Postcolonial border crossing

Through a postcolonial lens and based on in-depth interviews with British expatriates who moved to Hong Kong in the first decade after its handover, this paper highlights the contested role of borders in the everyday making and remaking of skilled migration. It draws on Paasi's (2003 Paasi, A. (2003). Boundaries in a globalizing world. In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, & N. Thrift (Eds.), Handbook of cultural geography. London: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781848608252.n33[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) definition of boundaries to denote that borders are not merely geographical lines but zones of mixing, blending and reconfiguring historically formed material connections, identities and power relations through which contemporary skilled mobility is constituted. The border crossing of skills in Hong Kong and elsewhere is a historically contingent phenomenon whose meaning derives not only from economic forces and social networking but also the accumulated history of the borders they cross. The notion of ‘postcolonial border crossing’ highlights the dis/continuity in skilled migration and integrates social, cultural and economic spheres into the same framework in interpreting skilled mobility.     

The transformation of the Irish border

This article introduces a special issue dealing with partition and the reconfiguration of the Irish border. Notwithstanding southern nationalist refusal to accept the partition of Ireland in 1921, the border gradually consolidated its position. The article describes the transformation in relations across the Irish border which first found a place on the political agenda in the early 1970s, but which was given full institutional expression only following the Good Friday agreement of 1998. This new configuration has two aspects, which seem at first sight to be in conflict with each other: it marks a new, unreserved acceptance of the legitimacy of the border by Irish nationalists (though moderated by British agreement to end partition if the two parts of Ireland so wish), and it is characterised by a significant growth in public sector bodies which span the border.     

Millstones north and south of the Scottish border

Abstract

It is perhaps surprising that there should be very considerable differences in the practices of millstone-making in Scotland on the one hand and in England and Wales on the other. However, it has been emerging from recent studies and discussions, that such is the case. Both those millstones incorporating pieces of imported French burr and those made entirely from indigenous rock show differences between the two national regions. The purpose of the present short article is to draw attention to the nature of these differences as so far observed, and to encourage further reporting and discussion on such an interesting topic.     

Putting the border in place: customs regulation in the making of the Irish border, 1921–1945

This paper explores the historical geography of the making of the Irish border through a focus on the practices of customs regulation through which it was constituted and on the impeded, permitted and concealed mobilities of people and objects across the customs boundary after 1923. It traces how legislative change at the level of the state – in this case the governments of the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom – was translated into the routine practices of those trying to regulate the movement of people and objects across the customs boundary, and considers the responses of those subject to, and regularly subverting, these efforts. Drawing on recent interests in the prosaic practices of the state, and in materiality and mobility more widely, our focus is both on the work of political power at the border through the practices, texts, tools and techniques of customs regulation, and on the experience and effects of customs control for those living near the newly defined line between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State.     

论清末的省界观念

清末的省界观念,学界对其在多个领域中的普遍存在缺乏清晰的认识和更进一步的探究.其实,到了清末,以地缘情结为基础的省界观念无论是在地方政权体系、私营经济领域当中,还是在留学生特别是留日学生群体、资产阶级革命派当中,都广泛地存在着,并产生着极其恶劣的影响.直到21世纪的今天,省界观念依然如幽灵一般无处不在,因此,涤荡省界意识,有着重要的现实意义和价值.     

The state as a symbol or a means to an end: internal border changes in multinational federations

Federalism is an important institutional option for the management of difference in multinational states. A number of scholars have argued that the internal boundaries of such states should divide each constituent group into several federal units. In theory, boundary engineering of this type should activate cross‐cutting cleavages, subvert secessionist movements and, ultimately, foster political integration and stability. This article, by contrast, demonstrates the conditions under which the subdivision of territorial units can destabilise polities. Where statehood is a central symbol in nationalist narratives of constituent groups, the fragmentation of the sub‐state unit will be perceived as a threat to national identity of the group in question. The article compares former Yugoslavia and Nigeria, two cases in which such processes led to divergent outcomes.     

Knowledge production and border nationalism in northern Mexico

ABSTRACT. This article examines the transformations in the cultural sphere of Tijuana, one of Mexico's largest and fastest growing cities, in order to emphasise the border as a crucial site of nation‐building in northern Mexico. I propose that cultural and intellectual actors, through particular sites, are changing the way the city is positioned in relation to the national political space of Mexico. Two institutions are considered specifically, both of which are integral to the propagation of an array of representations of Tijuana. In looking to articulations of nationhood and practices of knowledge production, this article delineates how urban identities reclaim and reconfigure key aspects of national identity in a region heretofore unrecognised as central to the creation of a national imaginary.     

Border crossings: new approaches to the Irish border

This paper explores and extends recent work on the Irish border that has sought to redress the relative lack of attention to the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the border in contrast to its intense political symbolism. In particular it addresses the theme of border crossing as a way to consider the border in terms of its everyday dimensions and in terms of questions of conventional and reconfigured categories of identity shaped by borderland life. The first section of the paper outlines recent approaches to the Irish border and their relationships to the field of border studies. The second section uses new research material to explore the ways in which the border was experienced on the ground in the lives of those most directly subject to its changing nature over the course of the twentieth century. The final part of the paper addresses recent suggestions that those experiences may form the basis of new cross-border and cross-community ‘border identities’. The term ‘border crossing’ in the paper's title thus stands both for the issue of physically crossing the border whose difficulties and effects have been central to the lives of those who have lived near the border, and for recent arguments that shared experiences of the impact of the border may be the basis for new senses of identity and commonality that imaginatively cross the borders of old categories of religion, culture and political affiliation. Recent efforts to reconceptualise border identities are emerging within a context still dominated by more polarised perspectives on identity and history, but they represent one significant strand of engagement with the Irish border. They suggest possibilities for forms of border identities that co-exist with, run counter to or cross cut old categories of division and difference.     

At the border: contagion, immigration, nation

In recent publications and as an ongoing project I have been pursuing the idea that public health and infectious disease control have been part of the legal and technical constitution of 'undesirable' and prohibited entrants: an under-recognised means by which individuals and certain populations have been specifically classified and excluded from the territory and body politic of Australia. This article surveys and summarises these ideas and points to some of the recent redirections. These include a growing interest in the legacy of twentieth-century medico-legal border control on current (highly discriminating) regulations governing entry; a concern to make admissions under immigration and health law and regulation conceptually central; and the more familiar focus on race-based exclusions. Overall, my aim is to integrate the history of health and infectious disease control into the already extensive study of immigration and citizenship. Part of the effect of joint infectious disease and immigration regulation over the twentieth century has been the imagining, as well as the technical implementation of the island-nation as ostensibly secure, racially and territorially.     

德天瀑布 跨越国境的山水传奇

<正>中国德天瀑布——越南板约瀑布,两座瀑布相依相连,宽200多米,落差70多米,纵深60多米,成三阶跌落,四季飞瀑,是亚洲第一大跨国瀑布。穿天透地不辞劳,到底方知出处高。穿天透地的壮观景象是人们追寻的瀑布之美,能给人穿天透地印象的瀑布,必然是"一落千丈"的,在人们的印象中,似乎只有这样的瀑布才称得上壮观,称得上美,才值得人们从四面八方逐美前来。而德天瀑布却恰好是个例     

The spatial manifestation of threat: Israelis and palestinians seek a ‘good’ border

Boundary studies in political geography have largely focused on the presentation of empirical case studies. There has been little development of a theory focusing on the multi-faceted nature of both spatial and group boundaries, and the interlinkages between them. An analysis of the boundary concept within the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict points to the importance of understanding both internal and external perceptions of threat. This is reflected in the dual political discourse of physical security and space purification, the former being used as a means of securing territorial boundaries, the latter in an attempt to obtain boundaries between competing national groups. Idealistic solutions to the Israeli-Arab conflict would result from an emphasis on human rights as an alternative to the traditional spatial discourse.     

"兴边富民行动"中的民族关系

"兴边富民行动"是一项有着多项政治、经济、社会目标的行动,也是一项有利于边疆民族关系和谐和边疆安全的国家行动. "兴边富民行动"直接关系到在兴边、固边过程中,不断协调民族关系,推进各民族平等、团结、共同繁荣的实现.自2000年全面开展"兴边富民行动"以来,这一行动在覆盖面、投入量和社会影响方面都有了重大进展,取得了良好成效,提高了边境民族地区加快与全国同步发展的速度,成为民族地区稳定发展的重要推动力.本文旨在讨论"兴边富民行动"中的民族关系,并探讨如何进一步推进"兴边富民行动"问题.     

Sovereignty and statelessness in the border enclaves of India and Bangladesh

This article investigates the 198 political enclaves along the northern section of the border between India and Bangladesh. The enclaves are a remnant of the partition of British India in 1947 and are effectively stateless spaces because most are small and located several kilometers within their host country, which has prevented any administrative contact with their home country. Drawing on interviews with current enclave residents, this article describes the creation of the enclaves and analyzes the disputes that prevented their normalization over the past 60 years. The enclaves provide an important site for scrutinizing the connections between bordering practices and sovereignty claims. They also demonstrate both the social benefits the sovereign state system has brought through the establishment of law and order and the devastating consequences it has caused by territorializing those basic social protections. The article concludes that the failure to exchange the enclaves displays the powerful role nationalist homeland narratives play in institutionalizing the concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity, often at the expense of human rights.