Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies

Throughout history, the functions and roles of borders have been continuously changing. They can only be understood in their context, shaped as they are by history, politics and power, as well as cultural and social issues. Borders are therefore complex spatial and social phenomena which are not static or invariable, but which are instead highly dynamic. This comprehensive volume brings together a multidisciplinary team of leading scholars to provide an authoritative, state-of-the-art review of all aspects of borders and border research. It is truly global in scope and, besides embracing the more traditional strands of the field including geopolitics, migration and territorial identities, it also takes in recently emerging topics such as the role of borders in a seemingly borderless world; creating neighbourhoods, and border enforcement in the post-9/11 era.

Contents: Introduction, Doris Wastl-Walter; Part I Theorizing Borders: Conceptual Aspects of Border Studies: A border theory: an unattainable dream or a realistic aim for border scholars?, Anssi Paasi; Contemporary research agendas in border studies: an overview, David Newman; The mask of the border, Henk van Houtum; Borders and memory, Tatiana Zhurzhenko; Border regions as neighbourhoods, Alan K. Henrikson; The border as method: towards an analysis of political subjectivities in transmigrant spaces, Stefanie Kron. Part II Geopolitics: State, Nation and Power Relations: Borders, border studies and EU enlargement, James Wesley Scott; The 'green line' of Cyprus: a contested boundary in flux, Nicos Peristianis and John C. Mavris; Post-Soviet boundaries: territoriality, identity, security, circulation, Vladimir Kolossov; Polar regions – comparing Arctic and Antarctic border debates, Lassi Heininen and Michele Zebich-Knos; Spaces, territorialities and ethnography on the Thai-, Sino- and Indo-Myanmar boundaries, Karin Dean. Part III Border Enforcement in the 21st Century: The emerging politics of border management: policy and research considerations, Jason Ackleson; Building borders the hard way: enforcing North American security post 9/11, Heather Nicol; Blurring boundaries/sharpening borders: analysing the US's use of military aviation technologies to secure international borders, 2001–2008, Alison J. Williams; A retrospective look at the nature of national borders in Latin America, Edgardo Manero; The inter-Korean border region – 'meta-border' of the Cold War and metamorphic frontier of the peninsula, Valérie Gelézeau. Part IV Borders and Territorial Identities: the Mechanisms of Exclusion and Inclusion: National minorities in European border regions, Jan D. Markusse; The borderland existence of the Mongolian Kazakhs: boundaries and the construction of territorial belonging, Alexander C. Diener; Borders and territorial identity: Persian identity makes Iran an empire of the mind, Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh. Part V The Role of Borders in a Seemingly Borderless World: Waiting for work: labour migration and the political economy of borders, Roos Pijpers; A cross-boundary mega city-region in China under 'two systems': multi-level governance in the Greater Pearl River Delta, Chun Yang; Global city frontiers: Singapore's hinterland and the contested geographies of Bintan, Indonesia, Tim Bunnell, Hamzah Muzaini and James D. Sidaway; Cross-border cooperation and regional responses to NAFTA and globalization, Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi. Part VI Crossing Borders: Everyday practices of bordering and the threatened bodies of undocumented North Korean border-crossers, Eunyoung Christina Choi; Women and migration in Asia – eroding borders, new fixities, Parvati Raghuram and Nicola Piper; Western Sahara – territoriality, border conceptions and border realities, Elisabeth Bäschlin and Mohamed Sidati. Part VII Creating Neighbourhoods: Different neighbours: interaction and cooperation at Finland’s Western and Eastern borders, Heikki Eskelinen; Borders and neighbourhoods in the Carpatho-Pannonian area, Károly Kocsis and Monica Mária Váradi; Transcending the national space: the institutionalization of cross-border territory in the lower Danube Euroregion, Gabriel Popescu. Part VIII Nature and Environment: Natural resources and transnational governance, Juliet J. Fall; One decade of transfrontier conservation areas in Southern Africa, Sanette L.A. Ferreira; The delimitation of maritime boundaries: an incomplete mosaic, Clive Schofield; Index.