Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan Boundary

“Where is the border?” Villagers, environmental consultants and the ‘work’ of the Thai–Burma border

“…This approach highlights the possibility for the border to "be done differently," and, optimistically, Rumford suggests that "borderwork is less and less something over which people have no control" (Rumford, 2008a(Rumford, , 2008b. It can be seen as part of a broader shift in scholarship toward treatments that do not privilege the role of a central state in bordering, and that highlight border practices as part of our daily lives (Balibar, 2002;Donnan & Wilson, 1999;Doty, 2007;Heyman, 1995;Megoran, 2006Megoran, , 2012Mountz, 2010;Nevins, 2002;Newman, 2006;Paasi, 1996;Reeves, 2011;Walters, 2006). It also resonates with studies of border residents in Southeast Asia that I will discuss below (Baird, 2010;Sturgeon, 2004Sturgeon, , 2005Turner, 2010;Walker, 1999).…”

Pawns, pirates or peacemakers: Fishing boats in the inter-Korean maritime boundary dispute and ambivalent governmentality

“…Analyzed through the lens of governmentality, the fisher population and fishing boats, together forming a range of fishing activities, reveal a dynamic capacity to affect the meanings of a maritime boundary and alter the trajectory of a dispute. In response to the suggestion that the prevalent frameworks of boundary studies in political geography have largely eluded serious attention on maritime boundaries (Megoran, 2012;Minghi, 1963), it may be of worthy consideration to phrase fishing people as something akin to "borderland residents", who frequent the frontier and whose lives intimately "touch" the border (for land cases, see Doevenspeck, 2011;Jones, 2009;Lamb, 2014;Paasi, 1999). Maritime boundaries are neither inhabited nor delimited in the same way land boundaries are.…”

From mice-eaten passports to fingerprint scanning: fluctuating state presence and ‘entangled documents’ along the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border

“…They would recall that passports were handed out at the local school or working place, indicating that the passportization occurred on the initiative of a state institution rather than the individual citizen. For this community, the Soviet period was also marked by a highly active cross-border life that was barely regulated or surveilled but rather encouraged and supported (Megoran 2012;Reeves 2014;Troscenko 2016). Thus, while it was an important document, the passport was not a prerequisite in the daily lives of these borderland inhabitants.…”