Borders Call

Science and Engineering at The University of Edinburgh

School of GeoSciences

Human Geography

Section Contents

BORDERS: WHEN FIXITY AND FLUIDITY MEET

Much of geography is about power. Power does not exist in a vacuum but is exercised in space and over various entities, from the genes of individual beings, to bodies and groups and the territories that they define and claim. As this suggests, a key element in the exercising of power is the designation of relevant context and this always involves the creation or invocation of some borders and the disregard or denial of others. In recent years, geographers have attempted to challenge assumptions that boundaries are fixed and impermeable or that they ever were so. Through this work, the lines (both figurative and literal) that unite and divide are shown to be remarkably fluid, especially over time. Moreover, these borderlines can be singularly or simultaneously drawn as historical, natural, cultural, political, economic and symbolic phenomena.

This revelation of the fluidity of borders has demanded that people relinquish the comforting illusions of spatial coherence and fixed social categories. However, in the process of demonstrating the constructedness of borders or their production through performativity, we may have lost sight of the fact that these constructions and performances can be devised as fixed and invested with the power to reify them as such.

One key goal of this symposium is to explore what happens when fixed and fluid imaginings of borders coincide. How, for example, do undocumented workers or asylum seekers experience state borders and citizenship; how do people with HIV/aids escape the consequences of this categorization (e.g. in terms of movement through space and access to resources); how does technological innovation challenge geographic boundaries; and how do people like artists challenge and subvert formal institutional and popular understandings of borders (e.g. Banksy’s decoration of Israel’s barrier/separation wall: see symposium poster)?

A second key goal of the symposium is to examine the consequences of the coexistence of pressures for breaking down boundaries alongside the simultaneous defence of a world defined and divided by differences. Here, one can ask things such as how the notion of “fortress Europe” co-exists with a supposed shift towards transnationalism and multiple citizenship; how the promotion of globalization in general, and free trade in particular, squares with the resilience and defence of nation-states; how attempts to do away with social categories like race influence attempts to deploy these categories in the pursuit of economic redress and/or social justice (e.g. Japanese- and Chinese- Canadian experiences); and how boundaries of everyday life (around, between and within communities, for instance) are interwoven into people’s social worlds?

These examples of how we might extend understanding of what happens when the fixity and fluidity of borders meet, give a sense of the potential breadth of the symposium’s discussion. The titles of the formal presentations listed in the Schedule and Abstracts indicate how our speakers will work to stimulate thought and interaction amongst all participants, in these and related directions. Please come along and join us.