but also
between cultural, social, religious, and economic
groups, all of which contribute to the notion of
societal compartmentalization. Each has its own
border, its own processes of demarcation and
delimitation, means of effectively controlling
and managing the border, and its crossing points.
Crossing from one territory into another may be
relatively easy with the problems encountered
by people attempting to cross from one cultural
or religious group into another and the ways
in which they negotiate, through documents,
customs, or even linguistic skills (the ultimate
sealed border for one who does not speak the
requisite language) to move beyond the border.
The division of society into cultural, religious,
and economic groups, to name but a few of
the more major categories, is about borders
and compartments. Notions of demarcation,
delimitation, crossing borders, and border man-
agement are as much part of the discourse of
sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists,
and economists as they are of geographers. The
functional terminologies discussed in this review
are common to all forms and types of border, be
they geographical or cultural, visible or invisible,
local or global. The crossing of disciplinary bor-
ders creates a cross-border community of ideas,
which is at the core of the recent renaissance of
border studies within the social sciences.
The third form of border diversity is con-
cerned with the tangibility or invisibility of
boundaries. Borders can be perceived as much
as they are visible or tangible. Within urban
environments, specific neighborhoods and their
assumed cultural characteristics are as much
about image as they are about reality. Residents
do not cross beyond certain self-perceived limits,
a major transportation artery, or a major road
junction, assuming the people on the “other”
side to be different – in terms of racial char-
acteristics, income levels, or ethnic diversity.
The imagined borders of the urban landscape
are as much about the creation of borders and
self-imposed prophecies as they are about the
ways in which they may reflect already existing
realities and difference. In this context, Stephen
Graham has discussed the role of urban dividing
lines and their scalar connection to wider spaces
and processes (Graham 2010). The perception
of borders can be much harder to change than
the physical removal of boundaries. With this
knowledge many groups who are in positions
of power (see next section), and are able to
determine the constant formation and reforma-
tion of urban landscapes for their own political
or economic ends, are able to manipulate the
ways in which space remains segregated, or
undergoes new processes of segregation, through
the demarcation of municipal boundaries and/or
the manipulation of the housing market within
both the public and private spheres.
Power relations at the border
A major theme within all areas of border studies
concerns the nature of power relations (New-
man 2003). Power relations are as relevant in
terms of those who undertake the processes of
demarcation and delimitation as they are of those
(often the same power elites) who determine
the ways in which borders are managed and
controlled. The decision to “open” or “close”
borders is a political decision reflecting power
interests as is the decision to relocate the control
of borders away from the physical location of
the border – in the middle of airport terminals
in a foreign country or behind the faceless
desk of a visa bureaucrat half way around the
7
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
world. Power thus determines the changing
geographical location of the border and the bor-
der guard, aided and abetted by technology that
intensifies border surveillance and management
rather than contribute to the weakening of the
barrier functions of borders. This management
is in sharp contrast to the role of technology that
was highlighted in the globalization debates of
the 1980s and 1990s and that assumed a direct
correlation between technology and the opening
of borders as part of a uni-directional process.
The very existence of borders is essentially
a function of political power. All borders are
politically and socially constructed. They may
result from military conquest, cultural hege-
mony, or from bilateral agreements, depending
on the extent to which power is asymmetrical
and borders are either imposed by one powerful
side or agreed upon by two or more sides. The
demarcation of many state boundaries has been
superimposed as a result of victory in times of
war. Their delimitation has not taken account
of the requirements (legitimate or otherwise) of
the vanquished side, not least in situations where
warfare has focused around contested claims for
valuable natural resources within the borderland
or the inclusion of ethnic groups as part of the
national entity. The construction of borders may
signify identity, but is more significant in the
determination of citizenship. This situation also
raises many critical questions concerning the
ethics of border construction, superimposition,
and management that have been addressed by
scholars in recent years (Williams 2003; van
Houtum and Boedeltje 2009).
There is no such thing as a “natural boundary”
in the sense that the physical topography deter-
mines the course and the location of the bound-
ary. But where it is convenient for the power
elites to make use of natural features and where it
does not conflict with their political objectives,
states will use them. The use of natural features
8
would have been common in pre-technological
historical periods of reduced mobility and access
from one region to another. As such, the initial
location of boundaries affected the development
and consolidation of state territories over time.
But where states have undergone processes of
reterritorialization, especially through the past
century, the natural features are only used by
power hegemonies to determine the course of
the boundary where it serves other political
purposes. In many cases, natural features, such
as the location of mineral deposits or the flow of
riparian waters, are precisely the factors deter-
mining their inclusion by the power elites within
their own territories. In the past, such factors
were often the catalysts for territorial conflict.
In situations where ethnic majorities and
minorities are split across boundaries and consti-
tute spatial minorities in neighboring states, the
formal determination of citizenship is contingent
upon boundaries, even where this conflicts with
critical issues of national identity. The super-
imposition of borders upon ethnic landscapes
is a function of asymmetrical power relations.
The long straight geometric lines so common
throughout Africa and, until recently, in much of
the Middle East are the most blatant example of
the use of power to superimpose borders upon a
landscape. This demarcation may have resulted in
the division of homogeneous ethnic territories
between neighboring states, reducing relatively
large ethnic groups to minority status in neigh-
boring political entities. Probably the most signif-
icant twentieth-century example of such division
resulting from a process of re-bordering is that
of the Kurds. The post-World War I victorious
powers, seeking to re-compartmentalize the
territories that had been under the control of the
Ottoman Empire, and according to the realpoli-
tik interests of the period, drew lines in the heart
of the Kurdish territory, fragmenting the region
between Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, with smaller
 BOR D ER S, BOU NDAR IES, A ND B OR D ER L A ND S
residuals in both the Soviet Union and Syria
and leaving them as ethnic minorities within
those neighboring states. One hundred years
after the demarcation of Middle Eastern bound-
aries along the principles of the Sykes−Picot
agreement, with the upsurge in internal discord,
the Arab “spring,” and the rise in the power
of the Islamic State, the artificially constructed
borders of this region are falling away. The
contemporary turbulent events in the Middle
East have resulted, once again, in attempts to
redraw borders and enable the Kurds to establish
their own independent political territories.
The same can be said for Germans during
the period of the division of Germany or Pales-
tinians following the partition of Palestine in
1948−1949. In both cases a single ethnic group
was split beyond the boundaries imposed as a
result of political conflict. While their cultural
identity remains unchanged, their separate cit-
izenship is determined by the border regime.
Instead of constituting a majority ethnic group
as part of a “nation” state, they remain ethnic
(and in some cases persecuted) minorities in
neighboring states, where the borders are rigidly
controlled in an attempt to prevent cross-border
alliances against the existing state regimes.
Control is exercised as an absolute concept
throughout state territory as far as the border.
This claim contrasts with normative geographi-
cal theory in many areas of economic and social
development, which emphasizes distance decay
as a major explanatory factor for geographical
and spatial differentiation. Notions of sovereignty
do not, on paper, comply with the concept of
core and periphery, where the process is stronger
in one place than in another. The border is the
ultimate delimiter in that it separates absolute
control from zero control across a relatively small
geographic space. It is this function of borders
that has been challenged more than any other by
globalization and that may yet serve to change
the essential power relations at and beyond the
border.
Border superimposition has also resulted in the
opposite phenomenon, namely, the inclusion of
multiple ethnic groups within a single political
territory, resulting in competition for power and
control and, in many cases in Africa and more
recently the Middle East, civil strife and warfare,
ethnic expulsion, and genocide. For a continent
that has had to come to terms with the violent
legacy of border superimposition in regions
where territorial behavior for thousands of years
was not based around fixed territories with lines
that could not be crossed, contemporary west-
ernized notions of borderless worlds are as much
a superimposition of political hegemonies as was
the imposition of the borders in the first place.
The major difference between the two periods
is that it was the Western powers, external to
the region, who determined the territorial map
one hundred years ago, while today it is the local
power elites who determine the ways in which
territorial power is to be distributed.
The same powers that determine the criteria
for border demarcation also determine the ways
in which borders are to be managed, especially
regarding who and what can cross the border
from one side to the other and under what
conditions. The necessary documentation in
the form of passports, visas, and other forms
of identity documents and permits is a pow-
erful form of border control that enables state
agencies to permit or prevent people or goods
(lacking the necessary customs fees) from freely
crossing in a world of fixed territories. As border
smuggling has become more sophisticated and
as people cross national and other borders in
cyberspace without physically moving from one
place to another, so too the forms of surveil-
lance and control have become more advanced
and technologically sophisticated, as reflected
in a major growth in the field of research on
9
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
border surveillance, often funded by respective
departments of homeland security who seek
ways in which to make borders more difficult
to cross and even hermetically sealed in some
places. The location of the border control point
has moved partly away from the border itself
to places where control can be exercised at a
distance – such as the checking of passports in
airports many thousands of miles away from the
country to where entry is sought or to an office
in Washington that collects surveillance data of
movement across the US−Mexico border within
seconds and relays these data back to the local
control centers.
As borders were initially transformed from
closed (sealed) to open and porous (or vice versa)
it was initially assumed that this transformation
reflected a transfer of power from one elite to
another, as governments with different perspec-
tives on global geopolitics wrested power one
from the other. But in retrospect, it is the same
power elites who, having determined what was
in their political and economic interests at a time
of border construction, are able to adapt with
the changing global realities and to modify their
policies vis-à-vis border management as a world
of flows, movement, and networks serves their
interests in the same way as did a previous world
of closed compartments. It is essentially another
way in which power is institutionalized within
existing bureaucracies and governmental elites
enabling power to be maintained even in the face
of volatile global and regional transformation.
Borderlands and cross-border zones
Borders have become associated with the notion
of the borderland, the functional space within
which development is impacted by the existence
of the border or the boundary in close proximity.
A borderland is defined as a region in close
proximity to a political border, within which
10
development diverges from what would have
been expected under normal planning models.
Such spaces are not symmetrical on each side of
the border and functions may extend more on
one side of the border than the other, contingent
upon both the nature of the border itself, and
the government policies and investment within
the border zone. In cases of cross-border tensions
and animosities, where borders remain largely
closed to the movement of people and goods
from one side to the other, such policies can vary
from extensive investment and development as
a means of ensuring a bolstered presence along
the border or a lack of resources in a region that
is considered potentially at risk of conflict and
potential destruction.
The literature has used different terminologies
to describe cross-border spaces, including polit-
ical frontiers, borderlands, cross-border regions,
and border zones. The common point about
all of these terms is that they focus on an area
or space as contrasted with a single line. The
extent of contact or meeting across the border
line determines the extent to which the border
functions as a barrier to movement or as a place
where meeting takes place and, in some cases,
where cultural and social hybridity is created.
Cross-border spaces are particularly effective in
regions where a process of border opening is
taking place and where the initial cross-border
contacts can take place at grassroots levels of
mundane daily activities such as food provision,
tourism, and commerce.
As borders in many parts of the world have
become increasingly porous, the borderland has
become transformed into a zone of transition
where peoples and cultures, previously separated
from each other, come into contact and create
a place of meeting. Cultural transition between
two distinct peoples or cultures may take place.
In some cases there may even be cultural hybrid-
ity as the previous distance decay between state
 BOR D ER S, BOU NDAR IES, A ND B OR D ER L A ND S
cores and peripheries is replaced with a transition
from one culture to another. The European
Union in particular has created transboundary or
cross-border regions within the borderlands as a
means of easing the border opening process and
creating places of meeting and familiarity where
there had previously been places of separation
and ignorance of what takes place on the “other”
side. These policies have eased the eventual bor-
der opening or erasure as new countries become
members of the EU, enabling free movement
from one state territory to another.
Cyberspace and satellite communications
have contributed a great deal to the reduction
of cross-border animosities, as they depict the
cross-border “other” as encountering the same
daily life activities and problems. Such depic-
tions may contrast with the governmentally
constructed images of the cross-border “other”
as constituting a threat from which the national
self has to be protected through the construction
of walls and fences and through stringent pro-
cesses of border management. Cyberspace and
globalization have contributed to a rethinking
of the border phenomenon as borders that
cannot be crossed on the ground have effectively
been crossed on the internet and have removed
the sense of threat and fear that traditionally
emanated from the other side of the border.
Equally, the crossing of borders in cyberspace,
has also brought about situations in which
threat can be disseminated across boundaries
that were previously closed. This is especially
true of the dissemination of national ideologies,
strengthening the role of diaspora groups and
their attachment to their former “homelands,”
even for those who are already second and
third generations removed from their ancestral
homelands. Such is also the case with the spread
of global terror during the past fifteen years. The
cross-border dissemination of messages, slogans,
and information encouraging violence and
anti-state behavior is enabled precisely through
the use and manipulation of globalization
technologies as state boundaries are no longer
effective in preventing such flows of information
from taking place. Thus, local populations are
encouraged to take part in such activities (such
as British citizens who were involved in the 7/7
bombings in London), rather than focusing on
migrants who have physically crossed the border
and have traditionally been perceived as the
instigators of internal instability.
The existence of border regions in which
the border can be crossed as part of normal life
also highlights the changing understanding of
cross-border difference. Much recent research
in the field of border studies has focused on the
changing mechanics and dynamics of the border
crossing process. A misconception concerning
the opening and crossing of borders was that as
borders open, so difference is gradually erased
and disappears. But the numerous narratives that
accompany cross-border experiences strengthen,
rather than diminish, the notion of difference on
two sides of a border – in terms of the price of
goods, the nature of the cuisine, the politeness
(or rudeness) of the people, the language spoken,
and so on. But the opening of the border enables
such difference to be enjoyed and celebrated
rather than constituting the underlying reason for
threat. It strengthens the notion of the border as
a line of cultural division or separation, but one
that exists within a multicultural world where
the previous binaries of “self” and “other” are to
be shared and enjoyed, rather than feared out of
a lack of knowledge and invisibility put in place
by a sealed and impenetrable border. Difference
that has existed across the border for hundreds
of years will not disappear overnight as borders
become easier to cross, but as borders become
more porous and people cross them on a regular
basis, difference no longer necessarily constitutes
threat.
11
B OR DE RS, B O UN DAR I E S, A N D B O R DE R L A ND S
The celebration of difference within cross-
border regions has also added a new dimension
to the growing interest in border tourism. Both
closed and open borders are a magnet for inter-
ested tourists. They are as eager to see and be
photographed at the DMZ (demilitarized zone)
in Korea or the points of transit between Israel
and the West Bank as they are to experience
different cultures and customs on each side of
the border. Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin has
become a major attraction for tourists, as have
the few remaining border relicts left by govern-
ments at former borders and around which new
informal tourism commerce has emerged. There
is a great potential for further border tourism
and governments are eager to cash in on this
new border phenomenon – at places of conflict
as at places of peace.
Border representations and images
Much of the recent literature on geopolitics
in general, and border studies in particular,
has discussed the ways in which borders are
represented in a variety of images, ranging
from traditional sources such as cartography
and paintings to additional media such as film,
literature, caricatures, graffiti on walls, on the
web, in Microsoft and other cyber products, and
even poetry (Dell’Agnese and Amilhat-Szary
2015).
Images and representations of borders often
reflect grassroots understandings of the impact
and significance of borders. Maps and cartogra-
phy were used in the past to create hegemonic
views of the territorial configurations of state
territories and the notion of the “correct” border
in the eyes of the political elites and in the process
of territorial socialization, especially in situations
of territorial conflict between countries. Many
caricatures of borders reflect the construction
of walls and fences, rather than their removal,
12
indicating the visual impact that such borders
have on the public at large. The inability to
move or communicate across borders is a theme
often highlighted in films, as too the difficulties
encountered when trying to cross closed or sealed
borders. Smuggling across borders, illegal migra-
tion, or the crossing of the border from a danger-
ous to a safe space (including that of fugitives) are
other common themes replayed in different geo-
graphical and political situations. Literature often
focuses on the nature of difference expected to be
encountered on either side of a closed border or,
alternately, the discovery that perceived differ-
ences are not as threatening as originally thought
when border crossings do take place. This topic
offers much scope for future research and under-
standing of the significance of borders as they
impact daily lives of both individuals and nations.
A Border Poem
Paul Muldoon (2001)
Boundary Commission
Your remember that village where the border
ran down the middle of the street
with the butcher and the baker in different
states?
Today he remarked how a shower of rain
had stopped so cleanly across Golightly’s Lane,
it might have been a shower of glass that had
toppled over.
He stood there, for ages, to wonder which side,
if any, he should be on.
SEE ALSO: Frontiers; Nation-state; State, the
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Newman, David. 2006. “Borders and Bordering:
Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” European
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1177/1368431006063331.
Prescott, J.R. Victor. 2015. The Geography of Fron-
tiers and Boundaries. London: Routledge. (Original
work published in 1965.)
Wilson, Thomas, and Hastings Donan, eds.
2012. A Companion to Border Studies. Oxford:
Blackwell.
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