The condition of borders has been crucial to many recent exhibitions, conferences and publications. But there does not yet exist a convincing critical frame for the discussion of border discourses. Rethinking Borders offers just such an introduction. It develops important contexts in art and architectural theory, contemporary film-making, criticism and cultural politics, for the proliferation of 'border theories' and 'border practices' that have marked a new stage in the debates over postmodernism, cultural studies and postcolonialism.

The nature and configuration of borders, and the relationship between state borders and societies, have changed. In the 21st century, internationalism, transnationalism, and super-diversity have further provoked complexities and anxieties. It seems that as border and migration regimes undergo dramatic transformations, their public profile increases. This book revisits borders, bordering practices, and meanings, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom as a case study. Bastian A. Vollmer examines not only the theoretical and historical dimensions of borders but also various empirical data, including extensive text corpora and dozens of in-depth interviews. Expanding on the concept of vernacular security—that is, an everyday understanding of security—he argues that the existential value of borders is not merely physical, but extends into the order and future construction of states and societies. This book demonstrates decisively that the concept of the border has not left the centre stage of philosophy, political theory, and political sociology, but has instead emerged as a focal point for multidisciplinary engagements. It further demonstrates how attention to a vernacular perspective can inform those engagements, yielding vital insights. As such, it should appeal to students and scholars across disciplines interested in the contemporary development and relevance of borders and their discursive cultures.

A timely and provocative challenge to the foundations of our global order: why should national borders be unchangeable? The inviolability of national borders is an unquestioned pillar of the post–World War II international order. Fixed borders are believed to encourage stability, promote pluralism, and discourage nationalism and intolerance. But do they? What if fixed borders create more problems than they solve, and what if permitting borders to change would create more stability and produce more just societies? Legal scholar Timothy Waters examines this possibility, showing how we arrived at a system of rigidly bordered states and how the real danger to peace is not the desire of people to form new states but the capacity of existing states to resist that desire, even with violence. He proposes a practical, democratically legitimate alternative: a right of secession. With crises ongoing in the United Kingdom, Spain, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and many other regions, this reassessment of the foundations of our international order is more relevant than ever.

Challenging the Westphalian view of international relations, which focuses on the sovereignty of states and the inevitable potential for conflict, the authors from the Borderlands Study Group reconceive borders as capillaries enabling the flow of material, cultural, and social benefits through local communities, nation-states, and entire regions. By emphasizing local agency and regional interdependencies, this metaphor reconfigures current narratives about the China India border and opens a new perspective on the long history of the Silk Roads, the modern BCIM Initiative, and dam construction along the Nu River in China and the Teesta River in India. Together, the authors show that positive interaction among people on both sides of a border generates larger, cross-border communities, which can pressure for cooperation and development. India China offers the hope that people divided by arbitrary geo-political boundaries can circumvent race, gender, class, religion, and other social barriers, to form more inclusive institutions and forms of governance.

The research of pandemics, epidemics, and pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, reaches beyond biomedicine and touches the core of modern statehood, since foci and vectors of communicable diseases are testing the efficacy of medical control at state borders.By illuminating these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume starts with historical models of quarantine. It deals with fears of contamination and the corresponding stereotypes border crossers and migrants are confronted with. At state borders the latter have been subject to the implementation of medical, genetic and biometric screening techniques. The book wants to show that the contemporary border security regimes of Western states exhibit a high share of medicalised techniques of power that originate in European modernity; it draws on the expertise of a network of researchers who deal with these issues from the early eighteenth century up to recent developments.

This book documents border porosities that have developed and persisted between Greece and North Macedonia over different temporalities and at different localities. By drawing on geology's approaches to studying porosity, the book takes an innovative approach arguing that similarly to rocks and minerals that only appear solid and impermeable, seemingly impenetrable borders are inevitably traversed by different forms of passage. The rich ethnographic case studies spanning between the history of railroads in the region, border town beauty tourism, child refugees during the Greek Civil War, mining and environmental activism, and the urban renovation project in Skopje, show that the political borders between states do not only restrict or regulate the movement of people and things but are also always permeable in ways that exceed state governmentality.

This book brings an intersectional perspective to border studies, drawing on case studies from across the world to consider the ways in which notably gender and race dynamics change the ways in which people cross international borders, and how diffuse and virtual borders impact on migrants' experiences. By bringing together 11 ethnographies, the book demonstrates the necessity for in-depth empirical research to understand the class, gender and race inequalities that shape contemporary borders. In doing so the volume sheds light on how migration control produces gendered violence at physical borders but also through the politics of vulnerability across borders and social boundaries. It places embodied narratives at the heart of the analysis which sheds light on the agency and the many patterns of resistance of migrants themselves. As such, it will appeal to scholars of migration and diaspora studies with interests in gender.