Borders, Society and Politics

This portal (Border-research.eu) will explore different areas of conceptual change that can be assumed to have concrete impacts on the ways borders both condition and are conditioned by different institutions and actors. In progressing beyond the state of the art, we therefore argue that important connections can be uncovered between borders as a “challenge” to national (and EU) policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through conceptual (re-)framings of social, political, economic and cultural spaces. This requires a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of borders as resources in terms of the exercise of power, the management of conflict, cross-border co-operation, and the everyday negotiation of borders by “ordinary” citizens and non-citizens. State borders also reflect and thus help us interpret tensions as well as points of connection within intercultural and interstate relations. In a very direct manner, these tensions are reflected in the practical consequences of controlling borders through security policies, border and visa regimes and immigration policies at the same time that global interdependencies require more forceful international co-operation.