Abstract
Although border issues are a matter of importance for a large number of people, contemporary Border Studies (dominated by the intertwining of post-modernist, constructivist, and critical approaches) is little preoccupied with finding viable practical solutions, focusing instead on conceptualising the essence of borders and border processes. Meanwhile, previous Border Studies was a practically-oriented discipline focused on helping practitioners delimit borders, and to find an optimal balance between protecting borders against unwanted cross-border flows and fostering desirable cross-border interactions. The article examines the widespread theoretical approaches to studying borders in the light of their practical relevance, and discusses what can be done in order to make Border Studies more capable of generating viable practical solutions. Despite the fact that mainstream Border Studies is currently not much preoccupied with bridging theory with practice, I argue that both contemporary and older approaches have significant practical potential which could be especially helpful in solving delimitation problems, increasing efficiency of cross-border cooperation, better balancing the priorities of strengthening border security and fostering cross-border interaction, cross-border region building, managing cross-border conflicts and mitigating alarmist perceptions of the Other, fighting border-related injustices and human rights violations, etc. In addition, I suggest that drawing new ideas from Management Studies and Communication Studies could be promising ways of making Border Studies more practically relevant.
Highlights
Borders have great importance for a large number of people
The problem is that borders and border-related processes are complicated and multidimensional; studying them requires interdisciplinary approaches drawing ideas from geography, and from political science, sociology, economics, history, philosophy, and other disciplines
Are there ways to bring back practical relevance to contemporary Border Studies? To what extent can the existing approaches to research on borders be made practically relevant? What other approaches can be potentially employed for this purpose? These are the key questions to be considered in this article
Summary
Border issues are a matter of importance for a large number of people, contemporary Border Studies (dominated by the intertwining of post-modernist, constructivist, and critical approaches) is little preoccupied with finding viable practical solutions, focusing instead on conceptualising the essence of borders and border processes. The problem is that borders and border-related processes are complicated and multidimensional; studying them requires interdisciplinary approaches drawing ideas from geography, and from political science, sociology, economics, history, philosophy, and other disciplines. It is still not quite clear what borders are and how they work; in many cases it is difficult to advise on what should. I examine how some other academic approaches that are currently used or can be employed from other disciplines that could make research on borders potentially practically relevant
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