noun
- The part or edge of a surface or area that forms its outer boundary.
- The line that separates ones country, state, province, etc., from another; frontier line. (ex. he border between the U.S. and Mexico).
- The district or region that lies along the boundary link of another.
- The frontier of civilization.
Dictionary.com. Retrieved from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/border?s=t (Accessed October 21, 2012).
noun
- A line separating two countries, administrative divisions, or other areas.
- [As modifier]: border controls
- A district near the border between two areas: a refugee camp on the border.
- (The borders) the boundary and adjoining districts between Scotland and England.
- The edge or boundary of something, or the part near it.
verb
- [with object] form an edge along or beside (something).
- [of a country or area] be adjacent to (another country or area).
- Come close to or be developing into (an extreme condition).
The Oxford Online Dictionaries. (2012). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/border?q=border (Accessed October 21, 2012).
- (v.t.) to make a border for; to furnish with a border, as for ornament; as to border a garment or a garden.
- (v.i.) to touch at the edge or boundary; to be contiguous or adjacent; – with on or upon as, Connecticut borders on Massachusetts.
- (v.i.) to approach; to come near to; to verge.
- (n.) the outer part or edge of anything, as of a garment, a garden, etc.; margin; verge; brink.
- (n.) a boundary; a frontier of a state or of the settled part of a country; a frontier district.
- (v.t.) to confine within bounds; to limit.
Thinkexist.com. Retrieved from: http://thinkexist.com/dictionary/meaning/border/ (Accessed October 21, 2012).
Line separating the land territory or maritime zones of one State from another.
International Organization for Migration. (2004). International Migration Law: Glossary on Migration. Retrieved from http://http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/IML_1_EN.pdf (Accessed January 4, 2013).
The place at which someone leaves another country and enters the United Kingdom. Our border is mainly the coastline around England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, but also includes the line between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In practice, a person who enters the United Kingdom legally will do so by being permitted to enter by an immigration officer at one of our border control points at a port or airport. Some of these border control points are outside the United Kingdom and a passenger must pass through them before being allowed to travel to the United Kingdom.
UK Border Agency. Retrieved from http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/glossary?letter=B (Accessed January 4, 2013).
Brief Explanation
The term border is more complex than simply the delineation between countries, or a line drawn in the sand, so to speak. While it may be easy to think of borders, they are multifaceted complex concepts for which an entire field of study within Geography has been dedicated, namely that of Border Studies.
A key author on the concept of Border Studies, Étienne Balibar, a French philosopher who studied under Althusser, essays on borders have become central to the critical study of borders. In his essay “What is a Border?” which he first presented at a conference in 1993, and later published in 1997 and translated into English in 2002, delineates key aspects of modern borders. He writes:
“To mark out a border is, precisely, to define a territory, to delimit it, and so to register the identity of that territory, or confer one upon it. Conversely, however, to define or identify in general is nothing other than to trace a border, to assign boundaries or borders (in Greek, horos; in Latin finis or terminus; in German, Grenze; in French, borne). The theorist who attempts to define what a border is is in danger of going round in circles, as the very representation of the border is the precondition for any definition” (emphasis in original; Balibar, 2002, 76).
As such, a definition of a border, Balibar explains, would necessitate the reducing of a complex term to an impossibly simple one. It is important however to understand what is a border, as its existence has real implications on the lives of human beings.
In attempting to understand borders, Balibar reminds us of the importance of history for borders,
“since earliest Antiquity, since the ‘origins’ of the state, of city-states and empires, there have been ‘borders’ and ‘marches’ – that is to say, lines or zones, strips of land, which are places of separation and contact or confrontation, areas of blockage and passage (or passage on payment of a toll. Fixed or shifting zones, continuous or broken lines. But these borders have never had exactly the same function – not even over the last two or three centuries, despite the continuous effort of codification put in by nation-states” (Balibar, 2002, 77).
These varying functions over time and space retain three important aspects which mark the equivocal nature of borders in history. The first is that borders are subject to ‘overdetermination’ which Balibar explains is that “no political border is ever the mere boundary between two states, but is always overdetermined and, in that sense, sanctioned, reduplicated and relativized by other geopolitical divisions… Without the world-configuring function they perform, there would be no borders – or no lasting borders” (Balibar, 2002, 79). The example given, which nicely illustrates Balibar’s point, is that of the European colonial empires who divided up their colonies with new national borders which were also imperial borders between colonies which represented the frontiers of colonial empires which extended and replicated throughout Africa and Asia, and conferred certain rights along differing hierarchies to different subjects within those empires (Balibar, 2002, 79).
A second and equally important aspect of borders is that they are by nature polysemic in that “they do not have the same meaning for everyone” (Balibar, 2002, 81). Borders are “designed … not merely to give individuals from different social classes different experiences of the law, the civil administration, the police and elementary rights, such as the freedom of circulation and freedom of enterprise, but actively to differentiate between individuals in terms of social class” (Balibar, 2002, 81-82). As such, “for a rich person from a rich country… the border has become an embarkation formality… for a poor person from a poor country, however, the border tends to be something quite different: not only is it an obstacle which is very difficult to surmount, but it is a place he runs up against repeatedly” (Balibar, 2002, 83).
For Balibar, the repetitiveness of borders lends to the third aspect of borders, the “heterogeneity and ubiquity” (Balibar, 2002, 84), where borders are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. While he doesn’t explore this idea to its fullest, he does explain that “some borders are no longer situated at the borders at all, in the geographico-politico-administrative sense of the term” (Balibar, 2002, 84). For an example of this Balibar points to the use of security and health checks for immigrants and refugees (see Wiebe, 2009 for the use of International Medical Examinations for immigrants and refugees in Canadian immigration policy) and other biopolitics (see Foucault, 1990).
Like Balibar, Henk van Houtum talks to the fact that a border is more than a line which divides country. To him “a border is a verb… is interpretation” (van Houtum, 2011, 50). “What is important to the study of the ontology of borders is hence not the item of the border per se, but the objectification process of the border, the socially constituent power practices attached to a border that construct a spatial effect and which give a demarcation in space its meaning and influence” (ibid). As an ideology, he explains that a border “is a belief in the presence and continuity of a spatial binding power, which is objectified in our everyday social practices” (van Houtum, 2011, 51). That power binds citizens, in an imagined community (Anderson, 1991) that helps us to believe that as a nation we have something in common and allows us to order a place and identity in space that becomes the nation-state (van Houtum, 2011, 53). Van Houtum, like Balibar, is critical of the border and for a more critical reading of what he terms “the Mask of the Border” see his article by the same name.
Many authors also speak of the performative nature of borders, in that they only exist through the practices of state agents, policy makers, citizens and non-citizens, without whom the borders would not be possible. They often call on the work of Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity, the “iterational practices through which categories become reified”. As such, in their iteration borders are created, both by being obviously and purposively performed but also by being unconsciously performative so that the practices and nature of the border becomes naturalized. Through these practices, borders become places of inclusion/exclusion where states are able to decide on the fate of both others and their own. For a more detailed reading of the concept of borders as spaces of exclusion (otherwise known in the literature as ‘states of exception’ see Salter [2008] among others).
To cite this: Abdelkader, M. (October 2012). Definition of Border. Online Research and Teaching Tools, York University.
During the Cold War, the world was divided into blocs in which borders represented not only the divisions between countries, but could conceivably be the divisions between the Eastern and Western blocs which represented vastly different political ideologies (Balibar, 2002).
When crossing the border between Canada and the United States, a Canadian citizen may have a very different experience from a Mexican asylum-seeker since the “war on Drugs”, or than an Arab migrant since the “war on Terror” both of which contributed towards an increasing racialization of the border and have contributed to their polysemic nature.
Since the implementation of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in 2002, immigrants and resettled refugees have been subject to International Medical Examinations before they are able to leave their countries of origin and come to Canada. Similarly asylum-seekers, known in Canada as refugee claimants, must also undergo these medical examinations. These practices turn the bodies of migrants, economic or forced, into the modernized borders (Balibar, 2002; Foucault, 1990; Wiebe, 2009).
The Schengen Agreement (see Glossary of Terms for more) is a modern example that illustrates the loss of borders within a region and its implications for the securitization of borders beyond the regional perimeter (Balibar, 2002; van Houtum 2011). Another example, is the Security and Prosperity Plan between Canada, the United States and Mexico, however in this example the countries in the region have maintained their borders between each country (Gilbert, 2007).
To cite this: Abdelkader, M. (October 2012). Definition of Border. Online Research and Teaching Tools, York University.
Andrijasevic, R. & Walters, W. (2010) “The International Organization for Migration and the international government of borders”. Environment and Planning D-Society & Space, 28(6), 977-999.
Balibar, E. (2002). “What is a border?” In Politics and the Other Scene. London: Verso, 75-86.
Canadian Border Services Agency. Retrieved from: www.cbsa.gc.ca (Accessed on January 4, 2013).
Doty, R. (2011). “Bare life: border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi”. Environment and Planning D – Society & Space, 29 (4), 599-612
Frontex: European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union. Retrieved from: http://www.frontex.europa.eu/ (Accessed on October 12, 2012)
Gilbert, E. (2007). “Leaky borders and solid citizens: governing security, prosperity and quality of life in a North American partnership”. Antipode, 39 (1), 77-98.
Khosravi, S. (2007). “’Illegal’ traveller: an auto-ethnography of borders”. Social Anthropology, 15(3), 321-334.
Mountz, A. (2010). “Seeking asylum: human smuggling and bureaucracy at the border”. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rumford, C. (2008). “Introduction: citizens and borderwork in Europe”. Space and Polity, 12 (1), 1-12.
U.K. Border Agency. Retrieved from: www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk (Accessed on January 4, 2013).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Retrieved from: http://www.cbp.gov (Accessed on January 4, 2013)
Van Houtum, H. (2011). “The mask of the border”. In The Ashgate research companion to border studies, ed. D. Wastl-Walter. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 49-61.
Wiebe, S. (2009). “Producing bodies and borders: A review of immigrant medical examinations in Canada”. Surveillance & Society, 6(2), 128-141.
Anderson, B. (2006). “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism”. Revised Edition. London: Verso. Note: Originally published in 1983.
Balibar, E. (2002). “What is a border?” In Politics and the Other Scene. London: Verso, 75-86.
Butler, J. (1990). “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. In Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, Case, S.E. (Ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 270-82.
Dictionary.com. “Border”. Retrieved from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/border?s=t (Accessed October 21, 2012).
Foucault, M. (1990 [1976]). “Part five: Right of death and power over life.” In The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 135-159.
Gilbert, E. (2007). “Leaky borders and solid citizens: governing security, prosperity and quality of life in a North American partnership”. Antipode, 39 (1), 77-98.
International Organization for Migration. (2004). “Border”. International Migration Law: Glossary on Migration. Retrieved from http://http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/IML_1_EN.pdf (Accessed January 4, 2013).
Oxford Online Dictionaries, The. (2012). “Border”. Oxford University Press Online. Retrieved from: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/border?q=border (Accessed October 21, 2012).
Salter, M. (2008). “When the exception becomes the rules: borders, sovereignty, and citizenship”. Citizenship Studies, 12(4), 365-380.
Thinkexist.com. “Border”. Retrieved from: http://thinkexist.com/dictionary/meaning/border/ (Accessed October 21, 2012).
UK Border Agency. “Glossary: Border”. Retrieved from http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/glossary?letter=B (Accessed January 4, 2013).
Van Houtum, H. (2011). “The mask of the border”. In The Ashgate research companion to border studies, ed. D. Wastl-Walter. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 49-61.
Wiebe, S. (2009). “Producing bodies and borders: A review of immigrant medical examinations in Canada”. Surveillance & Society, 6(2), 128-141.
Other related words (may be concepts):
- Boundaries
- Exclusion (as in social exclusion)
- Freedom of Movement
- Mobility
- Sovereignty
- State