The expansive understanding of borders and boundaries in recent scholarship has enriched border studies, but it has also obscured what a border is. This set of interventions is motivated by a need for a more sophisticated conceptualization of borders in light of the recent trajectories of border scholarship. In contrast to the much-feted "borderless world" of the early 1990s, the trend during the past decade has been to consider the exercise of state sovereignty at great distances from the border line itself as "bordering". Indeed, Balibar's (1998) notion that "borders are everywhere"-that the sovereign state's loci of bordering practices can no longer be isolated to the lines of a political map of states-has gained tremendous currency but it is also quite a departure from traditional border studies. Thus the broad question posed to our contributors was: Where is the border in border studies?

In recent years, categories have been a topic of substantial research in the social sciences and humanities. Although many problematic categories such as culture, gender and scale have been criticized, moving beyond them has proved to be surprisingly difficult. This paper attributes this difficulty to what is termed the paradox of categories and argues that the key problems with categories emerge from the contradictory ways their boundaries are intellectually and cognitively understood. By integrating poststructural insights into the role categories play in ordering modern society with research from cognitive science on the role categories play as containers in cognitive processes, this paper argues that the boundaries of categories should be understood as always inchoate — only partially formed and incomplete. The paper concludes that research into categories and boundaries is unnecessarily fragmented across a wide range of disciplines and proposes expanding boundary studies in geography to be the field that investigates the bounding processes that result in all types of categories.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper identifies a global trend towards hardened, militarised borders through the use of military technologies, hardware and personnel. In contrast to claims of waning state sovereignty, drawing on detailed case studies from the United States and European Union, we argue the militarisation of borders represents a re-articulation and expansion of state sovereignty into new spaces and arenas. We argue that the nexus of military-security contractors, dramatically increased security budgets, and the discourse of threats from terrorism and immigration is resulting in a profound shift in border security. The construction of barriers, deployment of more personnel and the investment in a wide range of military and security technologies from drones to smart border technologies that attempt to monitor, identify and prevent unauthorised movements are emblematic of this shift. We link this increasing militarisation to dehumanisation of migrant others and to the increasing mortality in border spaces. By documenting this trend and identifying a range of different practices that are included under the rubric of militarisation, this paper is both a call for nuanced interpretation and more sustained investigation of the expansion of the military into the policing of borders.

No abstract

No abstract

Introduction On one of my last days of research in India, as I was passing an Indian Border Security Force (BSF) compound, I noticed a large banner that hung across the imposing wall of the facility. (1) BSF camps are ubiquitous on the Indian side of the border, providing a reminder that the state is operating in the borderlands to provide security for the population. Many smaller camps are within a few hundred meters of the border; however, there are also larger bases, like this one, that are several kilometers inside India. The banner hung beside two armed guards in formal military dress who stood at the gated entrance to the compound. It was above their reinforced guard post and just below lengths of barbed wire at the top of the wall. The message, written in large English letters, was simple:``BSF: Friend of border populace.'' On the banner, there was a large photograph of a BSF soldier in an aggressive stance, apparently having just jumped over an obstacle. He was dressed in military fatigues, had both hands on an assault rifle held out in front of his body, and his dirty, camouflage-painted face was eternally caught in a war cry. Although political borders have always been a key concern for the leaders of sovereign states, the narratives of fear and uncertainty that have characterized the discourse of the`global war on terror' have allowed governments worldwide to rapidly accelerate securitization processes at their borders (