Border Complexities. Outlines and Perspectives of a Complexity Shift in Border Studies

Abstract

Border studies is seeing more and more discussion about complex borders or the complexity of borders. This article systematizes this discussion and shows that there are different views circulating about what exactly is complex at borders and that the complexity term is still used imprecisely. In this article, the notion of complexity will be defined in more detail and border complexities will be proposed as a perspective for an actual complexity shift in border studies. Border complexities stands for a concept that sees borders as relational structures and focuses on the unpredictable, self-dynamic interplay of their event elements and on the emergent effects of dis/order resulting from this interplay.

European Border Region Studies in Times of Borderization: Overview of the Problem and Perspectives

“…However, the concept also implies a concept of border, which in many places has not yet prevailed in European border region studies and calls for a specific methodological perspective. This addresses the trend established in international border studies to open up borders towards the spatially and socially diffused "arenas" of their effectiveness (Wille 2021;2024), a trend that easily conflicts with European border region studies. For while a border for the latter merely exists as an unquestioned and static line that marks the edge of a precisely encircled unity of territory, state, and nation, international border studies has largely emancipated itself from this idea: "[I]t is not the lines on the map [...] that we need to focus on only when studying power geometries, but also how, when and where spatial power differentials are given meaning and being translated in daily practices by people".…”