Contradictory meanings of border in Ressano Garcia community

Abstract

Whereas security has evolved extensively from its traditional role (national defence) to include the protection of individuals, the war on terror has resulted in dissonance between human security and border control, particularly in post-colonial countries. This paper focuses on Ressano Garcia border community (in the southern part of Mozambique) as a case study and analyses discourses from different actors using critical discourse analysis. Departing from the argument that sovereignty-oriented border control is detrimental to the negotiability of security between the state and cross-border communities, the study finds that, the state’s concept of the border is driven by the protection of national security, while local populations understand the role and meanings of the border from a different perspective (that is, as a socio-economic and cultural set of opportunities). This places the state’s perceptions of human mobility, migration management and border control in direct conflict with human security-based border control that sovereignty-oriented border control is detrimental to the negotiability of state security with human aspects of border control.