This book analyzes the political and material conditions driving contemporary border control policies and discusses the processes that mediate popular and official understandings of border-related fatalities.

Border culture emerges through the intersection and engagement of imagination, affinity and identity. It is evident wherever boundaries separate or sort people and their goods, ideas or other belongings. It is the vessel of engagement between countries and peoples—assuming many forms, exuding a variety of expressions, changing shapes—but border culture does not disappear once it is developed, and it may be visualized as a thread that runs throughout the process of globalization. Border culture is conveyed in imaginaries and productions that are linked to borderland identities constructed in the borderlands. These identities underlie the enforcement of control and resistance to power that also comprise border cultures. Canada’s borders in globalization offer an opportunity to explore the interplay of borders and culture, identify the fundamental currents of border culture in motion, and establish an approach to understanding how border culture is placed and replaced in globalization. Published in English.

The emergence of new and substantial human migration flows is one of the most important consequences of globalisation. While ascribable to widely differing social and economic causes, from the forced migration of refugees to upper-middle-class migration projects and the movement of highly skilled workers, what they have in common is the effect of contributing to a substantial global redefinition in terms of both identity and politics. This book contains contributions from scholars in the fields of law, social sciences, the sciences, and the liberal arts, brought together to delineate the features of the migration phenomena that will accompany us over the coming decades. The focus is on the multifaceted concept of 'border' as representing a useful stratagem for dealing with a topic like migration that requires analysis from several perspectives. The authors discuss the various factors and issues which must be understood in all their complexity so that they can be governed by all social stakeholders, free of manipulation and false consciousness. They bring an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective to the social phenomena such as human trafficking, unaccompanied foreign minors, or ethnic-based niches in the job market. The book will be a valuable guide for academics, students and policy-makers.

This collection investigates the complex and myriad relations between identity and borders in an increasingly globalized world. The movement towards a borderless world, bolstered by an unprecedented development in information and communication technology, forces us to rethink traditional notions of singular identity, and directs us towards the need for engaging and negotiating with the world in multiple ways. Employing a wide range of critical approaches to works that examine and explore the contested terrain of globalization and the hotly disputed arena of borders, the essays brought together here offer innovative perspectives through which issues of borders, globalization and identity can be negotiated. Straddling various genres, this collection represents an investigation of the conflicting relationship between identity and borders in the contemporary globalized world.

Cross-border regions are newly emerging social spaces stretching across national borders. Globalization makes national borders more permeable and leads to a rearrangement of economic and political interactions. This is particularly pronounced within supra-regional blocs featuring specific internal border regimes. The ensuing opportunities are increasingly seized to create border-spanning discourses and institutions. This is illustrated in the book by a range of experts analyzing cross-border regions in Europe, America, East Asia and Africa.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a case-study collection examining the influences and functions of British Columbia’s (BC) borders in the 21st century. British Columbia’s Borders in Globalization examines bordering processes and the causes and effects of borders in the Cascadian region, from the perspective of BC. The chapters cover diverse topics including historical border disputes and cannabis culture and identity; the governance of transboundary water flows, migration, and preclearance policies for goods and people; and the emerging issue of online communities. The case studies provide examples that highlight the simultaneous but contradictory trends regarding borders in BC: while boundaries and bordering processes at the external borders shift away from the territorial boundary lines, self-determination, local politics, and cultural identities re-inscribe internal boundaries and borders that are both virtual and real. Moreover, economic protectionism, racial discourses, and xenophobic narratives, driven by advances in technology, reinforce the territorial dimensions of borders. These case studies contribute to the literature challenging the notion that territorial borders are sufficient for understanding how borders function in BC; and in a few instances they illustrate the nuanced ways in which borders (or bordering processes) are becoming detached from territory. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

Globalization in the United States can seem paradoxical: free trade coincides with fortification of the southern border, while immigration is reimagined as a national-security threat. US politics turn aggressively against Latinx migrants and subjects even as post-NAFTA markets become thoroughly reliant on migrant and racialized workers. But in fact, there is no incongruity here. Rather, anti-immigrant politics reflect a strategy whereby capital uses specialized forms of violence to create a reserve army of the living, laboring dead. Visible Borders, Invisible Economies turns to Latinx literature, photography, and films that render this unseen scheme shockingly vivid. Works such as Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends and Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer crystallize the experience of Latinx subjects and migrants subjugated to social death, their political existence erased by disenfranchisement and racist violence while their bodies still toil in behalf of corporate profits. In Kristy L. Ulibarri’s telling, art clarifies what power obscures: the national-security state performs anti-immigrant and xenophobic politics that substitute cathartic nationalism for protections from the free market while ensuring maximal corporate profits through the manufacture of disposable migrant labor.

My Kurdish background has sparked an interest in the study of identity and ethnicity that has always been present in me. My childhood experiences have been affected by various ethnic stories, narratives and wartime memories. I was born and raised in an area close to the Iraqi border and not far from the Turkish border. This border position might have helped me to reach a more vivid picture and understanding of such concepts as identity and ethnicity. Another reason for my interest in identity and ethnicity is related to the background of my studies in other geographical locations, mostly in Iran and its rural and deprived societies. These studies kept me in close contact with the ethnic groups that settle in underdeveloped and low-income areas, an encounter and a relationship that ultimately helped me to arrive at an understanding of the various dimensions and aspects of the question of ethnicity. The third reason for studying and researching identity and ethnicity is the requirement to distinguish these ethnicities from one another, as well as the flaws and shortcomings that have long existed in centre-oriented policies leading to an unfair distribution of wealth and power among the different geographical regions of a country. Additionally, the importance of peace in the geography and history of Iran, particularly at this pivotal time, further inspired me to conduct a study on identity and ethnicity with a focus on peace. Studies for this research focused more on the elite members of these ethnic groups than on ordinary people. The study makes a concerted effort to answer issues like how these people view themselves and their ethnicities, how they use that understanding to create a sense of otherness and distinction from other identities, and how they see themselves in the current political and social structure of Iranian society, and what they presume about ideas like convergence, political cooperation, mother tongue, as well as the central and peripheral ethnicities.

Borders - whether settled or contested, violent or calm, closed or open - may have a direct, and often acute, human impact. Those affected may be people living nearby, those attempting to cross them and even those who succeed in doing so. At the border, vulnerable refugee and migrant communities, especially women, are exposed to state-centred boundary practices, paving the way for both their alienation and exploitation. The militarization of borders subjugates the very position of women in these marginalized areas and often subjects them to further victimization, which is facilitated by patriarchal socio-cultural practice. Structural violence is endemic to these regions and gender interlocks with their perimeters to reinforce and shape violence. This book locates gender and violence along geographical edges and critically examines the gendered experiences of women as global border residents and border crossers. Broadly, it explores two questions. First, what are women's experiences of engaging with borders? Second, where are women positioned in the theory and practice of marking, remarking and demarking these margins? Offering a nuanced and thorough approach, this book suggests that research on borders and violence needs to focus on how bordered violence shapes the embodiment of gender identity and norms and how they are challenged. It examines an array of issues including forced migration, trafficking and cross-border ties to explore how gender and borders intersect.