Why the focus on Borders?
The issue of state borders, their functions and changing significance and symbolism presently looms larger than at any time during the last decades. The commonplace of global de-bordering, supported by optimistic notions of globalisation and a new post-Cold War world order, has arguably succumbed to the reality of increasing complexity and instability in the world system. Even within a seemingly borderless European Union, national borders are again seen as central to the organisation of political community and the protection of group interests. Clear symptoms of re-bordering tendencies within various nation-states in the EU, can be recognised in discussion on neo-nationalism, protectionism and illegal migrants crossing the EU’s external borders – leading even to measure of reinstating border controls within the EU’s Schengen Area.
The raison d’être for this research portal is the need to understand the complex roles and realities of borders in the 21st Century and thus deal with changing borders and their strategic, economic, cultural consequences.
