Ambiguous Borderlands

"This book examines shadow imagery in postwar literature, television, film, photography, and popular culture"--

Since 1991, post-Soviet political elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have been engaged in nation- as well as state-building. They have tried to strengthen territorial sovereignty and national security, re-shape collective identities and re-narrate national histories. Former Soviet republics have become new neighbours, partners, and competitors searching for geopolitical identity in the new "Eastern Europe", i.e. the countries left outside the enlarged EU. Old paradigms such as "Eurasia" or "East Slavic civilisation" have been re-invented and politically instrumentalized in the international relations and domestic politics of these countries. At the same time, these old concepts and myths have been contested and challenged by pro-Western elites. Borderlands into Bordered Lands examines the construction of post-Soviet borders and their political, social, and cultural implications. It focuses on the exemplary case of the Ukrainian-Russian border, approaching it as a social construct and a discursive phenomenon. Zhurzhenko shows how the symbolic meanings of and narratives on this border contribute to national identity formation and shape the images of the neighbouring countries as "the Other" thereby shedding new light on the role of border disputes between Ukraine and Russia in bilateral relations, in EU neighbourhood politics and in domestic political conflicts. Zhurzhenko also addresses 'border making' on the regional level, focusing on the cross-border cooperation between Kharkiv and Belgorod and on the dilemmas of a Euroregion 'in absence of Europe': Finally, she reflects the everyday experiences of the residents of near-border villages and shows how national and local identities are performed at, and transformed by, the new border. Borderlands into Bordered Lands was honored by the American Association for Ukrainian Studies as best book 2009/2010 in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture. For more information, view: www.ukrainianstudies.org.

Borderland Religion narrates, presents and interprets the fascinating and significant practices when borders, migrants and religion intersect. This collection of original essays combines theology, philosophy and sociology to examine diverse religious issues surrounding external national borders and internal domestic borders as these are challenged by the unstoppable flow of documented and undocumented migrants. While many studies of migration have examined how religion plays a major role in the assimilation and integration of waves of migration, this volume looks at a number of empirical studies of how emergent religious practices arise around border crossings. The volume begins with a detailed analysis of the borderland religion context and research. The aim is to bring an eschatological interpretation of the borderland religion, its impact and significance for migrants. Themes include a critical analysis of how religion has formatted Europe; empirical studies from the US/Mexican border and Southern Africa; an overview of the European refugee crisis in 2015; editors’ account of borderland religion from the perspective of citizenship studies. Contributions of scholars from a broad range of disciplines ensure a careful analysis of this highly topical situation. The volume’s interdisciplinary profile will appeal to scholars and students in religious studies, migration studies, theology and citizenship studies.

This study aims for a wider understanding of the redevelopment processes that emerged several decades ago in downtown San Diego and now gradually spread over the downtown edges into the inner ring. Perspectively situated in the fields of urban landscape and urban border studies, the research project outlines how the eastward ‘redevelopment wave’ in San Diego contests socialized neighborhood (boundary) perceptions by transforming the former first-tier suburbs from disinvested communities into ‘urban villages’ and trendy places to be. The study shows how the redevelopment perforates, dissolves, and shifts socialized, linear neighborhood boundaries into areas that are simultaneously part of the one and the other neighborhood. In the present work, the resulting, rather undefined or stretched border areas have been referred to as hybrid urban borderlands. This notion is a novel conceptual approach that can be deemed a promising lens for future studies on neighborhood change, urban redevelopment, and socio-spatial re-interpretation beyond the context of San Diego.

The past two decades have seen an intense, interdisciplinary interest in the border areas between states—inhabited territories located on the margins of a power center or between power centers. This timely and highly original collection of essays edited by noted scholar I. William Zartman is an attempt “to begin to understand both these areas and the interactions that occur within and across them”—that is, to understand how borders affect the groups living along them and the nature of the land and people abutting on and divided by boundaries. These essays highlight three defining features of border areas: borderlanders constitute an experiential and culturally identifiable unit; borderlands are characterized by constant movement (in time, space, and activity); and in their mobility, borderlands always prepare for the next move at the same time that they respond to the last one. The ten case studies presented range over four millennia and provide windows for observing the dynamics of life in borderlands. They also have policy relevance, especially in creating an awareness of borderlands as dynamic social spheres and of the need to anticipate the changes that given policies will engender—changes that will in turn require their own solutions. Contrary to what one would expect in this age of globalization, says Zartman, borderlands maintain their own dynamics and identities and indeed spread beyond the fringes of the border and reach deep into the hinterland itself.

The construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border—whether to build it or not—has become a hot-button issue in contemporary America. A recent impasse over funding a wall caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, sharpening partisan divisions across the nation. In the Arizona borderlands, groups of predominantly white American citizens have been mobilizing for decades—some help undocumented immigrants bypass governmental detection, while others help law enforcement agents to apprehend immigrants. Activists on both the left and the right mobilize without an immediate personal connection to the issue at hand, many doubting that their actions can bring about the long-term change they desire. Why, then, do they engage in immigration and border politics so passionately? Divided by the Wall offers a one-of-a-kind comparative study of progressive pro-immigrant activists and their conservative immigration-restrictionist opponents. Using twenty months of ethnographic research with five grassroots organizations, Emine Fidan Elcioglu shows how immigration politics has become a substitute for struggles around class inequality among white Americans. She demonstrates how activists mobilized not only to change the rules of immigration but also to experience a change in themselves. Elcioglu finds that the variation in social class and intersectional identity across the two sides mapped onto disparate concerns about state power. As activists strategized ways to transform the scope of the state’s power, they also tried to carve out self-transformative roles for themselves. Provocative and even-handed, Divided by the Wall challenges our understanding of immigration politics in times of growing inequality and insecurity.

Borders are both a door and a bridge. Because they are operating at a critical juncture between security expectations and intense cross-border exchanges, they appear to be Janus-faced. To some, they are demarcating lines that call for extensive protection and a regime of strict closure. To others, they are a gateway to transnational opportunities and their opening should be carefully but liberally managed. The very same paradox affects the regions located alongside borders, that is the borderlands or frontier zones. Borderlands can be simultaneously depicted as epitomizing the growth of mutually beneficial transnational ties and as offering a privileged but bleak glimpse into the importation of international threats into domestic politics. Partly due to the discrepancy between their premises, borderlands studies and security studies have virtually no dialogue. Security studies remain focused on the discriminatory function of the border while borderlands studies document the social dynamics of cross border societies. Against this backdrop, the ambition and originality of Securitized Borderlands lie in its aim to theoretically and empirically fill the gap between security studies—that remain focused on the discriminatory function of the border, and borderlands studies—that document the social dynamics of cross border societies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

Whereas currently, German-Polish relations are marked by irritations, the previous phase of politics and discourse from 1990 leading up to the EU-accession of Poland was marked by an increasing stress on Europe in both countries. This was connected with changing practices of cross-border cooperation as well as a change in academic border studies. Transgression as a Rule argues that resulting from this, cross-border cooperation has become a rule. The actors negotiate new, contradictory spaces for their actions: supported by the state but partly uncomfortable with it, drawing on the powerful discourse of cooperation and trying to escape from it. Their practices can also inform the practices of border studies.