Mapping Mobile Borders: Critical Cartographies of Borders Based on Migration Experiences

Abstract

Borders cannot be reduced to a linear and territorial definition. The field of border studies has largely been revitalized by studies on borderlands and border zones (Anzaldua, 2012; Brunet-Jailly, 2007; Rosler & Wendl, 1999), which have added to the complexity of the nation-state conception of borders. Furthermore, over and above the study of borders themselves, the processes of bordering/debordering/rebordering have been analyzed (Popescu, 2011; van Houtum, Kramsch, & Ziefhofer, 2005). Contemporary border functions have been redefined with the help of migration and mobility studies, so that their role as a barrier or border interface is diffused in space and time, according to state policies, notably migration policies. Works on the externalization of borders (Audebert & Robin, 2009; Casas, Cobarrubias, & Pickles, 2011; Ferrer-Gallardo, 2008), have also contributed to a critique of the normative paradigm of the fixed borderline. As Perkins and Rumford explain, ‘bordering-as-process, coupled with a general interest in a range of mobilities, has led to the recognition that borders can be mobile to the same extent as those who seek to cross them’ (Perkins & Rumford, 2013, p. 268). Within the framework of the study of border politics, the notion of ‘borderities’, developed in this book, allows us to study the multiplication, transformation, and spatio-temporal mobility of contemporary border functions.