Border Discourse Research Articles

Open Wounds and Physical Divisions: Pre-Brexit Visions of a Divided Kingdom

Abstract This article frames Brexit as the consequence of social and demographic fissures running through the United Kingdom, thereby arguing that Britain’s exit from the European Union is symptomatic of a specifically English rather than British crisis of national identification. It shows how such internal faultlines within the UK’s society intersect with the evocation and employment of various kinds of border imagery and border discourses in the run-up to the Brexit Referendum in 2016. For the main part of the analysis, the article sets out to broaden the by now well-established genre of “BrexLit” (Shaw, Everitt) by focusing on what could be called “Pre-BrexLit,” that is, novels written well before Brexit became a term, let alone political reality. By way of three exemplary texts—Julian Barnes’s England, England (1998), Tony Saint’s Refusal Shoes (2003), and Rupert Thomson’s Divided Kingdom (2005)—the analysis retraces how literary accounts of how to establish, maintain and control borders—both real and metaphorical, mental and physical, external and internal—prefigure some of the divisive issues around which the Brexit struggle would revolve, while at the same time avoiding the necessarily contentious and biased labels attached to post-fact Brexit literature. (WF)

Of infiltrators and wild beasts

Abstract This paper addresses Benjamin Netanyahu’s border discourse in the context of radical right-wing populism. It discusses how, in the speeches and statements appearing in his official government website, Netanyahu construes groups located spatially outside Israel’s borders, mainly terrorists and migrants (the “wild beasts” and the “infiltrators”), as existential threats to Israel. The aim is to prove that, in legitimizing the militarization of borders through “security fences”, so that the “other” can be excluded from the nation, Netanyahu uses the same power geometries and discursive strategies, i.e. Proximization (Cap 2013) and dehumanizing metaphors (Santa Ana 1999, Musolff 2015, Taylor 2021), typically used by right-wing populist parties and leaders. By appealing to both populism and certain interpretations of Zionism, his ethnonationalist view of borders is based on the normalization of the discourse of delegitimation and exclusion of those groups considered as a threat to the nation.

Border Anxiety in International Discourse

AbstractInternational borders have become a growing security concern in many parts of the world. Porous borders have raised concerns about a host of external threats—real and imagined—that in turn potentially inform policy decisions about border security. We examine global official discourse and show that border discourse has become more frequent, localized, non‐state‐centric, and negative over time. However, negative rhetoric is not convincingly linked with objective measures of globalization is only partially explained by political violence between and within states, and influences border‐hardening policies. This raises the possibility that the border fortification trend noted in the international relations literature has not only a material basis but is also fueled by negative emotive rhetoric that may be deployed strategically for domestic purposes. We call for a research agenda that incorporates border discourse more centrally into international and comparative politics.

Policing the Border in Lucas Pope’s Computer Game ‚Papers, Please‘

Lucas Pope’s 2013 video game ‚Papers, Please‘ places the player-character in the position of an immigration inspector in a fictional Eastern Bloc nation. Since its release, the game has garnered enthusiastic responses, being celebrated by critics as an essential dramatisation of the ethical dilemmas associated with the migratory flows and fraught border politics of the post–9/11 world. However, this essay argues that this reputation must be scrutinised: for while ‚Papers, Please‘ indeed illustrates some of the contradictions at the heart of contemporary border policy – such as immigrant- receiving states’ pragmatic application of exclusionary immigration practices that run contrary to their self-professed liberal-democratic ideals – it also engages in a ‘universalising’ abstraction of the border space, which limits its feasibility as a lens through which to view 2010s border discourses. Drawing from current research in Border Studies, a close reading of Pope’s game illustrates how its geo-historical setting and its omission of crucial phenomena associated with the twenty-first-century border, such as the interactional processes of bordering and the existence of ‘bi-cultural’ borderscapes, ultimately render it a liberal-democratic fantasy, according to which the conflicts engendered by the enforced geopolitical border are abstract questions of morality and ethics rather than practical socio-political questions. Keywords: video games; border politics; migration; rebordering

Leadership Strategies Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Utilise in Addressing Issues in the US-Mexico Border

This paper investigates the administrative procedures utilised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the United States (US) and Mexico by addressing issues emanating from the US-Mexico border discourse. The boundary presents a complicated maze of problems including drug abuse, undocumented migration, compassionate emergencies, common freedom infringements, and financial differences. Understanding how NGOs practically explore this landscape is essential for constructing fruitful mediation strategies. Drawing from a survey of writing, contextual investigations and reports from three NGOs, this paper recognizes key initiatives or techniques utilised by these organisations. It investigates the characteristics and skills displayed by viable NGO pioneers like versatility, social capability, coordinated effort and key reasoning. Likewise, the paper highlights the basic significance of associations and coordinated efforts among NGOs, neighbourhood networks, states and global associations. These partnerships enhance the compass and effect of NGOs’ drives and highlight the interconnectedness of tending to line issues exhaustively. At last, this paper gives significant insights into the dynamic and advancing scene of NGO administration at the US-Mexico line. It adds to the more extensive comprehension of the powerful procedures and authoritative rules that impede or facilitate the provisioning of care in these critical regions.

How to brand a border despite its wall? A social semiotics approach to cross-border place branding

This paper explores the ways in which borders are likely to be used as a semiotic resource in cross-border place branding. We develop a conceptual framework, distinguishing two meaning-making strategies: one that seeks to valorize borders as assets for cross-border place branding and another that relies on their invisibilization in order to promote, implicitly, the legitimacy of a seamless cross-border regional imaginary. For each meaning-making strategy, specific border discourses are identified. Based on a social semiotics approach, we analyze the case of Cali Baja, a place branding initiative that seeks to promote a bi-national mega-region straddling the US-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana. Despite the militarization of the border and the highly visible physical wall that divides Cali Baja, a selective branding discourse framed around favorable border images and representations is brought to the fore. It is therefore at the cost of the partial (in)visibilization of the border that the mega-region can be given value and promoted on the international scene, but it is also the discrepancy with the identity of the bi-national region that precipitated the failure of this place branding initiative.

Border anxieties: populist emotional politics at internal EU borders

ABSTRACT Along the internal EU border between Germany and Poland, border discourse has increasingly turned to issues of crime and insecurity, with voices speaking up for more controls and border closures. This paper analyses the way in which such border-related statements show features of populist communication by contextualizing this example within a wider discussion on the issues of populism in relation to emotions and space. The argumentation supports the use of concepts of populism in political geography as it has a high potential of analysing discourses of othering, reordering and re-bordering and of highlighting the emotions within these processes.

Language, food and identity in the borderlands of El Paso

The border is a contested space. It is a site where physical and discursive violence act to enforce hegemonic understandings of nation, citizenship and belonging. However, the spaces at the border also create sites where resistance to border discourses is possible. Using interviews conducted by the El Paso Food Voices project in 2018 and 2019, I examine the construction of identity through foodways in the US border town of El Paso, Texas. I view these interviews, called “food stories,” as entextualizations of the semiotic food system. Through critical discourse analysis of these food stories, I identify discourse strategies that construct identity in opposition to border discourses. In the borderlands, people have multiplex identities. Through foodways, residents of El Paso construct identities that do not conform to the dichotomizing and hierarchizing discourses of the border and create counter discourses that build possibility outside of border discourses.

Crossing transcultural liminalities with critical virtual exchange: a study of shifting border discourses

Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic st...

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ КОМУНІКАТИВНИХ СИТУАЦІЙ ПРОФЕСІЙНОГО ПРИКОРДОННОГО ДИСКУРСУ

Specific features of border discourse as a special form of social interaction are considered in the article. The characteristic features of communicative situations of border discourse are highlighted. The conditions under which modern border discourse takes place are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the professional speech of border guards, which is characterized by professional border guard vocabulary, depending on the field of communication. Discourse is a complex communicative event or sociolinguistic structure created by interlocutors in specific communicative, social and pragmatic situations. Border discourse exists in two forms: the oral form and written form. Oral border discourse is the communication between people in the line of duty. It can be a conversation between two servicemen, between an officer and a person crossing the state border of Ukraine, or a senior officer and a subordinate serviceperson. Written border discourse is secondary to oral speech. Written speech is actually dialogical. The material of the research is presented by normative documents, educational materials, materials of mass media, in which the communicative situations of the border discourse are presented. The place of speech situations of border discourse is determined by the sphere of activity of communicators and the method of communication: personal or indirect means of communication (telephone conversations, Internet, correspondence by regular or e-mail, mass media, etc. Participants in speech situations within this discourse are border guards, academics who teach disciplines related to the activities of border guards, members of the media who cover issues related to border activities, as well as ordinary citizens involved in border discourse when crossing the state border. Motives of communication and speech intentions of communicators are determining factors in the selection of language means to achieve the communicative goal. Areas in which the border discourse takes place are official receptions, meetings, conferences, press conferences, negotiations, command and staff exercises, conferences, training situations with the use of professional border guard vocabulary, regulations, official situations at checkpoints.

Mídia e fronteira: uma análise da fronteira a partir de reportagens na mídia digital na sub-região XII do Arco Central da Faixa de Fronteira

O tema da fronteira é abordado neste artigo, tendo como objetivo analisar a forma como ela vem sendo tratada pela mídia digital. O referencial empírico para análise compreende a sub-região XII do Arco Central da Faixa de Fronteira. Desse modo, procura-se desenvolver uma pesquisa qualitativa que permita identificar quais os principais temas são abordados pela mídia nesta região fronteiriça, a partir dos quais se podem compreender as principais problemáticas que envolvem a questão da fronteira. A metodologia corresponde ao levantamento do material midiático e na análise dos mesmos a partir de alguns conceitos das ciências sociais. Como resultados, foi possível identificar as principais questões que envolvem este cenário fronteiriço e a reprodução do discurso de fronteira como espaço de problemáticas diversas.

On Decolonising Borders and Regional Integration in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region

This paper uses insights gained from a qualitative study of informal cross border actors on selected Southern African Development Community (SADC) borders to argue for the decolonisation of these borders. It is asserted that, although SADC citizens enjoy a 90-day free visa in member states, this should not be simplistically taken to mean that there are “open borders” and free movement of persons in region. The recognition that a border “open” to formal actors may be closed to informal cross border actors based on issues of power and class is the foundation for the decolonisation of these borders, a process which should articulate to the regional integration project in the region. Such a decolonisation of borders should recognise in policy and/or border management regimes all cross-border actors, especially non-state actors, who are criminalized and rendered invisible through cross border discourses and policies. This point is worth emphasizing, because most people who cross African borders may not be the formal actors such as multinational corporations (MNCs) and/or their proxies who are favoured by cross border policies, but ordinary people such as informal cross border traders and border citizens, who need decolonised borders for them to enjoy freedom of movement, rather than being depoliticized and relegated to the subaltern who cannot speak, let alone move.

The implied border mechanisms of Antarctica: Arguing the case for an Antarctic borderscape

AbstractAntarctica is arguably the only geographical territory left on Earth without political borders. Narratives of peace, science and environmental protection in the Antarctic Treaty System drive a collective governance system that avoids border discourse even though physical boundaries exist. This article fills a gap in Antarctic research by exploring the question ‘What borderwork is evident in the Antarctic Treaty System in relation to the construction and maintenance of its physical boundaries?’ through a study of a gateway to Antarctica—New Zealand. Borderscaping and borderwork concepts are used to examine territoriality in Antarctica. Enacted narrative analysis reveals effects of strategic narrative on practices, showing the Antarctic Treaty system has created an ‘implied’ border system that lacks some of the capabilities of an acknowledged border system. The article argues that understanding the full reach of the absences on practices and attitudes in this Antarctic system is important for the continent’s ongoing security and for border theory. It concludes that more needs to be known about the subtle effects on the many actors in this implied borderscape. Such further research will add to knowledge about Antarctic practices and governance and borderscaping theory.

Performing the Border as a Zone of Contestations: A Critical Analysis of Root Map

The plethora of meanings associated with the term “border” not only accentuates the frequent use of the word, but also implicates the border as a zone of contestations. These contestations underscore how borders covertly or overtly continue to affect the lives of millions of people across the globe. By “zone of contestations,” I situate the border as both a tangible and an intangible site that is replete with competing narratives about migration and migrants themselves. As a zone of contestations, the border eschews the idea of a monolithic story of migration; instead, it presents us with layers of stories by relocating border discourses to the realm of both the personal and the interpersonal lives of those interfacing with the border. Keywords: migration, performance, theatre, border, migrants, deontology, consequentialism DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-24-10 Publication date: December 31 st 2019

Re-engaging the “International”: A Social History of the Trans-Himalayan Borderlands

ABSTRACTThe paper critically interrogates a central paradox in India’s emerging border discourse. Although a feel-good narrative of rethinking borders as bridges, it has been curiously resistant to step away from the reductionist logic of borders as barriers. The paper argues that this dualism can be traced to conflicting geopolitical and sociological notions of the international that have resulted in a range of contradictions and distortions at the borders. The paper will engage with the puzzle as to why the trans-Himalayan trader, historically the central protagonist has today become a rather forlorn metaphor of a conflicted discourse. It will draw inferences based on field observations in Dharchula, an ancient trading town in northern India located on the trans-Himalayan trading routes with Nepal and China. These offer interesting insights on how state power and regulation as well as new border alignments have affected everyday lives at the borders. The paper concludes by arguing for discursive cross-fertilizations as first steps towards recognizing the borderlands as the agentive sites that they are.

From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography

This article explores border crossing and the Palestinian city as a literary metropolis—two major themes in the works of emerging Palestinian novelists in Israel. It looks at the “re-Palestinization” of urban space by writers who belong to a post-Oslo generation of Palestinian intellectuals that left villages and small towns in Israel to go and study, work, and live in the city. What distinguishes the literature of this generation is its negotiation of border crossing in a fragmented geography and its engagement with the city as a space of paradoxical encounter between a national imaginary and a settler-colonial reality. Based on a critical reading of their works, the article argues that Adania Shibli and Ibtisam Azem challenge colonial border discourse, exposing the ongoing Zionist erasure of the Palestinian city and creating a new topography for Palestinian literature. The article also traces the role of these writers in the “twinning” of Haifa and Ramallah starting in the late 1990s, and it examines how this literary and cultural “sisterhood” informs spatial resistance.

Criminalization and Undocumented Migrante Laborer Identities in the Zone of Nonbeing

Abstract Joseph Carens in his 2013 book Ethics of Immigration argues we should not criminalize undocumented migrants. Instead, we should view them as irregular immigrants who are entitled to some general human rights. This article focuses on Caren's discussion of criminalization in light of recent scholarship by John Marquez and Natalie Cisneros pertaining to the Latina/o border death toll, generalized violence, and discourses on undocumented pregnant migrante females as multiplying rats and anchor babies. This article argues that simply relying on a democratic state model to understand the realities of border militarization is not sufficient because it does not perform some of the explanatory functions performed by other non-ideal theories. By synthesizing the views of Cisneros and Marquez, this article distinguishs thick and thin senses of excessive border enforcement and outlines a notion of the racial/sexual state of expendability as a way of making better sense of these violent realities.

THE IDEOLOGY OF MINORITY: A TRANSNATIONAL STUDY OF THE AMERICAN NEW LEFT IN 1960S

Student organizations have been acknowledged as vanguards and agents of social and political change in some parts of the world. In America, the dynamic student organizations cannot be set apart from American history. The upheaval of the 1960s signaled the advent of the New Left movement, comprising the Free Speech Movement (FSM) and Students for A Democratic Society (SDS). While, in the Indonesian experience, there was somewhat of a similarity of thought and spirit related with the role of student movements historically. Therefore, the study is intended to discover the emergence of the New Left in Europe and America, and expose the cultural hybridity-similarities and reasons of occurrence-of the American New Left and Indonesian student movement in the 1970s. This research is written under the American Studies discipline, specifically related to Transnational American Studies by employing cultural hybridity and border discourse. The finding shows that the ideology of the American New Left in the 1960s comprises of a means of globalizing the New Left in Europe and America, involving the universal ideas of inequality, communication, people migration, and social phenomena in the 1960s and the cultural hybridity of the ideology of the American New Left in the 1960s and the Indonesian student movement of the 1970s evidently showing that the New Left is a ‘third ideology’ by resisting two globalized ideologies during the 1960s, capitalism and communism. In addition, the locality or sustained values, which are democracy and social justice and the universal values shared of the American New Left, FSM and SDS, and the Indonesian student movement in the 1970s are anti-establishment and anti-capitalistic society.Keywords: New Left, ideology, cultural hybridity, border discourse, minority.

States, locals and cross-border cooperation in Kashmir: Is secondary foreign policy in making in South Asia?

ABSTRACTThis article interrogates the state-centric notion of border and security in Kashmir and examines the non-state, and non-central government, actors in the borderland evolution. It analyses the border-related peace initiatives and examines the following questions: Are the initiatives purely state centric? Are the non-central government actors totally absent in the bordering practice in the Kashmir borderland? Is the secondary foreign policy as a tool for cross-border cooperation apparent in the region under scrutiny? Secondary foreign policy, a concept which has become recently vogue in border discourse in Europe, emphasizes on non-federal actors, particularly at a local level, and their role in shaping relations in border regions. Drawing on the literature on borders and qualitative field research, the article examines whether the recent border evolution in Kashmir has witnessed activism at two planes: grass-roots non-state actors and non-central government.

They Shall—or Shall Not—Pass? Communist State Borders in the Czech Culture of Remembrance after 1989

This article is part of the special section titled From the Iron Curtain to the Schengen Area, guest edited by Wolfgang Mueller and Libora Oates-Indruchová. This article analyses the formation of the two mutually opposing memory poles of the communist past that crystalized in Czechia after 1989. To this end, it focuses on the issue of communist state borders, which slowly developed into one of the most controversial memory conflicts. Anti-communist Iron Curtain discourse established a new mainstream “national memory” using the previous border regime as a prime example of the non-democratic rule that violated values that were constitutive of liberal democratic order after 1989. Nevertheless, the Communists’ border discourse did not fade away after 1989. It was sustained by communist politicians, party members and former Border Guards. It still influences the public memory of state borders by stressing their legitimacy, legality, and ultimately the inevitability of protecting them. The search for unequivocal heroes and evil-doers of the communist state border regime strengthens this split memory and makes embracing its complexity hardly possible. The existence of these two opposing memory discourses, which refute one another, is not just an example of group conflict over the “right” memory. It also illustrates deep postcommunist divides in Czech society going beyond the watershed events of 1989.