Borders, Boundaries, and Borderlands

Borders have been a major theme in the study of political geography. The lines which demarcate and delineate the territorial configuration of the state were considered sacrosanct during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite the fact that many of them were created in arbitrary fashion. The last fifty years has witnessed alternative border discourses, ranging from the opening and removal of borders (the so called “borderless” world) to the return of borders as evidenced in the construction of new fences and walls as a result of the post-9/11-era securitization discourses. This entry discusses the main themes which have emerged in the renaissance of border studies during the past two decades. The entry also focuses on alternative ways of understanding contemporary processes of bordering in terms of diverse spatial scales, non-spatial processes of bordering, critical analyses of bordering, and the ways in which borders are represented in diverse texts, ranging from maps to films, literature, and caricatures.