Borders Project Research Articles

Print No Border

As borders gradually open up once again, the consequences of the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic are casting light on the renewed importance of regional and national borders. This is also true of European national borders – which had already been tested by the intensification of migratory flows and populist impulses – now in the process of becoming unwilling symbols of the restrictions ushered in by the pandemic. Closed for months, or at the very least made difficult to get through by health-related restrictions, the internal EU national borders that European peoples were coming to think of as a thing of the past were, quite suddenly, extremely concrete once again. This is a process that has been brought even more dramatically to the fore by the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. From the starting point of these premises, the Print no border project explored the border and frontier concepts via xylographic practice, juxtaposing, stratifying, and comparing the geographical representation of boundaries with images borrowed from nature and the man-made elements that boundaries cut through.

Policy Note: Strengthening Tax Systems in Developing Countries: The Dutch Contribution

The Netherlands has long faced criticism for its role in facilitating tax avoidance through its network of double taxation treaties (DTTs), particularly regarding developing countries, e.g., recently in a report of the Tax Justice Network (TJN). A review of the general Dutch tax policy shows that the country has taken several steps to reform its DTTs, undertaken domestic reforms to address tax avoidance issues, and has been offering tax-related capacity development (CD) programmes to developing nations. The authors ascertain from the results of an analysis of the parliamentary debate in terms of the contents of DTTs with developing countries and changes in domestic law as well as interviews with several stakeholders in the Netherlands and in developing countries show that the Netherlands is still likely to play a prominent role in global tax avoidance. This applies despite the significant changes in policy and substantive and procedural law. Not all loopholes have been closed, and adopting anti-abuse clauses in DTTs with developing countries – a central part of the Dutch response – has been somewhat disappointing. Moreover, the process of providing tax-related CD is not optimal, and tensions remain regarding the goals that the Netherlands attempts to pursue in tandem, potentially leading to policy incoherence. Moreover, unilateral action is unlikely to result in a reduction of global tax avoidance as financial flows – and therewith tax avoidance – are likely to shift to other countries. The global minimum tax (GMT) and other parts of the two-pillar proposal are more likely to offer a breakthrough for certain types of tax avoidance.Hence, a continued international dialogue on tax matters is needed to address all types of tax avoidance. In the parliamentary discussion on this topic, the Dutch Secretary of State for Finance reconfirmed the policy to assist developing countries in strengthening their tax systems in respect of the GMT through being in favour of a broader scope of Amount B, providing technical assistance in the implementation process of Pillars 1 and 2, and through the OECD’s Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) project. The objective of this article is to add to the policy discussion on how to strengthen the tax systems of developing countries. Tax avoidance, double taxation treaties (DTTs), international tax policy, Tax avoidance, double taxation treaties (DTTs), international tax policy, capacity development (CD), anti-abuse clauses, policy coherence, developing countries, BEPS, Addis Tax Initiative (ATI), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

ГЕОГРАФИЯ БЕЗ ГРАНИЦ: ИНФОРМАЦИОННЫЙ ПОРТАЛ И ЕГО ВОЗМОЖНОСТИ

The problems of studying and teaching geography, highlighted in the Concept of Geographical Education(2018), have not lost their relevance at present. The new federal standard of basic general education and the content ofthe school geography course, special attention to geographic information and modern ICT in work with schoolchildrenand university applicants have determined the significance of localizing regional geographic and local history informationin the online space to ensure common access and interaction opportunities for stakeholders in the field of geographic andenvironmental education.Digital educational content and digital educational resources are not innovative solutions in expanding the possibilities of presenting school disciplines, but they are rare in implementing the tasks of developing and improving theregional educational system. The goal of the Geography Without Borders project is to improve continuous environmentaland geographical education by expanding the interaction between universities, schools, and employers through the introduction of platform-based, digital, and network tools. At the first stage of implementation, the project is of a regionalnature, it is filled with regional geographic and local history information.The web portal is developed on Evolution CMS, a free open-source solution for site management; Bootstrap CSSframework, designed for adaptive web development, is applied. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL have beenused in the creation and operation of the site. The structure of this portal includes resource blocks for schoolchildren(research projects, Olympiad movement, independent educational resources, etc.), for geography teachers, a block foremployers, an information block for parents, and a block for the Perm Regional Branch of the Russian GeographicalSociety. The portal structure does not remain static. When user requests change, the portal is also ready to change andadapt to changes in the external and internal environment.The implementation of the project Geography Without Borders will make it possible to solve problems of regionalgeographical and environmental education, and of regional studies

Effect of Monitoring and Evaluation on Success of Cross Border Projects in Rwanda

It has been recognized that the monitoring and evaluation is important even though consideration must be undertaken on Effect of monitoring and evaluation on success of cross border projects. The research assessed the relationship between monitoring and evaluation and success of projects. The objective of the research was to determine the effect of monitoring and evaluation implementation on success of cross border projects in Rwanda. Three research theories namely: Classical organization theory, theory of change and realistic evaluation theory guided the research. The methodology applied quantitative research design, quantitative and inferential statistics have been applied to tabulate and analyze collected data. The target population was 2102 from great lakes trade facilitation project including SPIU employees and cross border traders in which the researcher selected a sample size of 336. The Researcher approached and reviewed Literatures and empirical reviews in order to establish coherence on effect of monitoring and evaluation on success of cross border projects. The study relied on primary data and secondary data in respect to the instruments of questionnaires and documentary instrument that was employed to review and sourcing information through internet source for secondary data on study entitled effect of monitoring and evaluation on success of cross border projects. Quantitative analysis used descriptive statistics to produce frequency tables, percentages and mean. Inferential statistics were used in order to use Pearson correlation and multiple regression model to test and draw relationship between variables both for independent band dependent. The data was analyzed using SPSS 26.0 version revealed that, the overall mean of the variables was 1.66 that is between Agree (2) and Strongly Agree (1), M&E implementation and project success was 0.947, and the results presented that the variables were statistically significant with p value=0.000b. the M&E implementation was statistically significant with p value=0.000b. The Model Summary the results present that, the R Square is 0.915. thus it is statistically significant clear that 91.5% of all variables of project success can be explained by one’s of all variables of the monitoring and evaluation in project. The test of hypothesis showed that H01 on whether, there is no significant of Monitoring and Evaluation implementation affect the success of cross border project trade facilitation in Rwanda showed that (β2=0.836, p-value=0.000<0.05, t= 12.273). Subsequently the null hypothesis was rejected because p-value=0.000 is less than 5% level of significance. It was concluded that there was a significant relationship between Monitoring & evaluation and cross border project success case of Great Lakes Trade Facilitation Project in Rwanda. The study recommended to integrate monitoring and evaluation at all the project phases to anticipate effective and efficient communication of the project performance results to the stakeholders for ownership and accountability.

Trade Facilitation at the Peru–Chile Land Border: Policy Impact of Digital Importation and Prearrival Declarations

This policy report examines the impact of the Peruvian Foreign Trade Public Policy implemented at the Santa Rosa Centre of Compliance (CAFSR) at the land border between Peru and Chile, presenting original research and quantitative analysis of statistics from the CAFSR at the Peruvian border collected by the National Superintendency of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT) from 2019 to 2022. The results show that customs compliance controls have been expedited, simplified, and modernised by both the digital importation process and mandatory prearrival customs declarations. However, the analysis calls for two further risk assessment strategies to be adopted by customs administrations in both countries. First, applying additional filters to identify fraud in prearrival customs declarations could expedite the release of low-risk consignments and help to ensure higher-risk consignments are subject to additional border restrictions. This paper suggests implementing an innovative blockchain technology that allows for the timely and accurate sharing of encrypted customs declarations to administrations in Peru and Chile. Second, upgrading infrastructure and logistics at the CAFSR could increase the capacity of the border post to facilitate increased binational trade.
 
 As a result, expediting the flow of goods and reducing time and costs facilitate trade. To maintain and enhance the advances, evaluating the infrastructure, logistics, and the automatic assignation of control channels is necessary. The flow of goods increased at CAFSR, even though the percentage per type of control (physical, documentary, or free) remains steady. Hence, the evaluation and adoption of this paper's recommendations are necessary as they also include the Smart Borders Project, announced to be executed up to 2024, aimed to automatize customs control and make it less intrusive and more intelligent through the extensive use of technology, risk assessment and data mining.

As if there was a border. Bordering through excision in Melilla and the Canary Islands

This article investigates the social life of excision at the Southern Spanish border. Scholars have documented how excision expands the border project, and how it uses the law to make it more defensible as a practice. Less attention has been paid to how excision is challenged by activist networks, and how the law is used as an instrument to un-make borders. I expand literature on the complex relation between the law and geography in bordermaking by arguing that excision is rather dynamic in nature. A comparative ethnography of Melilla and the Canary Islands reveals that de facto borders created through excision are vulnerable to legal activism. The strategic use of the law can set back the expansion of the border project, tenuously restoring some rights for asylum-seeking and undocumented foreigners. Such setbacks are tenuous because excision is, nevertheless, deeply integrated into a dense web of containment tactics. ‘The undesirables’ might thus recuperate some of their rights at one point but then still face exclusion at another point of the expanded frontier.

Externalizing otherness: The racialization of belonging in the Morocco-EU Border

This essay analyzes how race politics and immigration politics intersect in present-day Morocco, entangling various actors across multiple scales, from the continental to the interpersonal. While often problematic, we suggest that externalization can provide a lens through which to trace the production and circulation of race in the Morocco-EU borderlands and to chart the uneasy proximities that emerge among states, migrants and “civil society,” and racialized outsiders and insiders. And while numerous studies analyze the geopolitical and economic dimensions of the externalized border, how externalization reworks racial-social categories of belonging in “partner” or “third” states like Morocco is less known. Drawing on ethnography and interviews, we argue that externalization is a useful analytical category for understanding transnational border projects as racial projects that operate beyond the domain of citizenship or the state, reworking categories of belonging and exclusion from the scale of the body to the global scale. The Morocco-EU borderlands constitute a “contact zone” where multiple peoples, institutions, processes, and histories interact to produce blackness as out-of-place, changing the way that Moroccans understand race, place, and membership. The mobilization of race in the Morocco-EU border impacts the lives and movements of West and Central African migrants, but may also compound the exclusions of racialized Moroccans at home and in Europe.

Le projet Archaeo-Term : premiers résultats

The Project Archaeo-Term: Initial Results
 This article aims at describing the objectives, the theoretical and methodological background, the development, and the first results of the Archaeo-Term project of the University of Naples "L'Orientale", Department of Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies. The Archaeo-Term project has been developed within the YourTermCULT project promoted by the Terminology Without Borders Project of the Terminology Coordination Unit (TermCoord) of the European Parliament - Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) specifically for collecting terminology in different aspects related to culture. The aim of the Archaeo-Term project is to enhance the access to the archaeological data in several formats and languages. It represents a common effort to contribute to the creation of linguistic and terminological resources for the domain of Cultural Heritage (CH) and, in particular, for the sub-domain of archaeology, which is notably highly complex and fragmented. One of the first results of the Archaeo-Term project is the creation of a multilingual terminological resource for the domain of archaeology, which can be conveniently employed in different Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, including Machine Translation (MT). The first version of the Archaeo-Term multilingual terminological resource is available in 5 languages: Italian, English, Spanish, German, and Dutch and is publicly accessible online. With the objective of promoting a common and shared termbase across different languages, the Archaeo-Term terminological resource is addressed not only to a specialized audience such as experts in the field of archaeology but also as terminological support for translators and interpreters during their professional practice, as well as for a more general audience. The terminological resource is the result of an extraction and aggregation process carried out starting from two already existing thesauri: the Italian "Thesaurus per la definizione dei reperti archeologici" developed by the Italian Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione - ICCD) and the multilingual Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) developed by the Getty Research Institute, which is among the most trustworthy and accurate resources in the domain of Cultural Heritage. Taking advantage of the Semantic Web formalisms applied to these terminological resources, we are able to extract and merge information from the aforementioned thesauri using SPARQL queries. Indeed, we run different queries against the SPARQL endpoint to enrich our multilingual terminological resource by extracting useful information about the different terminological entries. The information extracted and merged from these thesauri by means of several consecutive queries is as follows: the equivalent terms in the foreseen languages, the alternative terms and the plural forms, the domains and sub-domains, the definitions of the terms, and their sources. Furthermore, the extraction phase has been followed by an evaluation step aimed at checking missing information, verifying and adjusting possible misalignments among entries, and setting potential future implementations. As an ongoing project, we are also planning to enlarge the terminological resource with equivalent terms in other languages such as French, Swedish, Polish, Russian, and Chinese, with the aim of extending the language coverage also to non- European languages which are usually under-represented and low-resourced. As a first implementation with regards to the first version of the terminological resource, we have currently collected: 1.059 entries in Italian, 1.055 in Spanish, 1.053 in English, 843 in Russian, 600 in Polish, 460 in German, 193 in French, and 82 in Chinese. To conclude, the Archaeo-Term project aims at promoting the creation of high-quality and trustworthy multilingual terminological resources for the domain of archaeology by also collaborating at the same time with institutions, experts in the field of terminology, linguistics, and cultural heritage.

Cross border project in China-Pakistan economic corridor and its influence on women empowerment perspectives.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a significant and inaugural project of the "Belt and Road" initiative which is considered as structure and manifesto for panoramic and fundamental collaboration between China and Pakistan. The CPEC project was initiated to develop economic growth and facilitate free trade between both countries. However, it has generated immense employment opportunities, education facilities, and improved quality of life for local citizens, specifically women, as well as international overreach. This study investigates and examines the benefits of CPEC project and its influence on women empowerment. Based on the background of the CPEC, this study has been carried out by applying a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods to fill the gap. Data was aggregated with the help of a survey questionnaire and interviews from the residents of the Thar region of Pakistan, which comes under CPEC route. In total, 306 samples were acquired and analysed using different statistical tools such as SPSS (Statistical package for social sciences) and PLS (Partial least squares) to formulate the study results. The findings revealed that the development of CPEC has remarkably improved the quality of life for women by providing enormous employment opportunities, education facilities, skills enhancement programs, and training facilities. The analyzed results will guide government policymakers and officials to promote operational activities in the region, develop new educational institutions, and create employment opportunities for the local community and women to obtain further development of CPEC projects.

Seismic Soundoff: Building a volcano early warning system — A GWB story

This episode features Katrin Sieron and Blake Weissling discussing their Geoscientists without Borders (GWB) project on Pico de Orizaba — the highest volcano in Mexico. Sieron and Weissling provide an overview of their project, highlight their accomplishments, and reflect on the legacy of their work. Hear the full episode at https://seg.org/podcast/post/14727 .

The Financial – Economic Factors in the Strategic Planning of European Borderlands: Envisioning the So-Desired Sustainable Development

In Europe, there are a considerable number of borderlands involving various Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) projects, plans, and strategies. It is a well-known fact that these border synergies are perceived as very intricate processes. Consequently, research projects that focus on different variables, factors, and perspectives that could affect the success or failure of the common border projects are essential to achieve consistent regional sustainability. In fact, we believe there is a gap on the perception and implementation of some of the critical factors for territorial success in borderlands by the regional main actors. Thereby, this study through the use of exploratory tools as top-to-bottom questionnaires examines the border cooperation of eleven CBC projects (twenty-one European cities) focusing on the financial-economic theme. Besides, the research permits us to recognize and isolate the two main decisive factors to consider from a financial-economic: (i) Strong territorial strategy; (ii) Access to European funds. Moreover, this study shows that the CBC could be used as a catalyst for creating job opportunities in these regions.

Assessment of landslides in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia: A Geoscientists Without Borders project

A severe storm caused floods and landslides in the Balkan region in May 2014. In response to the disaster, geophysical and geotechnical surveys were organized as a Geoscientists Without Borders (GWB) project of SEG. It took place in eight landslide-prone areas in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in three phases in 2015 and 2016. The seismic and electric resistivity surveys were conducted, and the results were interpreted in conjunction with the geotechnical inspection. The surveys identified the size of a potential landslide layer by the S-wave velocity distribution and, in particular high-risk locations, by electric resistivity anomalies. This interpretation enhanced the geotechnical observation. From the result, several countermeasures were recommended to suit the budgetary restrictions of local governments. Among them, the survey results in the Lopare locality have been presented as an example. The project was organized by the Association of Geophysicists and Environmentalists of Serbia involving many scientists, engineers, students, government staff, and local communities. As well as technical achievements, the significance of the project included providing students with opportunities to have practical experience of geophysical surveys and to learn outside the classroom and bringing together participants from different racial, political, religious, and educational backgrounds. All were made aware of the importance of humanitarian expert work. We have assessed the effectiveness of the GWB project using the guidelines of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Development Assistance Committee. One important outcome of the assessment was that such a volunteer geoscientific survey cannot stand alone. It would be more effective if incorporated in overall recovery and prevention programs.

Establishing the Aedes watch out network, the first island-wide mosquito citizen-science initiative in Cyprus within the framework of the Mosquitoes Without Borders project

Establishing the Aedes watch out network, the first island-wide mosquito citizen-science initiative in Cyprus within the framework of the Mosquitoes Without Borders project

Generic properties of free boundary problems in plasma physics* *DB has been partially supported by Beyond Borders Project 2019 (sponsored by Univ. of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’) ‘Variational Approaches to PDE’s’, MIUR Excellence Department Project awarded to the Department of Mathematics, Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata, CUP E83C18000100006.

We are concerned with the global bifurcation analysis of positive solutions to free boundary problems arising in plasma physics. We show that in general, in the sense of domain variations, the following alternative holds: either the shape of the branch of solutions resembles the monotone one of the model case of the two-dimensional disk, or it is a continuous simple curve without bifurcation points which ends up at a point where the boundary density vanishes. On the other hand, we deduce a general criterion ensuring the existence of a free boundary in the interior of the domain. Application to a classic nonlinear eigenvalue problem is also discussed.

Development and validation of a low-cost direct current resistivity meter for humanitarian geophysics applications

Insufficient access to safe drinking water is one of the most challenging global humanitarian issues. The development of low-cost microcontrollers and the widespread availability of cheap electronic components raise the possibility of developing and using low-cost geophysical instrumentation with open-source designs and software solutions to circumvent geophysical instrumentation capital cost issues. To these ends, we alter an existing low-cost direct current (DC) resistivity meter design and develop an optional modular Raspberry Pi data-logging system to improve the unit’s functionality and usability and to ensure data integrity. Numerical modeling and physical testing demonstrate that the system is more robust than previously published low-cost designs and works in a more diverse range of geologic scenarios — especially conductive environments. Our instrument was tested in a Geoscientists Without Borders project jointly run between researchers from Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and Université d’Abomey-Calavi (UAC), Cotonou, Benin. A key project component involved CSM and UAC students constructing and validating two low-cost DC resistivity meters and then using these instruments for fieldwork aimed at better characterizing and monitoring the health of a local aquifer used as a groundwater source for communities in the Cotonou region. The low-cost instruments were successfully used alongside a commercial resistivity meter to acquire data for 2D inversion of aquifer hydrostratigraphy, indicating the presence of a clay-sand contact. The costs of the redesigned instrument and data logger, respectively, are $177 and $108 (in 2021 USD) with future cost reductions possible, which are fractions of the price of commercial resistivity meters.

Detection of 3D face masks with thermal infrared imaging and deep learning techniques

Biometric systems are becoming more and more efficient due to increasing performance of algorithms. These systems are also vulnerable to various attacks. Presentation of falsified identity to a biometric sensor is one the most urgent challenges for the recent biometric recognition systems. Exploration of specific properties of thermal infrared seems to be a comprehensive solution for detecting face presentation attacks. This letter presents outcome of our study on detecting 3D face masks using thermal infrared imaging and deep learning techniques. We demonstrate results of a two-step neural network-featured method for detecting presentation attacks. Full Text: PDF ReferencesS.R. Arashloo, J. Kittler, W. Christmas, "Face Spoofing Detection Based on Multiple Descriptor Fusion Using Multiscale Dynamic Binarized Statistical Image Features", IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 10, 11 (2015). CrossRef A. Anjos, M.M. Chakka, S. Marcel, "Motion-based counter-measures to photo attacks inface recognition", IET Biometrics 3, 3 (2014). CrossRef M. Killioǧlu, M. Taşkiran, N. Kahraman, "Anti-spoofing in face recognition with liveness detection using pupil tracking", Proc. SAMI IEEE, (2017). CrossRef A. Asaduzzaman, A. Mummidi, M.F. Mridha, F.N. Sibai, "Improving facial recognition accuracy by applying liveness monitoring technique", Proc. ICAEE IEEE, (2015). CrossRef M. Kowalski, "A Study on Presentation Attack Detection in Thermal Infrared", Sensors 20, 14 (2020). CrossRef C. Galdi, et al, "PROTECT: Pervasive and useR fOcused biomeTrics bordEr projeCT - a case study", IET Biometrics 9, 6 (2020). CrossRef D.A. Socolinsky, A. Selinger, J. Neuheisel, "Face recognition with visible and thermal infrared imagery", Comput. Vis Image Underst. 91, 1-2 (2003) CrossRef L. Sun, W. Huang, M. Wu, "TIR/VIS Correlation for Liveness Detection in Face Recognition", Proc. CAIP, (2011). CrossRef J. Seo, I. Chung, "Face Liveness Detection Using Thermal Face-CNN with External Knowledge", Symmetry 2019, 11, 3 (2019). CrossRef A. George, Z. Mostaani, D Geissenbuhler, et al., "Biometric Face Presentation Attack Detection With Multi-Channel Convolutional Neural Network", IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 15, (2020). CrossRef S. Ren, K. He, R. Girshick, J. Sun, "Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition", Proc. CVPR IEEE 39, (2016). CrossRef K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, J. Sun, "Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition", Proc. CVPR, (2016). CrossRef K. Mierzejewski, M. Mazurek, "A New Framework for Assessing Similarity Measure Impact on Classification Confidence Based on Probabilistic Record Linkage Model", Procedia Manufacturing 44, 245-252 (2020). CrossRef

Comprehensive sexuality education in six Southern African Countries: Perspectives from learners and teachers.

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) promotes young people's healthy sexual decisions. This study assessed the level of provision of CSE in schools in ten sites in six Southern African countries from the perspectives of learners and teachers. The data was from a needs assessment preceding the baseline evaluation of the SRHR-HIV Knows no Borders Project conducted in ten sites in six Southern African countries. A total of 161 learners from 10 schools and 96 teachers from 96 schools were interviewed. Among the teachers, 82.3% reported CSE was part of the school curriculum. Although basic education policies in Southern African countries are in tandem with international, regional and national policies, complete implementation of the policies remains unfulfilled owing to conflicting policies and socio-cultural values of diverse stakeholders. Awareness campaigns and trainings may help to promote positive perceptions among stakeholders about sensitive CSE topics and the distribution of SRH commodities in schools.

Dancing with Epistemic Borders

This article explores an encounter with ‘unknowns’ of knowledge production and analysis experienced by a dance practitioner-scholar and social science researchers during an ongoing, collaborative project charting the effect of territorial borders on dance artists’ lives and practice. Expanding the investigation of borders beyond the territorial to also encompass the methodological, the Co-Motion: Dance and borders project experiments with how improvised dance responses to research questions place an affective and embodied experience of borders in dialogue with more traditional methods of sociological enquiry. In contrast to ‘Danced Data’ projects that position dance as a primarily interpretative and communicative tool, Co-Motion considers how dance practice can be made integral to interdisciplinary, mixed-methods research processes as a source of knowledge production in its own right. The project’s aim to achieve an interweaving of different knowledges through a possible fusion of horizons in an event generated by a joint questioning (Gadamer) seemed a relatively straightforward premise at the outset. However, the practical execution raised questions as to how a mixed-methods approach might truly embrace epistemological pluralism in knowledge production from inception, and how seemingly paradoxical forms of knowledge generation and languaging (Ingold) might be reconciled in analysis. Acknowledging these complexities, this article presents a dialogue between the researchers involved, mapping a terrain that welcomes unknowns and challenges the knowledge hegemonies experienced. Building on Mignolo and Tlostanova’s (2006) critique of Western imperial and colonial knowledge hierarchies and their concept of ‘critical border thinking’, we ask how dance troubles epistemic frontiers that place knowledge classified as other outside of discourse. We also consider what epistemic shifts need to occur in collaborative, interdisciplinary projects to enable an ‘unlearning and ungrounding of knowledge’ that allows ‘unforeseen bodies, movements and relations’ (Cvejić, 2018, p.226) to inform the design of cultural policies that impact artists’ daily lives and practice.

Classification of oil and gas-bearing territories of Russia and the structure of the oil and gas industry of the regions

The article is devoted to the qualitative assessment of the state of the oil and gas industry in the Russian Federation based on the context of administrative-territorial units. It was realized that the data provided by different sources differs due to the variation in the calculation methods used, and the lack of detailed regional reports from foreign agencies shows the novelty of the research. In the current research the projection of administrative borders on the territory of oil and gas-geological zoning is used. To determine the degree of the dependence of regional economies from the oil and gas industry, current data about the state of the mineral resource base in the subjects of the Russian Federation were compared with the geography of the location of processing enterprises. On the basis of the obtained materials, the classification of oil and gas-bearing territories is carried out.

A comparison of primary stakeholders’ views on the deployment of biometric technologies in border management: Case study of SMart mobILity at the European land borders

Advances in technology have a substantial impact on every aspect of our lives, ranging from the way we communicate to the way we travel. The Smart mobility at the European land borders (SMILE) project is geared towards the deployment of biometric technologies to optimize and monitor the flow of people at land borders. However, despite the anticipated benefits of deploying biometric technologies in border control, there are still divergent views on the use of such technologies by two primary stakeholders–travelers and border authorities. In this paper, we provide a comparison of travelers' and border authorities' views on the deployment of biometric technologies in border management. The overall goal of this study is to enable us to understand the concerns of travelers and border guards in order to facilitate the acceptance of biometric technologies for a secure and more convenient border crossing. Our method of inquiry consisted of in-person interviews with border guards (SMILE project's end users), observation and field visits (to the Hungarian-Romanian and Bulgarian-Romanian borders) and questionnaires for both travelers and border guards. As a result of our investigation, two conflicting trends emerged. On one hand, border guards argued that biometric technologies had the potential to be a very effective tool that would enhance security levels and make traveler identification and authentication procedures easy, fast and convenient. On the other hand, travelers were more concerned about the technologies representing a threat to fundamental rights, personal privacy and data protection.