Border Theory Research Articles

From Territoriality to Borderscapes: The Conceptualisation of Space in Border Studies

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to analyse the conceptualisation of space in border studies. My interest in the subject arises because recent articles published on diverse outlets of border studies have advanced the notion that borders are on the move and not necessarily located where it is expected—at the line shared by two sovereign nations. Instead, scholars argued that borders have become dislocated, displaced and can be found in-between, anywhere even if they have been out-sourced or placed off-shore. This notion of borders “everywhere” gives the sensation that borders are becoming a-spatial, a-territorial, space no longer matters, and geography is dead. This paper challenges that view. Thus, the main contribution this paper makes is to bring back space into border theory by tracing and reinserting spatial concepts into the discussion of border studies. The central argument in the paper is that space and borders are closely intertwined—like the ying and yang; borders are space. I argue that we can advance the theorisation of borders from a spatial perspective by delving deeper into concrete spatialisations such as micro spaces or heterotopias (besides the camp. Prison, mental hospitals, etc.) where bordering practices take place.

Enactors or reactors? Work-life border management for women in law in Nigeria

ABSTRACT Work-family border theory casts individuals as protagonists who are enactive rather than reactive in shaping borders between work and personal life domains. To what extent is this the case in strongly patriarchal contexts that constrain women’s personal agency? This qualitative study conducted with 32 female lawyers, magistrates and justices in Nigeria shows how participants engage in new border management tactics in response to context-specific institutional and social factors. Faced with public harassment and physical assault in a country where violence against women is normalised, female legal professionals restructure family borders to extend no further than their homes and retain police attachés as border-keepers. When their families are reconfigured via nonconsensual polygamous marriages, women’s work borders are strengthened by co-wives performing domestic labour and family borders are strengthened by co-wives’ assistance with job tasks, thereby reducing participants’ work-family conflict. Rather than strategically enacting work-life borders within known situational constraints, Nigerian female legal professionals react to involuntary events that limit their agency to negotiate desired work and personal lives.

Communicating across the borders: managing work-life boundaries through communication in various domains

ABSTRACT Communicating work issues at home and home issues at work, also known as across-the-border (ATB) communication, is a part of everyday work and family interaction. This study focuses on the concept of ATB communication, using Work/Family Border Theory, according to which the boundaries between work and private life are seen as negotiated and shaped through social interactions and practices. We argue that through ATB communication, and especially by focusing on what is shared and how, employees can manage boundaries and achieve work-life balance. Altogether, 32 informants, comprising journalists (N = 16) and their relational others (N = 16), were interviewed to investigate the role of ATB communication in employees’ work-life boundary management. The findings show that ATB communication entails discussions about responsibilities in different life domains and a search for support in demanding or complex work or private life situations. One feature of boundary management involves refraining from ATB communication in order to achieve a balance between work and life. The study extends existing knowledge of boundary management as a communicative process and offers important practical implications by highlighting the role of interpersonal relationships in boundary management practices and the quality of ATB communication in these relationships.

The Digital Lives of Student Mothers: A Consideration of Technologies That Support or Erode the Student/Parent Boundary

A growing body of work explores the well-being of students. However, little work has addressed the experiences of student mothers, who must juggle the demands of study and childcare simultaneously. The rise of the student mother is taking place at a time when student learning and engagement as well as childcare has become highly digitised. Existing literature on work/life balance suggests a key issue for student mothers is management of the work-family border, such that they can choose to segregate or blend roles as appropriate. In this study, we used work-family border theory to examine the role that technology plays in supporting both the segregation and blending of student and parent roles, making recommendations for the ways that boundary maintenance might be more explicitly considered in digital systems design.

Work Life Balance and Performance of the National Police Service Officers in Kwale, County Kenya

Organizations have recognized the importance of Work-life balance as a means of employee performance and for this reason, institutions have various programs in place to ensure that the employee attend to both work and social life effectively. The National Police Service has put in place various programs to enhance work-life balance but there was a dearth of empirical knowledge on their effect work performance of police officers. The main intention of the research was therefore, to assess the effects of work life balance on the performance of National Police Service officer in Kwale County, Kenya. This research was anchored on Work-Family Border Theory and used descriptive survey research design to establish the effect of the work life balance on the performance of police officers. The target population under study was 748 police officers in Kwale County. The study adopted multi-stage sampling involving clustering sub divisions, stratifying as per rank and proportionate random sampling to select 261 officers for the study. The sample size was calculated using Yamane (1967) sampling formula that generated a sample size of 261 officers who filled in the questionnaires. The main data for this research was collected using structured questionnaires both open and close ended. To analyze data, the study employed both descriptive and inferential statistics (mainly regression) using SPSS version 20 for windows. The findings of the study revealed that the work life balance has influence on work performance in the National Police Service (NPS) in Kwale (R 2 0.767). Based on this finding the study recommends that top leadership of the National Police Service should embrace sound work-life balance practices and give prominence to work-life balance strategies such as leave; to enhance performance, in the National Police Service. Further, that policy maker to develop training policies aimed at equipping officers with relevant self-management skills and knowledge to enhance self-management for effective work performance. Keywords: Work Life Balance, Leave, Performance, National Police Service DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/11-5-09 Publication date: June 30 th 2021

Emerging Career Realities during the Pandemic: What Does it Mean for Women’s Career Development?

The Problem Women must often overcome inequitable workplace policies and unsupportive family for career development. Although remote work allows women the freedom to manage both work and family domains, stigma rooted in gender-stereotypes dissuades women from utilizing remote work policies and working flexibly. The Solution Working from home during the pandemic, has led to some erosion of the stigma attached to remote work. Through the work/family border theory, we explore the new realities for employees working remotely and its positive impact on women’s career development. We argue, organizations can promote women’s careers by capitalizing on employee’s positive experiences with remote work during the pandemic, and support women’s career development even after the pandemic. The Stakeholders Stakeholders for this article include colleagues, supervisors, partners, and spouses, who have the power to influence women’s career development, as well as HRD professionals and organizational leaders who implement policies and practices supporting women’s career development.

Staying in touch, yet expected to be? A diary study on the relationship between personal smartphone use at work and work–nonwork interaction

The present study challenges the prevalent negative view of personal smartphone use at work and advances our understanding of its effects on the work–nonwork interface. Drawing on border theory, we focus on the social and instrumental feature of smartphones that allows employees to be connected with their private contacts (e.g. friends and family members) while at work and, thereby, test the influence of day‐level personal smartphone use at work on positive and negative work–nonwork interaction (WNI). In considering social experiences of smartphone‐enabled communication, we propose underlying explanatory mechanisms, namely, the social benefits (i.e. feeling in touch with private contacts) and social costs (i.e. feeling expected to respond to private contacts) of communication. One hundred and twenty‐seven employees participated in a diary study. They completed online questionnaires three times a day over ten working days, resulting in a total of 1,066 days of data. Multilevel structural equation modelling indicated that on the day‐level of analysis, personal smartphone use at work promoted positive WNI through the perceived social benefits of communication and increased negative WNI through the perceived social costs of communication. We discuss our findings and extend current research on personal smartphone use at work by acknowledging this widespread workplace behaviour as both beneficial and detrimental for successfully managing the daily interplay of the work and nonwork domains.Practitioner points Personal smartphone use at work should not be classified as exclusively detrimental workplace behaviour, as it can help employees attend to personal responsibilities more easily. For a more comprehensive evaluation of the consequences of personal smartphone use at work, social experiences of communication should be considered when compiling workplace guidelines. Educating employees on how to make the most of personal smartphone use at work and understanding the underlying social mechanisms may help them to better manage work and nonwork responsibilities.

Deconstruction of the Border Theory through the Axiological Paradigm

<p>Granice i regiony przygraniczne to szczególnie ważne miejsca dla badań społecznych, zwłaszcza w erze postępującej globalizacji oraz rozwoju regionów ponadpaństwowych, takich jak Unia Europejska (UE). Migracyjny kryzys Europy wymusił aktualną refleksję na temat bezpieczeństwa granic. Wszystko to natychmiast znalazło odbicie w literaturze badawczej, która oferuje krytyczne spojrzenie na bieżąca politykę migracyjną dotyczącą zatrzymań, deportacji i kontroli granicznej w trakcie ostatnich lat. Poprzez paradygmat aksjologiczny nowego materializmu oraz krytycznej i radykalnej geografii spróbuję porównać koncepcje granic z lat 90ch (É. Balibar, A. Paasi, H. Donnan i Th.M. Wilson) z koncepcjami z pierwszych dziesięcioleci XXI wieku, które reprezentują nowy sposób myślenia o granicach Europy poprzez takie definicje, jak <em>wahanie granic, dyfrakcja, dehumanizacja</em> i <em>animalizacja migrantów, biopolityczne bezpieczeństwo</em>. Artykuł pokazuje, w jaki sposób powstała w ostatnich latach sytuacja na europejskich granicach wpływa na hierarchię wartości europejskich, uwidoczniającą się w mediach i internetowych sieciach społecznych. Ponadto w artykule mowa jest o moralnych kwestiach kryzysu środowiska i zmiany klimatu.</p>

Nexus among cyberloafing behavior, job demands and job resources: A mediated-moderated model

This study examines the influence of job demands and job resources on cyberloafing behavior through the mediating role of job stress and work engagement and the contingent role of employee motivation at universities. The research model draws on border theory and the JD-R model. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is followed for testing the hypotheses. Data from 534 questionnaires was used for final analysis. The main findings of the study are: 1) job demands significantly increase job stress and cyberloafing behavior; 2) job resources significantly enhance work engagement, while reducing cyberloafing behavior; 3) job stress increases cyberloafing behavior, but work engagement reduces it; 4) job stress and job resources significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and cyberloafing behavior; and 5) employee motivation significantly reduces cyberloafing behavior and significantly moderates the relation between job stress and cyberloafing behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Significance of the Insignificant: Borders, Urban Space, Everyday Life

AbstractThis paper can be read as a film sequence, as each scene is based on the narration of a different everyday encounter in the city. The aim of the paper is to start a discussion on the multiple ways borders proliferate in the urban: not only through laws, institutions or policing practices, but also through deeds, words, and feelings. Rather than analyse migration and borders by focusing only on the borderzones, this paper captures the multiple relations that connect the camp to the city square, the deportation regime to the train carriage, the newspaper headlines to the housing tenements in an attempt to work towards framing a broader theory of borders in geographical terms. Focusing on everyday encounters generates more complicated and nuanced understandings of subjectivity and power, while it brings to the fore the multiple borders that are simultaneously embodied and transcended, performed and challenged, established and subverted.

Uncovering stories of resilience among successful African American women in STEM

The need to increase the number of African American women who obtain STEM degrees has been well documented in the literature by researchers, scientists, and policymakers. Increasing the participation of this group of women and other underrepresented groups in STEM is both an issue of social justice and economic advancement on a national scale. Despite decades of efforts to address this need through research and funding, the participation of African American women in STEM is still low. In part, this may be due to the limited number of studies that include the voices of African American women. Drawing upon the theories of cultural border crossing and resiliency, this paper highlights the stories of eight successful African American women who earned a terminal degree in a STEM field. The purpose of the study was to identify and describe the key factors that these women said aided in their persistence and resilience during two key periods: before postsecondary education and during postsecondary education. We use a case study approach to interpret their stories about the obstacles they faced and the strategies they employed to overcome them. Our findings suggest that experiences outside of school are more important than experiences inside school. The paper concludes with a discussion of the finding’s implications and recommendations for African American women’s recruitment and retention in STEM.

The Ultimate Border: Mobility, Spirituality, and Death in Iñárritu’s Biutiful

Biutiful is the first of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s films to introduce the supernatural and focus on a single protagonist, Uxbal. The film makes a political commentary by showing the slums of Barcelona, where impoverished citizens and undocumented migrants coexist. Through Uxbal’s visions of ghosts, the supernatural enters the most marginalized sectors of Barcelona. While popular narratives often relate mobility to liberation and transformative experiences, Biutiful problematizes this understanding of displacement. This paper analyses how the film articulates borders both literally and allegorically. Through mobility and border theory I explore how socio-political conditions intertwine with the supernatural and determine the characters’ access to spiritual experiences. This article also explores how mobility intermingles with spiritual experiences, the supernatural, and death. I rely on the “spectral turn” to examine how ghosts in Biutiful serve to make a socio-political commentary. Lastly, this article explores the use of focalization in the film to represent the supernatural through Uxbal’s visions. Biutiful engages mobility and spirituality in a way that is symptomatic of the asymmetric power dynamics of globalization. It represents displacement as a navigation within the social fabric of the global system in which spiritual experiences seem elusive.

The Development of a Tool to Monitor the Impact of Flexible Conditions, Including Remote Employment, on Youth Work-Life Balance Parameters

Transformational processes in labor relations affect the employees’ social well-being. The published empirical works show that the values and perceptions of employment conditions differ among employees of various generations. The authors set the goal to develop and test a tool to monitor the work-life balance parameters of young people, belonging to the economically active part of Generation Z. The tool should be able to identify real and desired models of work-life balance and monitor well-being by satisfaction with the established ratio in the distribution of personal time over key areas that characterize the quality of life depending on the form and type of labor relations. When developing the tool, the authors paid special attention to the possibility of measuring the impact of modern flexible employment formats, including remote employment, on the social well-being of working youth of generation Z. The authors rely on the provisions of work/family border theory, generational theories and methods for assessing workplace toxicity. The application of sociological methods and instruments is justified. The authors developed a questionnaire for monitoring the satisfaction rate, tested during the pilot expert survey of young specialists in the Russian labor market by running a personal formalized survey. The respondents' responses were recorded in Google online questionnaire. An expert survey was conducted in May 2020. The results obtained confirmed that the tool allows to assess the required parameters. There was identified a positive relationship between flexible forms of employment and satisfaction with the work-life balance in the youth environment. Further research is considered to be promising.

WORK LIFE BALANCE: A HOLISTIC REVIEW OF THEORETICAL CONCEPTS

Work-life balance (WLB) has made remarkable development in the field of research during the last decade. Even though there is extensive literature available to support the concept, and contextual attempts have been made thoroughly, the current study shall provide a much more precise and concrete literature for researchers. The review encompasses work from the field of HR, OB and few multidisciplinary research articles as a reference to explain WLB theories. The major theories that have been covered in the paper are Segmentation Theory, Enrichment/enhancement Theory, Facilitation Theory, Spillover Theory, Social identity Theory, Compensation Theory, Congruence Theory, Conflict Theory, Human capital Theory, Instrumental Theory, Resource drain Theory, Conservation of resources Theory, Ecology Theory & Border TheoryWork-life balance (WLB) has made remarkable development in the field of research during the last decade. Even though there is extensive literature available to support the concept, and contextual attempts have been made thoroughly, the current study shall provide a much more precise and concrete literature for researchers. The review encompasses work from the field of HR, OB and few multidisciplinary research articles as a reference to explain WLB theories. The major theories that have been covered in the paper are Segmentation Theory, Enrichment/enhancement Theory, Facilitation Theory, Spillover Theory, Social identity Theory, Compensation Theory, Congruence Theory, Conflict Theory, Human capital Theory, Instrumental Theory, Resource drain Theory, Conservation of resources Theory, Ecology Theory & Border Theory

The Art of Writing from the Border: Narrative Decentralisation and Pluricultural Identity Construction in Tomizza’s Franziska (1996)

This article examines one of Tomizza’s unjustifiably understudied texts within two primary contexts: one formed around the historical, political and social background of early 20th-Century Trieste, the other around the author’s recurrent concern with hybrid characters and geopolitical, cultural and linguistic borderlands. At the surface, these contexts are dramatised to revisit a political and ethnic conflict from the viewpoint of one of its most invisible victims. To uncover the novel’s more deep-running operations, however, this study takes a narratological approach and applies perspectives associated with imagology and linguistic hybridity as well as theories of border writing and border-crossing. Whereas the narrative fusion of historical reconstruction, self-reflexive commentaries, epistolary testimonies and mythical fictionalisations creates a discourse of literary fragmentation and deterritorialisation, the protagonist’s biographical background and socio-culturally embedded experiences are interlaced to represent a liminal character formed by dual perspectives, plurilingual enunciations and incompatible loyalties. Franziska exists between history and myth and as she increasingly acquires different cultural codes, she also comes to linger, irreconcilably, between different and conflicting cultural civilisations. Just as the multidimensional text questions norms of literary unity, so does this fluid character expose stereotypical conceptions of ethnic identities. As an amalgamated device, the self-referential narrator and the border crosser he constructs expose not only ideals of linguistic and cultural purity but also totalitarian conceptions of geographical and cultural borders. Ultimately, this experimental literary operation implicates the reader in a democratic literacy of multiple perspectives that questions normative notions of identities, belonging, culture and nationhood.

Review of Work-Life Balance Theories

Objective - This paper’s objective is to make a comprehensive compilation of the various theories used in studies of work-life balance (WLB) in order to understand their usage. Methodology/Technique – Based on past literature, this paper focused on review of relevant literature from various online data bases as well as manual texts of studies on WLB with particular attention on the theories used. Using descriptive layout, the paper gives adequate review of WLB theories. Finding – This paper found that there are numerous prevailing theories on WLB explaining the relationships in various WLB studies. Such as Overall Appraisal, Structural Functionalism, Enhancement, Facilitation, Segmentation Spill-over, Compensation, Conservation, Conflict, Human Capital, Congruence, Ladder, Instrumental, Resource drain, Ecology, Border, Boundary and Integration Theories. Based on literature, this paper found that Boundary theory and Border theory are the two major foundation theories used in many studies to explain the different aspects of WLB. Novelty - This paper found that there are no universally accepted theories for WLB. Theories used on WLB studies depend on the range of the study’s framework, variables or perspectives of the study. This leads to omissions or overlapping in frameworks. Type of Paper: Review JEL Classification: B54, D63, E24, J24. Keywords: Work-life Balance; WLB Concepts; Work-Life Balance Theories; Family-Work Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bello, Z; Tanko, G.I. (2020). Review of Work-Life Balance Theories, GATR Global J. Bus. Soc. Sci. Review, 8(4): 217 – 227. https://doi.org/10.35609/gjbssr.2020.8.4(3)

Introduction to the Special Issue: Borderlands in the Era of COVID-19

This introduction outlines the themes of the special issue (borders, borderlands, and border theory since the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns) and summarizes its contents (a research article, two dozen essays, plus photography and videography). The introduction also includes an interactive map hyperlinking the contents of the issue, and raises new lines of thought for border studies in the era of COVID-19.

"Leave me alone!": Liminal Reverberations of Memory and Trauma in Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan

Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan (1996) is one of the elaborative representations of Irish culture and women within the boundaries of memory and trauma. It not only discusses the subject of Irish female identity but also offers an exploration of cultural memory using ghostly agents obscuring the liminal boundaries between the past and the present, culture and individual. Portia is depicted as a rebellious character who needs becoming independent of cultural restrictions and ghostly memories. In this paper, I aim to analyse the liminal reflections of memory and trauma by focusing on Portia’s struggles for reclaiming her identity within the scope of Jacques Derrida's theory of hauntology and Dominick LaCapra's trauma theory. In the light of these theories, I aim to explore how cultural and individual trauma is represented through spectral characters in Portia Coughlan. Derrida concentrates on the boundary between life and death and positions spectres in this purgatory. For him, haunting is intertwined with time and is a part of memory. LaCapra suggests that traumatic memory creates temporality and eliminates the boundaries between the past and the present. Portia is an in-between character trapped by the purgatory between the past and the present. Her rejecting traditional gender roles, such as her reluctance for domestic and familial issues, talking with her dead twin Gabriel, and her inevitable suicide display how she is traumatically dissociated from her cultural boundaries. Therefore, Portia Coughlan has a significant place within the scope of liminal, memory, and border theories in terms of its employment of Irish gender identity and traumatic memories.

Exploring the Tensions Between Masculinities and Connections with Faculty and Staff among Gay Latino Collegians

This study utilizes Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Border theory to explore how internalized messages of masculinities shape the ways that gay Latino men develop connections with university staff and faculty. Specifically, we highlight how such messages learned primarily in the context of the home create spaces of tension, nepantla, within heteronormative campus settings. We present portraits of five Latino collegians enrolled in a large public four-year institution, followed by three themes. The themes include gay Latinos developing relationships (1) solely for academic purposes, (2) that explicitly involve women, and, in other cases, (3) displaying resistant behaviors to developing connections. We conclude by offering practical implications for university administrators and faculty.

Working time flexibility and work-life balance

Based on border theory (Clark 2000), we aim to investigate the relationship between individual-oriented and organization-oriented working time flexibility and employees’ work-life balance, as well as the moderating role of segmentation preference. We use data from around 18,000 employees from the 2015 Working Time Survey of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Germany. Survey data were collected through computer-assisted telephone interviews. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that individual-oriented working time flexibility was positively related to employees’ work-life balance, whereas organization-oriented working time flexibility had a negative effect. Employees’ individual preferences regarding the segmentation of work and private life only played a minor role. Those with a higher segmentation preference profit only marginally more from individual-oriented working time flexibility and suffer only marginally more from organization-oriented working time flexibility demands.Practical Relevance: Taken together, the study’s findings highlight the importance of the design of flexible working time arrangements for improving employees’ work-life balance. Employers should grant their employees a certain degree of working time autonomy while keeping organization-oriented working time requirements, such as changes of working time at short notice to accommodate operational demands, to a minimum. This applies to all employees, not only those with a strong preference for separating work and private life.