Description

This volume addresses the marked influence borders and boundaries, whether real or imaginary, have on the lives of those who happen to live near them or are involved in making them. How do political and symbolic borders take concrete shape, and how do they shape life in these borderlands?
Borderlands can be understood as shifting places, times or domains where competing discourses and regimes of power overlap, characterized by overt contradictions and paradox, by a simultaneous presence (or absence), often imagined at the öutside" but pertaining to and defining the "centre". Case studies challenge the assumption that states and anonymized institutions are the principal actors in border-making. Instead, they argue for an actor-oriented perspective while drawing attention to the "physicality" of the borderscape.