Border Fortification Research Articles

The Berlin Wall as Living Ornament

In this article I argue, based on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of affect, that the aesthetics of the Berlin Wall, i.e., the aesthetics of the different generations of the Wall itself (especially the last generation of the Wall) and the artistic interventions on the Western side of the Wall, in form of graffiti and wall art, have created effects which not necessarily challenge the Wall’s function as a border fortification system, but incorporate it in dialectical form. Affects triggered by the Western Wall’s sensational effects and its meandering course through the divided city have animated the Wall in such a way, that the Wall transforms into a living ornament. I read the Wall’s aesthetics as Baroque, in which façade and inner structure are seemingly unrelated but not separate and condition each other. I argue that the growing tension between Western surface intervention and Eastern military structure have the potential to bring forward states of e/motion, which I term in the Deleuzian sense: becoming political.

“Who Is the Animal in the Zoo?” Fencing In and Fencing Out at the Hungarian-Serbian Border. A Qualitative Case Study

ABSTRACT In 2015, Hungary commenced the building of a fence at its border with Serbia. The current article investigates the Hungarian-Serbian border fence in terms of its meaning in the two countries. Building on recent re-bordering research, it analyzes the context within which the fencing took place, stressing both the domestic and the international dimension. Based on qualitative interviews and a document analysis for Hungary and Serbia, it argues that the fence did not create a conflict between the two neighbors – instead, the international entanglement of the border led to a complex bordering process that extended bilateral relations. In Hungary, the border fortification was used for internal political motives and at the same time aimed to exclude non-European migrants. Due to political circumstances and the filter function of the fence, the Serbian government likewise managed to exploit the border fortification to its advantage. The article introduces the concept of “fencing in and fencing out” in order to analyze the control function that the fence performs on both sides of the border.

Hacia una visión cosmopolita de las fronteras. Desigualdades y migraciones desde la perspectiva de la justicia global

El control que los Estados ejercen sobre sus fronteras para evitar la entrada de inmigrantes representa un importante desafío normativo para una comprensión de la justicia de alcance global. Contraviniendo la tendencia dominante que ha conducido a la fortificación de las fronteras mediante muros y vallas, en este artículo se propone una forma alter­nativa de concebirlas que permita el movimiento fluido de las personas y evite la reproducción de las desigualdades globales. Con el objetivo de poner fin o, al menos, amorti­guar los sufrimientos generados por esta forma persistente de injusticia estructural, se presenta aquí un escenario en el que los Estados pongan en común su autoridad y sus recursos para reconfigurar el sistema económico mundial y compensar a las víctimas de la lotería por haber nacido en el lado equivocado de la frontera.

Do Walls Work? The Effectiveness of Border Barriers in Containing the Cross-Border Spread of Violent Militancy

AbstractSince the end of the Cold War, walls, fences, and fortifications have been constructed on interstate borders at a rapid rate. It remains unclear, however, whether these fortifications provide effective security. We explore whether border fortifications provide security against the international spread of violent militancy. Although barriers can reduce the likelihood that militant activity diffuses across international borders, their effectiveness is conditional upon the roughness of the terrain on which they are built and the level of infrastructure development in their proximity. Barriers require intensive manpower to monitor and patrol, and so conditions like rough terrain and poor infrastructure render security activity more difficult. However, rebels and other militants prefer to operate in such difficult areas, ultimately reducing the effectiveness of barriers in containing the international spread of violent militancy. Analyses on newly collated data on interstate border fortifications within a global sample of contiguous-state directed-dyad-years show that border fortifications are only effective in limiting the diffusion of militancy in contexts in which states can plausibly monitor and police their borders. This paper has significant implications for the academic literatures on national security and intrastate conflict, and it also speaks to the broader policy debate over border walls and fences.

REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGY OF CLOCHE REPLACEMENT FOR WW2 FORTIFICATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Nowadays many parts of the Czechoslovak border fortification built in 1935 – 1938 have been sold to the private owners who want to reconstruct it. One of the biggest problems while reconstructing these objects is missing cloches. The aim of this study is to find solution of this problem. Authors wanted to offer the owners (usually clubs of military history) authentic design of the cloche for low cost, high durability and full functionality of the cloche that enables installation of original weapons.A result of the work was a development of a technical solution of the cloche consisting of a replica of the upper part made of reinforced concrete in combination with lower part made of concrete. This unique technical solution was confirmed as an utility model CZ32920(U1). Remediation measure was approved by the team at the pillbox T-S 20 in Červený Kostelec in 2019.

SECURITY AND BORDER WALLS/FENCES IN CONTEMPORARY INTENATIONAL LAW

The fortification of state borders with walls and the but use of law-making power and the adjudicating power of domestic courts to prevent the movement of persons —in particular those in need of protection and mainly on grounds of national security — are increasingly common in contemporary international society. This new trend is sending a troubling message to the international community about what is permitted with regard to third countries and which human rights are protected and to what extent, if at all. For states, border wallsreinforce a unilateral view of international relations and international law. For people, they presage a dramatic decline in human rights protection standards. In all cases, thistrend ignores the values of international law.

“Climate Refugees”—A Useful Concept?

“Climate Refugees”—A Useful Concept?

FORMATION OF FORTIFICATION ART IN ANCIENT EAST COUNTRIES

The article presents a comparative analysis of fortification art monuments in such East countries from Ancient Egypt to medieval China. An attempt is made to identify the main stages of the fortification development from a stand-alone fortress (citadel, fort) to the most complex systems of urban and border fortifications, including moats, walls and gates, battle towers. It is shown that the nature of these architectural structures is determined by the status of the city or settlement, its natural landscape, building structures and materials, the development of military and engineering art. The materials from poliorceticon (Greek: poliorketikon, poliorketika), illustrate the main types of siege machines and mechanisms. The advantages and disadvantages of boundary shafts and long walls (limes). The most striking examples are the defensive systems of Assyria, New Babylon, Judea and Ancient China.

Introduction

Introduction Sunaina Maira (bio) This forum features scholars and activists engaged in a transnational discussion about border violence and border protests in North America, South Asia, Palestine/Israel, Europe/Mediterranean Sea, and North/South Korea. It originated in a roundtable, "Border Protests and Transnational Solidarities," hosted by the Mellon Research Initiative in Comparative Border Studies at UC Davis in February 2018.1 This event brought together activists and scholars from around the world to explore the role played by borders, and the work they do, in different sites of struggle against militarization, nuclearization, nativism, displacement, partition, and colonization. As a response to border tensions and violence, protest cultures have produced new political imaginaries and transborder communities that have helped rethink borders and transnational solidarity. However, these cross-border and "No Borders" movements coexist with a retrenchment and fortification of ethnic and national boundaries. This forum addresses how migrant rights, antiwar, feminist, anticolonial, and indigenous movements in different sites have used cross-border affiliations, cultural production, and digital technologies to mobilize against and across borders, but have also faced repression, criminalization, and nativist backlash. The essays here explore the impact of border conflicts and enforcement on ordinary people, and the epistemologies of borders produced in daily life as well as in artistic and activist projects. Comparative Border Studies While border tensions have been subject to scholarly inquiry for years, contemporary global dynamics as well as the transnationalizing of American studies call for a renewed and comparative focus on the making, unmaking, and fortification of borders. Borders—whether national, colonial, regional, continental—are by definition a global and transregional issue. Yet American studies scholars have pointed to the ways in which the internationalizing currents in the field have sometimes recentered a US perspective and privileged the concerns of US academics.2 In the last several years, border studies scholars [End Page 1021] have called for more cross-regional, comparative, and inter-American studies research that decenters the US.3 It was this need for a critical transnational perspective that inspired the Mellon-funded initiative in comparative border studies from 2015 to 2018, co-directed by myself and Robert Irwin, a scholar of Mexican and Mexican American history. We conceived of this program as an intervention into urgent scholarly and political debates about borders that would bridge American studies, ethnic studies, and area studies and rethink paradigms in critical border studies through direct engagement with grassroots activists.4 The initiative focused on not only the Mexico/US border but also those adjoining Palestine/Israel, Europe/Mediterranean Sea, and Afghanistan/Pakistan. In American studies, border studies and border thinking have often focused on the US–Mexico borderlands, with the seminal critiques of Chicanx and feminist scholars who have engaged with issues of migration, hybridity, citizenship, (il)legality, gender, and resistance. Work on the southern border helped remap American studies in the 1990s by using the "field-imaginary" of the "borderlands" drawing on Chicana subaltern studies,5 analyzing the border as a space of transformation, hybridity, and resistance to US imperialism but also as a "shock culture, … a third country, a closed country" and a "war zone."6 However, the traditional critical tools of border studies do not adequately address the current moment, when xenophobic calls to close the borders are on the rise in the European Union as well as the US. Recent work, including by anthropologists, has challenged the "methodological nationalism" of US-based border studies that naturalized the notion of borders as territorial lines associated with national sovereignty7 and shifted attention to reconstitutions of and threats to national sovereignty and simultaneous processes of rebordering and debordering. The US has externalized its borders (as has the EU), mandating immigration checks inside Canada and Mexico, and also moved the border to the interior, far from the border with Mexico, underscoring that it is a fluid, racial, and not just territorial boundary.8 In their important intervention in critical border studies, Border as Method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson incisively critiqued the preoccupation with the border as wall,9 and thus a site only of exclusion. Viewing borders also as "devices of inclusion," and as temporal and not just spatial, Mezzadra and Neilson argue...

Sites of Dissensus : Sensing Borders and Affective States

This essay considers the shifting representation of borders and territory in a North American context and how these sites continue to exert force on the political imagination through a language of crisis and emergency. While the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (2002) and the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico border wall (2006-8) are among the most obvious manifestations of a transformation in border policy, calls for greater protection along sparsely populated regions of the Canada-U.S. border have surfaced repeatedly in the media from 2017 onwards. In both the U.S. and Canada, the gaze toward “the border” has remained steady for some time. I argue that the relationship between sight and site was pressed into service in the creation and maintenance of national borders and that the mediated image of the border has been critical to shifting attitudes toward the role of borders and migration from the late 19th century onwards. But borders are also paradoxical sites that become knowable, however, as affective states. Drawing on the disparate work of Walter Mignolo and Jacques Rancière this paper explores the role of the senses in both historical and contemporary bordering processes through looking at a range of collaborative art and activist practices that align with relational and decolonial aesthetics. As the decolonial project becomes increasingly imperative for both indigenous and non-indigenous people in North America after the recommendations of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report, I ask how the reactionary and populist forms of border fortification can be countered and unsettled by hemispheric perspectives and migratory routes.

The other U.S. Border? Techno-cultural-rationalities and fortification in Southern Mexico

This article proposes the concept of techno-cultural-rationalities to understand how border security is enacted and “technified” along the historically porous boundary between Mexico and Guatemala. Drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s description of how the technological apparatus transforms what is considered rational in a society, I examine how technology seeks to neutralize politics and instill rigid classifications on fluid and politicized realities in Mexico’s Southern Border Program ( Programa Frontera Sur). The effect of discursive maneuvers related to the Program leave the causes and conditions of migration aside and the victors of border fortification unremarked upon. The policy’s goals are partially and ambiguously accomplished amidst an array of practices, actors, objects, desires, and discourses mediated by and through the particularities of place, which circumscribe and define technological uses. In taking seriously the emergence of situated practices, which are themselves reconfigured by diverse political contexts, I make two inter-related arguments. The first is that technological rationality operates by administering scarcity through the production of finite securities contingent upon the renewal of spatial hierarchies. The second is that informality and transgression serve as idiomatic modes of governance. Provincializing Marcuse or, directing his work to place-based practices and trans-local modes of engagement, through the analytic of techno-cultural-rationalities buttresses the applicability of such an important thinker and provides critical insight into the reproduction of border regimes across different places.

Walled Borders and the Geography of Power in Henrician Prose

The geography of early modern England has attracted a great deal of attention from literary scholars for three decades. Of particular interest has been the projection of England or Great Britain in the atlases and histories of the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean periods. These projections were mapped out in the discourses surrounding the border fortification project initiated by Henry VIII in the last decade of his reign. This essay explores how the fortification network and the discourses surrounding it cooperated in the projection of an English geography that supported Henrician efforts to amplify and centralize royal power. [A.M.]

Los dados de Ausa y Mendikute (s. XIII-XIV): La elaboración de objetos lúdicos en hueso en algunas fortificaciones medievales del territorio guipuzcoano

espanolEl estudio arqueologico de los recintos fortificados de Ausa y Mendikute permitio recuperar una muestra significativa de utiles y complementos oseos correspondientes a la fase final de su ocupacion militar. Entre los objetos elaborados en hueso, cabe destacar un conjunto de piezas de caracter ludico, mayoritariamente dados, asi como otros elementos residuales del proceso de elaboracion. Dichos testimonios avalan que se trata de una manufactura local realizada por la soldadesca de ambas fortificaciones fronterizas. EnglishThe archaeological study of the medieval fortresses of Mendikute and Ausa allowed discovering a significant sample of bone tools and accessories from the final phase of their military occupation. Among these objects made of bone, a set of game pieces mostly including dice has been studied together with other elements related to the manufacturing process. Such evidences suggest that these manufactures where local productions made by the soldiers of both border fortifications. The study presented throughout these paper aims at offering a new data for the increasing of the state-of-the-art with regard to medieval games and leisure activities. The fortresses of Mendikute (Albiztur, Gipuzkoa) and Ausa (Zaldibia, Gipuzkoa) are set upon the southern area of the historical Gipuzkoan landascape, on the Upper Oria Basin, where the flows of rivers Goierri and Tolosaldea join together. Both fortresses exhibit high similarities with regard to their function, architecture and inner layout. These parallels suggest a most likely coetaneous building within the implantation process of the Navarre kingdom in the Basque Country. The archaeological materials studied were found at the occupation and destruction layers at both fortresses. The entire assemblage is formed by a set of bone dice and some auxiliary elements for their fabrication. These are bone prismatic bars ready for dice-cutting, bone cubes already cut and prepared for point marking and some remains of scrapped bones where prismatic bars were so far obtained. The most interesting aspect of these materials is the punctuation of dice, which mostly follows the late medieval convention placing 1 opposite to 6, 2 opposite to 5, and 3 opposite to 4. While this is the normal rule in most individuals, one dice from Mendikute (MEN 525) exhibits wrong punctuation in the form 1/6, 2/3, 4/5. This is not an isolated phenomenon, as some other parallels of erratic punctuation are known, even if they are not tricky dice. Examples of erratic punctuation are those that do not follow the normal rules, but there is no deceit in their fabrication. The found of auxiliary elements for dice fabrication, which points towards the local production of Ausa and Mendikute’s dice, has also other parallels in the nearby area, the Iberian Peninsula, Southern France or Great Britain, as demonstrated throughout this piece of research. The process of dice fabrication and their chronology are discussed according to the archaeological and written sources. Archaeological evidence reveals that most of these elements were made of bone, whilst this material is not exclusive as many others are known, such as wood, ivory or stone. The Alphonse X’s Book of Games shows some activities related to dice fabrication beautifully represented in its illuminations. The book itself offers remarkable information about the prescriptions and rules for the placement of the punctuation onto the cubes in late Middle age, which is slightly different from the majoritarian one in ancient times. To sum up, the study of medieval dice needs a holistic approach including written and archaeological evidence to determine the production processes and rules for game practices. Bone dice found at the medieval fortresses of Ausa and Mendikute, together with the remains of their fabrication, provide some evidence for their local production, probably made by soldiers guarding the border and aiming at amusing themselves in their leisure time. euskaraAusako eta Mendikuteko esparru gotortuen ikerketa arkeologikoaren bidez, haren okupazio militarraren amaierako faseko hezur-osagarri eta tresnen lagin esanguratsua berreskuratu ahal izan da. Hezurrarekin egindako objektuen artean, izaera ludikoko piezen multzoa (batez ere dadoak) eta prestaketa-prozesuko hondakin-elementu batzuk nabarmendu behar dira. Testigantza horiek agerian utzi dute bi gotorleku mugakideetako soldaduek bertan egindako manufaktura direla.

The Fortification of the Arab States’ Borders in the Sub-Regional contexts

ABSTRACT: The post-cold war period has witnessed a remarkable increase of the fortification and militarization of territorial borders as a direct result of new transnational challenges, including terrorism, irregular migration, drug traffi cking and weapons smuggling. Today, there are about 65 border walls around the world; most of them were built in the last three years especially in the Arab World and Eastern Europe. Although the fortifi cations of the Arab States’ borders differ in contexts and reasons, they are generally similar in structure and techniques used in their construction. The prevention of irregular immigration remains the major goal in the other regions of the world especially in North America and Eastern Europe; however, security goals, mainly the prevention of theinfiltration of armed groups, are the main reasons of the fortifi cation of Arab borders. In addition to the security goals, the current Arab border fortifications intend to prevent regular migration, goods smuggling, and drug traffi cking. Furthermore, this policy strives, in some cases, to unilaterally impose the de facto border. The key question the paper addresses is: to what extent does this fortification of Arab borders reflect the nature of the existing regional subsystems? The paper takes into account that Arab regional subsystems are characterized by mutual mistrust and suspicion, which prevent Arab states to adopt common security border policies. In addition, the current border policies are inseparable from the way in which the postcolonial Arab states’ borders were drawn.

FORMATION OF MILITARY FORCES ON THE IRTYSH BOUNDARY LINE IN THE MIDDLE 1740s

The article discusses the formation of the Fortress on the Irtysh boundary line of fortifications and introduction toSiberiaregular army units. It introduces a detailed study of the movement of military forces to the region and their redeployment to the south ofWestern Siberia. This process is presented in the context of the actions of the Russian administration aimed at building a single line of fortifications inSiberia. These events were largely related to the complication of the geopolitical situation on the Dzungar-Russian state border in connection with the development of mining and metallurgical industry in the Altai. The article examines the contribution to the formation of the border fortifications inWestern Siberiaby the Governor of Orenburg krai Ivan Neplyuev, Governor of Siberia Alexander Sukharev and the first commander of the Siberian Corps general H. Kindermann. On the basis of materials of central and regional archives the author covers the issues of mapping of the planned and actually built fortifications on theIrtyshline; the article states the number of weapons in the outposts and fortresses in the middle of 1740s.

Undocumented migration in response to climate change.

In the face of climate change induced economic uncertainty, households may employ migration as an adaptation strategy to diversify their livelihood portfolio through remittances. However, it is unclear whether such climate migration will be documented or undocumented. In this study we combine detailed migration histories with daily temperature and precipitation information for 214 weather stations to investigate whether climate change more strongly impacts undocumented or documented migration from 68 rural Mexican municipalities to the U.S. during the years 1986-1999. We employ two measures of climate change, the warm spell duration index (WSDI) and the precipitation during extremely wet days (R99PTOT). Results from multi-level event-history models demonstrate that climate-related international migration from rural Mexico was predominantly undocumented. We conclude that programs to facilitate climate change adaptation in rural Mexico may be more effective in reducing undocumented border crossings than increased border fortification.

ALGERIA – TUNISIA: Border Fortification

Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural SeriesVolume 50, Issue 5 p. 19718A-19718C Military ALGERIA – TUNISIA: Border Fortification First published: 18 June 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-825X.2013.05134.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume50, Issue5June 2013Pages 19718A-19718C RelatedInformation

Offshoring and outsourcing the ‘unauthorised’: The annual reports of an anxious state

Since the inception of Australia's mandatory immigration detention policy for ‘unauthorised’ arrivals, border issues have generated significant public discussion. The policy is controversial and has been made more complicated by the outsourcing and offshoring of detention centre management and processing. Despite the diversity of actors involved in the government's mandatory detention policy (such as private security firms and intergovernmental organisations), we argue that the management of ‘unauthorised’ migration has been framed as a matter controlled by the state that is beholden to no other interests except its own. In order to explore the role of state and non-state actors in Australia's detention policy, this paper offers a reading of departmental annual reports over a 14-year period from 1996 to 2010. Using the theoretical work of Wendy Brown, we explore the representation of non-state actors in border management and the impact this has on the identity of the state as revealed in the annual reporting process. In line with Brown, we argue that the department's annual reports demonstrate the tension that exist between the apparent “opening and barricading”, the “fusion and partition” that underpins globalisation (2010, p. 7). In addition, we argue that emergent forms of border fortification provide an opportunity for the nation-state to reassert its sovereignty whilst at the same time these reflect deep anxieties over the role of the state in a globalised and privatised future. We contend that the annual reporting process provides a performative opportunity for the nation-state to demonstrate its strength and relevance. At the same time it is dependent on multinational security firms and inter-governmental authorities to execute the policy.

Knowing-and-yet-not-knowing about European border deaths

Rapid changes associated with globalisation have led to the violent policing of territorial borders across the Global North. In Europe, the ongoing project of constructing a unified identity for an expanding European Union (EU) has created further pressure to separate included groups from surplus populations. The resulting fortification of external borders and intensification of internal controls have led to thousands of fatalities. But despite this mounting death toll, no EU agency is held to account for border-related deaths, and the carnage has failed to capture the attention of a seemingly unaware or uncaring public. In this article I acknowledge the efforts of NGOs to monitor and mourn the many deaths occurring at Europe’s physical, internal and external borders, and draw on post-Holocaust literatures on moral exclusion and the sociology of denial to identify systemic processes that prevent these deaths from being recognised as large-scale human rights abuses.

The military potential of small countries: Austria before World War II

Abstract : The military potential of small countries : Austria before World War II. Restricted by the peace treaty, the Austrian army would practically become a police force, the part of which, in the troubled inter-bellum history of the new state would increase as the danger of losing independence was growing. Under these circumstances, the Republic of Austria, missing a border with a great democracy and having only the platonic sympathy of the West and small border fortifications, and defended by a thinned army, could not face the Reich. Despite these factors, the Austrian military thinking was defensive, lucid and pragmatic especially thanks to the acknowledgement of country’s limits, without useless heroism, un excellent exemple for other small powers like Roumania.