Routing Borders Between Territories, Discourses and Practices

H.Van Houtum, Eiki Berg, H.Van Houtum, Eiki Berg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351759113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

This title was first published in 2003. This multi-disciplinary reading focuses on the latent meaningful and contextual strategies that are often implied and included in bordering processes. It demonstrates that the border as a concept is not so much an object, but rather an ongoing process. The book also consciously and provocatively balances the modernist trap of universalism, exclusive ordering and state-centrism and the postmodernist trap of moral nihilism. Leading specialists in their fields provide illustrative case studies from Europe and Asia, making a major contribution to border studies.

Chapter 1
Prologue: A Border is Not a Border. Writing and Reading Borders in Space

Eiki Berg and Henk van Houtum

The Lens of the Border

Since the last decade of the 20th century there has been a growing interest in borders, border regions, and cross-border studies. Partly this can be related to major changes in world politics in the last decade, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Cold War order. Since the opening up and fragmentation of the former 'East' many old border disputes have re-emerged and given rise to some new and renewed territorial claims of the modern world. On the European continent, within and the borders of the European Union most specifically, we have witnessed reverse developments, that is, strong attempts to defragmentize and integrate political entities. As a result, the interest in the potential for transnationalization and Euregions has grown considerably since the launching of the internal market programme and the institutionalization of cross-border development programmes. Also, processes of globalization, liberalism and postmodernization have contributed to shaping and proliferating the field of border studies. The increased mobility of people and availability of information that has been the consequence of these processes has not only lead to further integration and increased global awareness but has also invoked a renewed re-quest for certainty, identity and security in a territorial sense.

This volume aims to explore these dialectal developments in society through the lens of borders. Crucial to our understanding of borders is that we would see, what are often termed processes of 'de-bordering' and 're-bordering' as dynamic practices and discourses and not as objects, We would argue that processes of 'de-bordering' and 're-bordering' are mutually constitutive and cannot be separated or fixed, hence the quotation marks above these terms. Rather than searching for and attempting to fix, protect or rationalize de-bordered or re-bordered spaces in time and space ourselves, in this volume we study bordering practices and discourses, focusing our attention on the often implicit, latent, meaningful, and contextual strategies that are implied, rooted and included in bordering processes. It is such analytical stand on the interpretation and their political and normative consequences that can be seen as the crucial binding element of the contributions in this volume. What this volume attempts to make clear is that the border as a concept is not so much an object or phenomenon, something to erase or install, but rather an ongoing, repetitive process that we encounter and produce ourselves in our daily lives. To highlight the importance and implicitness of bordering practices has been one of the collective motivations for us to edit this book, which we for this reason have entitled Routing Borders Between Territories, Discourses and Practices.

A Border is not a Border

Our concern with a critical re-interpretation for the claiming of space via border practices and border discourses embeds itself in current critical geopolitics and critical geographical debates around the claiming of space and has developed into a careful scrutiny of past and ongoing border studies (see Newman and Paasi, 1998; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; O' Dowd and Anderson, 1999; van Houtum, 2000; van Houtum and van Naerssen, 2002). The term border has long been claimed by the state-centric scholarly realm, focusing in their debates on issues of state-related security and sovereignty. The border in these debates included both the legal borderline between states and the frontier of political and cultural contest and/or co-existence. In these debates the border itself has become an institution, a line to defend or cross, a demarcation in space to mark the functioning control over flows of people and cross-border trade, or to indicate the evolving gateway to facilitate contact and interchange. Over the last decade or so, the term 'border' itself has been opened up and 'unearthed', and has become gradually interpreted as the spatial strategic representation of the making and claiming of difference in space both at the international and local level and by more than politicians alone. The a-modernist (or late or post-modern) renewed scholarly attention for the importance of difference, in its interpretation of borders and borderlands, has given the debate among border scholars some important new and critical impetuses. Dominant concern in the a-modernist debates around borders and bordering processes express the complexity of inclusionary and exclusionary languages as well as the contested nature of reading and writing texts in which the monopoly of truth and rational or essential order is claimed by different schools of thought and practitioners of statecraft. This has led to the study of borders and discursive, narrative practices in social relations which there is much emphasis for the social and political creating, imagining, communicating, negotiating and identifying with meanings, norms, values, real and imaginary lines in space and over time. Borders have become predominantly interpreted as the communication of practices, as stories narrated by some for some and believed, identified with or contested by others.

Hence, a border is not a border. Our understandings and interpretations of what the border is and means varies with our own (strategic) interests, conventions, social relations and situations. Already in 1978, Sandra Wallman eloquently proposed to focus on such social relational quality of borders:

What kind of resource is this boundary? What is it used for? In which (and how many) contexts is it relevant? What is its status in historical or situational time? For whom is it an asset, for whom a liability? With what other differences is it congruent or associated? What meaning does it have on the other outer side? (Wallman, 1978, p. 208; as cited in Donnan and Wilson, 1999).

Instigating the importance of the social relational focus implies a move away from the rational and universal coding of lines in space, it puts emphasis on the writing and reading of borders in our daily lives and hence, the need to con-textualize the stories told on bordered spaces and to carefully include, re-represent and/or hybridize different contexts and contingencies. As Newman and Paasi (1998) argued, the boundary does not limit itself merely to the border area or landscape itself, but more generally manifests itself in social and cultural practices and legislation, as well as in films, novels, memorials, ceremonies and public events (p. 196). As a result, the, field of border studies has been re-routed to other paths, it has been opened up to scholars from human geography, sociology, environmental studies, anthropology, immigration studies, semiotics and so forth, allowing for a more transdisciplinary approach to and debate on borders.

This volume is the result of such a broader debate on borders. At the same time however, this book attempts to stay away from a nihilist or morally empty account of the bordering processes at hand. It explicitly wishes to develop a more reflexive, critical post- or non-modernist stand on borders and boundaries. Hence, this book is consciously and provocatively balancing on the fringe of the wish and need felt to avoid the modernist trap of universalism, exclusive ordering and state-centrism on the one hand and avoiding the postmodernist trap of moral nihilism on the other.

Contents and Authors

In the following, we will highlight some of the notions and thoughts that the contributing authors in this volume present us in their papers. We have subdivided the contributions into five non-exclusionary blocks, dealing principally with issues of politics and security, the bounding of nature, the con-textualizing of borders, issues of cross-border and transnational governance and finally, an epilogue on a non-nihilistic theorization of borders. By no means this collection of written views and insights means to represent the full lexicon and contents of the current border debates one comes accross in present literature, conferences, and seminars. This book merely wishes to represent the thought-provoking, timely and fascinating debates among a collection of fine and distinguished border scholars on a particular moment in time and space, to wit the fifth conference of BRIT (Border Regions in Transition). Originally started in Berlin (1994), BRIT has now grown out to represent an interesting barometer of hot issues around borders and cross-border matters. On the BRIT V conference, held in Estonia and with a field trip to the borderland with Russia, a total of 56 distinguished scholars, mainly coming from Europe and Asia, presented their timely views on the issue of borders and transnationalization. We hope that this volume brings together a representative sample of the debates and discussions that were construed at this conference in Estonia, and will hopefully be of value beyond and independent from the conference itself.

Part I – Contested Politics of Security and Belonging

Kari Laitinen begins the discussion in this volume with an analysis of the concept of security border. Traditionally, he argues, this has been understood as the border between two (or several) political units. He first reflects on the construction of this traditional notion as well as the underlying assumptions related to its usage and then combines it with the ideas based on so-called new security thoughts, i.e. the critical school and post-modem (security) orientation. In this way he shows how geography and politics have both contributed to the spatial understanding and theoretization of borders in the past, but also, how the construction of the security border has aimed at facilitating on-going repetitive practices, which are an essential part of nation building. Borders are not only physical records of a state's past and present relations with it's neighbours but tend to behave more often like agents of national security and sovereignty. His paper concludes with thoughts on the present development within an integrating Europe, and particularly on the security border concept.

In her article on the security (borders) of Estonia, Merje Kuus presents a framework according to which blurred borders are viewed as diluting the state. Inasmuch as international integration is perceived to intensify foreign pressure to implement co-operative policies with regard to Russia and Estonia's Russian-speaking residents, integration is domestically framed as a potential threat to the Estonian nation and state. In her essay she examines how the constructed notion of national security is functioning in debates about international integration and postulated threats to the national security. Starting from the position that security is discursively constructed in the process of describing and conceptualizing it, she explores in what specific occasions the imagery of openness is deployed and in what specific occasions that imagery is suppressed. In doing so, she specifies how the moral and discursive borders between threat and security, order and anarchy, and us and them are being redrawn and reconfigured in Estonia as that country is integrating with the EU and NATO.

Another country that is currently integrating with the Eu and ΝΑTO but with slightly different experiences is Romania. Alina Hosu rejects the contention that Romania's foreign and security policies in the Post-Cold War period are either natural or the effect of unilateral adaptation to Western norms. Instead, her study attempts to reveal how politics of security and belonging have developed in a specific way in Romania, namely, facing a wide range of security options and boundary re-drawings. In this sense, her essay questions the re-imagining of 'Romanianness' and the construction/deconstruction of borders of culture and identity, between Romania and 'the West'. This comprises the re-defining of ethno-cultural boundaries between Romanian and Hungarian and the discourse, which has sought to construct a relation of identity between 'Romania' and 'the West', understood as a collective subject. Romania's continuous stress that it could play the role of a security provider in the Balkans has fed the Western perception of 'Balkanization' of Romania and has blurred the border between the two spaces, with the 'Balkans' not necessarily understood within the West as being part of Europe.

Another contextualisation of territorial border practices and discourses is presented by the narration of the contested border spaces of Burma (Myanmar) in the Southeast corner of Asia. In their contribution Carl Grundy-Warr and Karin Dean address some of the long-standing political and social problems that arise with the construction of 'modern geography' and 'national geo-bodies' in this area. By examining two ethnic 'minorities' along separate international boundaries of one state, they reveal a well-developed 'pan-Kachin' identity across the long boundaries of China, Burma and India as well as the problem of Karenni displacements, which has little to do with pre-existing cross-border 'social space', but much to do with the military struggles for hegemonic control over territory, resources and people within the border regions of Burma. With this in mind they demonstrate that national territories are extremely leaky 'social containers' and that international boundaries create easily geopolitical polarizations that in turn intensify and solidify notions of 'ethnic difference'. Their case study also reflects how the new political boundaries have generated new dynamics and manipulations in the re-defined border spaces, only partly and selectively replacing the old.

Part II – Politicizing Nature: Negotiating Boundaries of Inclusion

In the first chapter of the second part of this volume, Henrik Gutzon Larsen proposes that the notion of environmental interdependence involves a spatial tension between the geopolitical vision of a world composed of fragmented sovereign territorialities and the ecological view of the Earth as a hierarchy of nested ecosystems. He argues that transboundary environmental problems are often approached as phenomena that simply question or undermine assumptions of fixed boundaries between sovereign state territorialities. Whether in the political practices of statespersons and activists or in the theoretical endeavours of academics, however, he suggests that particular transboundary environmental problems also involve a process of political objectification whereby the problem is furnished with meaning and boundaries that are prerequisite for speaking or acting meaningfully. The destabilisation of one type of boundaries are, in other words, often accompanied by the production of another type of boundaries. He proposes that the drawing of environmental boundaries should be seen as the political production of scale. Those concerned with environmental politics must select an appropriate scale for environmental perception and action. In many cases, the final environmental boundary is global in scale: Spaceship Earth, Global Village or Our Earth is one' are some of the charged metaphors that have been attached to this end of the scalar ladder. But the scale may also be fixed at a regional level. Concomitantly he perceives environmental boundaries as 'boundaries of inclusion' in the sense that they serve the political purpose establishing an inclusive collective identity around particular transboundary environmental problems. He then demonstrates subtle politics involved in the demarcation of spaces of inclusion without overt spatial exclusion, which is pursued in relation to the notion of environmental interdependence in the context of Baltic Sea environmental cooperation. Crucially, however, he also admits that this particular case does not imply that some states or communities for good or worse may not resist inclusion.

Eva Saroch offers a critical geopolitical view on the intricate but intimate interplay between space and its natural endowments such as water, and the socio-spatial consciousness of its various stakeholders. Drawing upon the examples from the on-going tensions/conflicts between India-Pakistan, India-Bangladesh and India-Nepal (as well as within these countries) over the so-called 'sharing' of water resources, her essay critically examines the interplay between boundary-defying/unifying nature of waterways and the bounding/excluding logic of geopolitical discourses, imaginations, and representations. Her key argument is that in the context of traditional, state-centric geopolitics of water resources, which seems to persist in post-colonial South Asia, the 'hydro-borders' continue to be constructed and reinforced through competing notions of domestic stability/instability,security/insecurity,legitimacy/illegitimacy, and purity/pollution. Constructed through 'nationalist' metaphors, state-sponsored security narratives and even politically motivated religious speeches, these mental borders, deceptively hydrographic in argument as well as appearance, remain integral to the politics of place-making and group-differentiation in the region. Even though the states and societies of South Asia are hydrographically united sharing the Indus river basin (India and Pakistan), Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin (India and Bangladesh) and Ganges-Mahakali basin (India and Nepal), geopolitically they remain divided.

Part III – Imagining and (Con)textualizing Bordered Space

In the third part of this volume the (re)textualisation, contextualisation and (re)imagining of borders and bordered spaces have been made central. Jevgenia Viktorova attempts to construct a semiotic view of the nature, properties and functions of boundaries. However specific these conceptualisations may seem, many of Lotman's and Bakhtin's works tend to favour broader interpretation and application in other fields than semiotics. But before expanding the range of their 'secondary' applications in border studies, Viktorova seeks to explore the complexity of concepts framing the notion of boundary, and clarify the relationships between them. One aspect of this complexity includes the 'generation' of boundaries by the differences between the modalities of identity and alterity, the perception of boundaries in these modalities, as well as the related processes of boundary-drawing and crossing, the mechanisms of communication and meaning-generation. These presented perspectives regard boundaries as nonaccidental as both Lotman and Bakhtin consider them to be a vital element of human perception.

In what follows, Anke Strüver concludes her particular story with related narratives and images in order to approach representations of the Dutch-German border as well as the border as representation and finally, to tie this back to border studies in general. This includes approaching the perception of 'insignificant' boundaries, their cognitive and affective meanings, e.g. as barrier-effects in people's everyday life, creating a 'cognitive-imaginative border'. In her contribution, Strüver promotes an understanding of both regions and borders as discourses with contested meanings that are embedded in social relations. At the same time, she refers to representations as products of their social contexts that are constitutive of borders. In her view, it is only through the linkage of the discursive construction of borders (as representations) and their material effects (that reproduce the construction) that they become meaningful. Thus, accordingly, meanings, identities, values, and the whole social life, are constituted in representations, which does not mean that there is no 'reality', rather that there is no 'founding presence' or 'original, objective meaning'. Her brief survey of works that resulted from such analyses makes it clear that the border is (still) very important as the dividing line between Germany and the Netherlands, both in representations and as representations, as constitutive of socio-cultural separation.

Ulrich Best demonstrates that the edges are all over the state as well as well as the continuous gnawing at the edges of the state. The importance in this practice lies in the attention to new emerging structures, new instances of control and the search for new 'free action'. For that purpose he brings together parts of the works of Deleuze and Gua...