Borders, border regions and territoriality: Contradictory meanings, changing significance

The meaning and significance of state borders, as well as their geographical location, can change drastically over space and time. Along with their associated regions, they have competing and contradictory meanings, both material and symbolic. Their particularities require localized study but also wider contextualization. As a general response to peripherality, borders tend to generate questionable arbitrage activities, and their significance ultimately derives from territoriality as a general organizing principle of political and social life, one which changes over time. Borders and border regions are thus particularly revealing places for social research, especially in the present era of accelerated globalization, the end of the 'Cold War' and the growth of supra-state regions such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Much of the research literature suggests that bounded territorial units are declining in significance given the increased flows of capital, commodities, information and people across state borders. The key claims of states to control exit and entry and to monopolize the means of violence within fixed borders seem to be under threat. Social and communal boundaries are seen to be increasingly de-linked from territorial borders. Such propositions raise a series of questions concerning how and to what extent state borders and border regions are being re-made, re-negotiated and managed or mismanaged. The paper sketches this changing context for studies and comparisons of particular borders and border regions.