Border Walls: On the Contemporary Transformation of State Borders

Abstract

It is today commonplace to claim that state borders are undergoing change. In the age of globalisation borders have acquired new characteristics that do not fit in with the traditional understanding of them. Many believe that this signifies a break away from the modern conception of state borders, which saw them as institutional lines that set the spatial extension of state sovereignty. This viewpoint can be challenged, however. On the one hand, the importance of state borders in international politics has been increasing over the last few years. On the other hand, the idea that globalisation is changing the very nature of state borders needs closer scrutiny. As a matter of fact, legal scholarship has paid little attention to the concept of border in the last few decades, and this is one of the reasons for the lack of clarity regarding the contemporary transformation of state borders. This paper tries to contribute to fill this gap by looking at the phenomenon of border walls, i.e. the construction of impenetrable barriers to safeguard state territory. Does the proliferation of border walls around the world simply indicate a revival of the territorial sovereignty of the states, or is it a phenomenon with quite different characteristics? To answer this question I proceed as follows. I first consider the debate on the transformation of state borders in the literature on globalisation. I then looks at the distinctive features of modern borders from a historical and theoretical point of view. This helps clarify whether the features of border walls make it necessary to update the traditional concept of public border. The paper shows that it is not possible to provide an univocal answer to this question and distinguishes four kinds of border walls having different institutional characteristics.