Borders and status-functions: An institutional approach to the study of borders

Abstract

This article develops an institutional understanding of borders. Drawing on constitutive constructivism and theories of practical communication we argue that bordering as a process is a form of sorting through the imposition of status-functions on people and things, which alters the perception of that thing by setting it within a web of normative claims, teleologies and assumptions. Studying any border, therefore, extends to include the rule structure that constitutes it as well as the sources of that structure's legitimacy. Furthermore, rule structures are both restrictive and facilitative and importantly they overlap while retaining different sources of legitimacy: actors bring different constitutive perspectives on the border depending on the particular rule structure they are drawing on in order to make legitimate claims about what that border produces. This recognition sensitizes analysis to the interplay between different sense-making regimes and their authoritative underpinnings. Methodologically it points researchers towards the practical and discursive methods actors use when making arguments about what a particular border can and does do.

Brexit, boundaries and imperial identities: A comparative view

“…Gardner, 2013: 3–9). The outcome of this is a programme of work driven by ‘border thinking’, seeking to articulate the heterogeneous bordering practices of everyday life which define people as similar or different to each other, and thus both manifest and transform not only identity groupings, but also power relationships (Cooper and Perkins, 2011; Parker and Vaughan-Williams, 2009; Rumford, 2006). Placing bordering at the heart of social life clearly makes this move relevant to archaeology.…”

“…Here I define ‘bordering practices’ in an expansive sense, building upon some of the work discussed above (esp. Cooper and Perkins, 2011; Parker and Vaughan-Williams, 2009) to encompass all of the different kinds of activity that people do to create and sustain social boundaries, as well as to cross or erode them – since boundary-making and boundary-crossing are mutually constitutive. In tandem with a practice-based approach to archaeological materials (cf.…”

Temporalities of Refugee Experience in Germany. Diversification of Asylum Rights and Proliferation of Internal Boundaries

“…They may also hinder border crossing, or prescribe the speed at which the border can be crossed, and as such, they bear spatial and temporal dimensions. Borders also define the social status of individuals within a social and legal order, which may change as soon as they cross a political territorial border (Cooper, Perkins 2012). Simply speaking, citizens are transformed into foreigners and vice versa as soon as they cross a state border (Berdahl 1999: 4).…”

On the effects and implications of UK Border Agency involvement in higher education

“…The border is interpolated into the classroom where border‐crossers must prove that they are fulfilling their visa requirements and the university must monitor this fulfilment for the UKBA. Borders are polysemic (Balibar ; Cooper and Perkins ), so such an extension of border space leads to changes in identities not only across non‐domestic students, but also across the student body more generally, across staff and, ultimately, across the university as an institution.…”

“…For the border‐crossing student, this represents a temporal expansion of the border (Cooper and Perkins ). Being a student now entails a rhythm of physical presence; of being in the correct place at the correct time.…”