Constructing (Un)familiarity: Role of Tourism in Identity and Region Building at the Finnish–Russian Border

This paper investigates the role of tourism in the construction of (un)familiarity in Karelia at the Finnish–Russian borderland. From a historical perspective, it deals with a culturally homogenous space, which more recently became divided by the border into two nation states that differ politically, ethnically and linguistically. In the course of the Cold War, unfamiliarity was one of the tools used by the Soviet political elite in construction of national identity. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the border regime became liberalized and cross-border interaction began, familiarity became one of the key factors of the regional identity construction. The case of Sortavala, on which this study focuses, allows us to analyse how identity was constructed in official and media discourses. Although familiarity in the local context is more prominent, unfamiliarity is also at stake, not only in a negative sense, but also from a sense of curiosity about historical ties between the different parts of Karelia. This paper contributes to an understanding of EU external bordering politics. It also highlights the role of local actors in the (re-)construction and (re-)interpretation of borders. Tourism is seen as one of the facets of local identity formation. This study attempts to understand tourism-driven cross-border region-building processes.     

跨境旅游合作区：探索中的边境旅游发展新模式

跨境旅游合作区是2010年末出现的新概念,同时也是探索中的边境旅游发展新模式,它从跨境经济合作区衍生而来。本文从概念切入,对边境旅游和跨境旅游进行了区分,并对两个概念给予界定。在此基础上,对跨境旅游合作区的概念、特征、发展阶段、发展模式等问题进行阐述,并从经济学与国际贸易、国际关系与地缘政治、人类学和社会学等多重理论视角分析与解读。本文认为,跨境旅游合作区是国家安全利益和地方经济发展这组矛盾的统一体,它在边境旅游模式探索、促进沿边地区经济发展、助推或缓和国际关系等方面有一定的潜在价值。同时,中国与周边国家的跨境旅游合作区建设也存在着双边诉求的矛盾二重性和合作的脆弱性。     

Contact,conflict and geography: What factors shape cross-border citizen relations?

Political geographers frequently argue that European borderlands, due to geographical proximity and cross-border contact, are sites of particularly good citizen relations. However, they have not put forward any general theory of the effect of cross-border contact on perceptions. This paper shows that social psychological contact theory, if applied to borderlands studies, can uncover the factors that influence citizen relations across national borders and under what conditions.Using opinion poll data from the Czech–German border region as an example, this paper shows that the Saxon and Bavarian regions bordering the Czech Republic are areas of high interaction density. Mediator analysis is used to decompose the direct and indirect effects of geographical proximity and contact on attitudes towards the Czech neighbours.Contact in the Saxon border region produces more favourable attitudes than elsewhere in Germany. However, contact does not have the same effect in the Bavarian border region: Bavarian attitudes are less favourable than elsewhere in Germany. The paper shows that Bavarian–Czech relations are weighed down by historical stumbling blocks, notably the influence of the post-World War II expellees from Czechoslovakia who are an important political force in Bavaria. The expellees issue demonstrates the need to take into account cultural factors when applying contact theory to the borderlands context.     

Socio-cultural proximity,daily life and shopping tourism in the Dutch–German border region

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses feelings of socio-cultural proximity and distance with a specific focus on the tourist experience in cross-border shopping and everyday life practices in border regions. We examined shopping practices of Dutch border crossers who visit the German town Kleve in the Dutch–German border region. This particular border context has allowed us not only to reflect on a multidimensional approach towards socio-cultural proximity and distance, but also to examine how these different dimensions express themselves in the tourist experience when it comes to people and places that are geographically ‘close’ but assumingly socially and culturally ‘distant’ from home. Although some differences prompted feelings of discomfort, in particular, differences in social engagement, feelings of comfort stand out in our analysis of cross-border shopping tourism. Furthermore, our study shows that shopping tourism and exoticism, on the one hand, and everyday routines and the mundane, on the other hand, are closely intertwined in the lives of people living in a border region, resulting in a fluid interpretation of the exotic and the mundane in the cross-border context.     

Feeling sexual transgression: subjectivity,bodily experience,and non-normative hetero-erotic practices in women's cross-border sex in Costa Rica

Participating in sexual tourism and cross-border sex, heterosexual Euro-North American women are a targeted social group whereby accusations, such as ‘fucking gringa’, label them as sexual transgressors for violating multiple boundaries of heteronormativity. The complex power dynamics of women's cross-border sex are due to negotiations of race, gender, and class that are played out in specific locales and political economies of desire. Within these dynamics, women are agentive social actors and exert considerable sexual agency in their desires for local men who are positioned unevenly vis-à-vis tourist women's mobilities within erotic markets. Yet women's hetero-erotic sexual practices, which are experienced at the level of the body, cannot be assumed; looking at the lived experiences of women as sexual trangressors in these spaces promises to complicate non-normative heterosexuality and the gendered dynamics of (straight) transnational sex. Using critical ethnography and a performance approach to writing that places subjectivity at the center of the ethnographic record and analysis, this article conveys an ‘insider’ or emic account of women's transnational sex taking place in a Caribbean region of Costa Rica renown for women's sexual and romance tourism. In taking this approach, I aim to show how heterosexuality, hetero-erotic practices, and cross-border sex are not always what they seem and a glimpse into ‘the subjects’ worlds in their words' (Madison, Soyini. 2005. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. London: Sage, 174) has implications for theory concerned with the body and performance as fundamental to the social production of sexual transgression.     

中国边境入境旅游的客流演化态势及其动因分析——新疆内蒙云南三省区的比较研究

边境旅游是在具有特殊区位和文化环境的边境地区开展的旅游活动,是国际旅游的重要形式之一。本文选取2000-2009年中国陆地边境省州市相关统计数据,采用入境旅游市场占有率、旅游资源丰度、旅游开放度、边境贸易比重和距离指数5个重要指标,应用矩阵分析方法,在对我国三个省区边境旅游发展及客流演化态势进行比较的基础上,对边境入境旅游及其影响因素进行深入分析,结果发现:旅游资源丰度、区位条件、经贸发展水平、开放度、可进入性等因素是影响边境旅游规模和类型的主要影响因素,现阶段我国边境省区各州市的边境旅游发展受贸易驱动明显,旅游资源丰度对边境旅游中的观光入境旅游者有较大影响,边境旅游也遵循距离衰减规律。在此基础上提出对我国边境旅游发展的启示,以期为沿边省区发展边境入境旅游提供科学依据和参考。     

Cross-Border Differences and Unfamiliarity: Shopping Mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion

Many international differences can be experienced in shopping spaces on both sides of a national border. Other languages, unfamiliar goods and unknown spatial codes are only a few of the physical-functional and socio-cultural differences that could cause exciting and stimulating situations but could also be perceived as problematic and deterring. This paper analyses perceptions, motivations and practices of cross-border (non-)shoppers and provides insights into ways in which people from cross-border regions deal with differences and the extent to which they interact across borders. The aim is to both theoretically and empirically substantiate the dynamic concept of (un)familiarity by scrutinizing the impact of “push”, “pull”, “keep” and “repel” factors on shopping (im)mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion. These factors are seen as rooted in dynamic processes of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing differences between places on both sides of the border. In so doing, attention is paid to changing shopping practices and motivations and influencing changing perceptions of international differences. As such, the paper also discusses “familiarization processes” in cross-border regions. The concluding section provides critical reflections on the current European policy approach towards cross-border regional development. In fact, the paper ends with a plea for more instead of less borders, as borders are markers of international differences which could promote cross-border mobility.     

Border-regional resilience in EU internal and external border areas in Finland

European border regions have witnessed a long history of remarkable mobility shocks stemming from complex ecological and economic changes and geopolitical events. The experience of near-continuous regional and global crisis has increased interest towards the idea of resilience, that is, the ability of communities and regions to adapt and cope with disturbances and transitions. Inspired by the literature of regional resilience and the evolutionary approach, this paper will examine the difference that borders and geopolitical conditions make from the perspective of regional resilience and especially ‘border-regional resilience’. Particular focus will be on irregular cross-border mobilities and consequent transitions in EU external and internal border towns, here the Finnish towns of Lappeenranta and Tornio. The study points out that the geopolitical environment and the openness of the border partly determine the regional development trajectories and the ways of coping with cross-border mobility-related changes. Although the border location entails some vulnerability, formal and informal cross-border institutions and relations of trust are of crucial importance from the perspective of border-regional resilience. The paper proposes a research agenda for studying border-regional resilience in the context of environmental, economic and social changes and geopolitical events.     

“路学”视角下公路交通对旅游地的影响维度与机制研究

“路学”是关于道路功能、时空演化及其区域影响的理论,为研究公路交通对旅游地影响提供新视角。借鉴“路学”构建“公路建设及其作用-公路对旅游地的影响-公路与旅游地交互响应”结构模型。结果表明：公路交通对旅游地的影响表现在经济、社会、文化和生态等维度,且具有正向影响。公路在增强旅游地通达性、刺激经济发展和改变生态环境的同时,也具有鲜明的社会文化特性,改变着人们的旅游经历与体验方式,引发地方重构和社会重塑。经济和生态维度对交旅响应有着正向影响,社会和文化维度影响不显著,交旅交互响应对公路交通建设影响不显著。进而基于生产、使用、建构和消费构建影响机制,以期为促进交旅协调发展提供新的理论视角和科学依据。     

Cross-Border Mobility,Unfamiliarity and Development Policy in Europe

In this special issue, we seek to explore experiences, performances and effects of both “unfamiliarity” and “familiarity” across a diversity of inner and outer borders of the European Union. In EU integration discourse, cross-border unfamiliarity is usually considered to obstruct international mobility and diminish opportunities for cross-border cohesion and communities to develop. European development policy, therefore, often focuses on creating mutual understanding in border regions, especially through diminishing the barrier effect of borders. One of the consequences is that more cross-border familiarity is created. However, too much familiarity may also have undermining implications for cross-border mobility, integration and community-building. This special issue, therefore, scrutinizes what “being” and “feeling” (un)familiar imply in cross-border contexts and what consequences both have for spatial practices in and representations of borderlanders in several Euroregions—as well as for European regional development policies aiming for cross-border mobility, integration and community-building.     

(Re)constructing borders through the governance of tourism and trade in Ladakh,India

This paper analyses how everyday life, the state and nationhood are regulated and organised in a conflict-affected borderland space through economic activities. It focuses on two elements that are often overlooked when scholars discuss spatial governmentality: tourism and trade. Both are commonly declared to be elements of peace, peacebuilding and cosmopolitism. However, the spatial governance of tourism and trade can also profoundly shape how national belonging and the limits of territory are perceived and experienced by borderland populations and visitors. These dynamics can be acute in conflict-affected border zones, where state sovereignty may be under existential or territorial threat. This paper exposes such dynamics in the Indian conflict borderland area of Ladakh, a part of Jammu and Kashmir State until October 2019. Building on scholarship that has analysed cultural and social dynamics of “bordering” in the region, this paper argues that it is possible to read (socio-)economic boundary-making in Ladakh through the state's influence in the organisation and experience of trade and tourism for Ladakhis and visitors. The paper highlights how their spatial organisation, in part, underwrites difference and separation, and aids in framing the contested territory as ‘Indian’.     

Crossing Khorgos: Soft power,security, and suspect loyalties at the Sino-Kazakh boundary

As China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) development projects deepen connections across Eurasia, the Sino-Kazakh border has been rematerialized in a manner that complicates the exercise of Chinese BRI soft power. On the one hand, the border city of Khorgos is being rebuilt as a bridgehead to facilitate trade and development between the countries; new infrastructure and spectacle at Khorgos and beyond works to entice Kazakhs to cross the border in pursuit of economic opportunities. At the same time, recent crackdowns on Muslims in China's Xinjiang Province has led to the detention and harassment of cross-border migrants with differentiated migrant statuses. Chinese security forces' continued anxieties about separatism in its borderlands imperil the developmental horizons the BRI project uses to entice Kazakhs. It also threatens the translocal development that a border conductive to mobility has provided for Kazakhs over the past thirty years. I argue that the BRI in northwest China fuses soft power rhetoric with territorial security practices in a way that is proving to be counter-productive. This is because border hardening can reactivate borders as “difference condensers” that draw from imperial and national legacies to reinscribe the othering of spaces and peoples beyond the border.     

International rivers as border infrastructures: En/forcing borders in South Asia

Rivers have long been convenient yet troublesome borders. Inherently itinerant, rivers routinely defy cartographic depictions of borders as static, territorially bounded formations. Such dynamism poses material and conceptual challenges to state regulatory activities, resulting in increasingly heterodox attempts to fix waterbodies through various securitizing mechanisms. I examine the dialectical relationship between rivers and borders through the concept of the river-border complex. I ask how the Ganges River shapes the form and function of the Indo-Bangladeshi border and how, in turn, bordering practices in India regulate flows along the river, which comprises 129 km of India's border with Bangladesh. Drawing on archival records, in-person interviews, and river data, I find that the border and efforts to secure it mediate many flows along the river. The study corroborates previous work within critical border studies that securitizing cross-border flows has the perverse effect of generating greater insecurity in adjoining countries. Crucially, historical analysis of sediment, information, and human flows reveals how international rivers also determine patterns and processes of circulation and thereby warrant reconceptualization as border infrastructures, rather than as merely being subject to them.     

论澳门旅游业之发展前瞻

澳门旅游业有其特有的优势,但也存在着对香港的过分依赖、周边地区日益激烈的竞争和治安不佳等方面的隐忧。为此,对博彩业进行改革、对其历史化资源进行深度开发、加强治安工作及发挥政府的宏观管理作用,成为促进澳门旅游业未来健康发展的基本方向。     

"The perfect business": human trafficking and Lao-Thai cross-border migration

Over the past few years some governments and development organizations have increasingly articulated cross-border mobility as "trafficking in persons". The notion of a market where traffickers prey on the "supply" of migrants that flows across international borders to meet the "demand" for labour has become a central trope among anti-trafficking development organizations. This article problematizes such economism by drawing attention to the oscillating cross-border migration of Lao sex workers within a border zone between Laos and Thailand. It illuminates the incongruity between the recruitment of women into the sex industry along the Lao-Thai border and the market models that are employed by the anti-trafficking sector. It discusses the ways in which these cross-border markets are conceived in a context where aid programming is taking on an increasingly important role in the politics of borders. The author concludes that allusions to ideal forms of knowledge (in the guise of classic economic theory) and an emphasis on borders become necessary for anti-trafficking programmes in order to make their object of intervention legible as well as providing post-hoc rationalizations for their continuing operation.     

Producing-resisting national borders in the United States,France and the Netherlands

Since the 1990s, governments in the United States, France, and the Netherlands have expanded their capacities to police their national borders against immigrants. The paper examines how such efforts have contributed to the growth of centralized policing agencies and the devolution of powers to individualized border enforcers (local police, service providers, nonprofit organizations, etc.). The paper argues that bordering strategies have closed some “holes” in national walls, but they have also introduced countless disagreements, disputes, and resistances by undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, national citizens, and frontline border enforcers. Many of these small resistances stay small and do not evolve into large contentious struggles. Others scale up and present more important challenges to government efforts. Rather than simply producing smooth governing machines that sharpen boundaries between the national citizen and the foreign Other, bordering strategies generate waves of small and big struggles that puncture and blur these facile boundaries.     

区域旅游发展中政府合作的制度障碍及对策思考

在区域旅游业发展进程中,由于行政区划的刚性约束,地区利益分配矛盾以及现行行政管理体制等制度性因素的制约,导致地方政府之间合作的目标机制、运行机制和制度保障机制的不能适应区域旅游业发展的需要,从而造成了区域政府合作有名无实。基于以上原因,本文从分析行政区划、地方利益竞争及现行管理体制等方面入手,探讨了现阶段地方政府在共同发展区域旅游的合作中所存在的制度障碍,提出在地位平等、互信互利、政府主导和市场合作等原则的基础上,建构制度化的多层次组织机构以制定统一的区域旅游经济发展政策,建立区域旅游利益共享机制,重建地方政府竞争秩序以及完善政府合作原则等对策。     

Recovering the Paradox of the Border: Identity and (Un)familiarity Across the Portuguese–Spanish Border

European internal borders have been involved in a process of reconfiguration. Political discourses have emphatically commented upon the dismantling of borders, the Single Market and free movement of products and people. This paper addresses these changes in relation to a specific European internal border—the Portuguese–Spanish border. To reflect on the changes referred to above, three different axes are explored: the relationship between borders and mobility, between borders and identity and between borders and memory. It is by stressing these relationships that concepts of familiarity and unfamiliarity will be equated and discussed. Drawing on my fieldwork experience and on documented studies on different sections of the border, I will explore how territorial and social dissimilarities affect the relationship with the border and in what ways (un)familiarity acts as a motivation for border crossing. I will argue that although there is a feeling of familiarity (constructed by past experience) and that despite the fact that Iberian states are imposing a new paradigm of relations across the border (that of cross-border cooperation) people living on the border are using concepts of differentiation to sustain their identity in a discursive manner.     

我国旅游流研究进展与展望

旅游流研究是旅游地理学研究的核心问题之一,为了总结我国旅游流研究成果,找出我国旅前流研究的不足并指出未来的研究方向,本文对1987-2010年我国旅游流文献进行了梳理。我国旅游流研究历程可以划分为起步、成长和发展三个阶段,可划分为时间分布特征、空间结构特征、时空演化特征、影响因素、驱动机制和规模预测等六类研究主题,但我国旅游流研究也存在六方面的不足,特别是要深入挖掘研究内容,创新研究方法,以推动我国旅游流研究更进一步发展。     

Bringing Back the (B)order: Post‐9/11 Politics of Immigration,Borders, and Belonging in the Contemporary US South

Abstract: Post 9/11, debates about borders, immigration, and belonging have reached a new intensity in the US South. The temporal overlap of growing immigration to the South since the late 1990s and growing nativist sentiment across the US since 9/11 has led southern communities to fuse new regional racial demographics to new national border anxieties. This convergence enables southern political elites to address the changing contours of local communities through recourse to national imperatives of border security, all the while avoiding an explicit language of race in a thoroughly racialized debate. In an analysis of recent political maneuvers in the South, this article examines what happens when debates about nation, community, and borders are relocated to southern spaces heretofore absent in discussions of immigration. It argues that legislative actions against immigrant populations in southern states are virulent and multi‐scalar border policings in which concerns about the social and cultural boundaries of southern communities, new racial projects across the South, and post‐9/11 immigrant anxieties across the US become inseparable. To conclude, it discusses the theoretical insight that this critical assessment of the South's new border projects offers vis‐à‐vis understandings of, and struggles against, exclusion, racism, and social injustice.