From “Thin” to “Thick” (and Back Again?): The Politics and Policies of the Contemporary US–Canada Border

Despite making modest progress on challenging management and security issues common to their shared border, the United States and Canada have, in recent years, slipped behind on advancing a progressive border agenda. The momentum unleashed under the 30-point Smart Border Action Plan, signed in late 2001, has slowed in the face of new regulations at the border, many of which were initiated by the United States. These include significant changes in US admission procedures under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), new border policing resources and protocols, as well as new customs and inspection fees. The much-heralded Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), designed to facilitate both trade and security between the two countries, has also lost momentum, with the last trilateral meeting of leaders resulting in little more than a press release. As a result of these and other developments, it appears that rather than “thinning,” the US–Canada border is “thickening” at precisely the time when greater economic and security cooperation is necessary to bolster North American competitiveness in an increasingly globalized economy and complex security environment. This article will investigate some of the key reasons behind these policy developments, exploring some of the early positions that frame approaches to border management in the Obama administration. It will also offer some thoughts on opportunities for improved border management policies by providing some specific recommendations, which may help advance solutions to pressing – and festering – bilateral security and trade issues.     

Visual media and the construction of the benign Canadian border on National Geographic's Border Security

Visual media have long been instrumental in the production of international borders as sites of spectacle. Such projects involve careful delineations of who may enter and under what conditions. In Canada, this representation often centres on a dialectical relationship between a welcoming and generous, multicultural nation and a threatening foreign immigrant Other. We adopt a visual content analysis approach to examine Border Security: Canada's Front Line, a documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel that follows the daily activities of Canadian border security agents. Because this series is sponsored by the Canadian Border Patrol Agency, it provides an ideal case with which to interrogate the State's agenda in representing home, Other and risk. Given previous scholarship on the dialectical representation of Other and Canadian multiculturalism, we expected to find similar juxtapositions on Border Security. Rather, our analysis reveals a carefully managed representation of colour and nation-blindness that supports a construction of Canada in opposition to the United States.     

Books Received

While improving the “hard” resources of the physical infrastructure is important to facilitating cross-border trade, studies of global supply chain logistics performance suggest that expanding the focus to include “soft” infrastructure resources will be critical for future gains. Border management is increasingly important to North American trade facilitation, yet little is known about what constitutes the soft infrastructure of border crossings or how to design and manage this infrastructure for improved performance. Hence, this study uses an exploratory research design to examine the nature and dimensions of the soft infrastructure of border crossings. The research relies on a grounded-theory analysis of primary data collected in an exploratory case study of two border crossings between Alberta, Canada, and Montana, US.     

新时期新疆边境城镇体系构建和口岸小城镇发展

新疆所处区位条件决定了边境的稳定与发展在整个区域经济中占据重要位置。把城市化和对外开放结合起来,通过边境城镇体系的构建来密切边境城镇与腹地的联系具有积极作用。边境城镇体系通过交通轴线的连接,对不同层次、不同职能分工的核心、节点、边境城市和口岸小城镇进行空间纵深配置,从而发挥对外开放的城镇整体优势。口岸型小城镇是边境城镇体系的前沿,最具特色。在发展条件较好,规模较大的口岸可考虑直接设立建制镇。在一些自身设镇条件不足的口岸,可考虑与地方、兵团联合设镇,协调管理。     

Border guarding and the politics of the body: an examination of the Finnish Border Guard service

In previous studies, the question of the state control over the bodies of people at border-crossing points has been of great interest, while less attention has been given to the bodies that carry out border surveillance and control. This article introduces a new perspective on the study of the state and gender by examining the imaginations and rationalities of state border guarding and the politics of the body in the Finnish Border Guard (FBG) service. By taking the body politics and gendered relations of border guarding as an analytical starting point, this study takes a step forward toward ‘feminizing’ the study of borders and border securitization. The article scrutinizes the depictions, articulations, and conceptualizations of the work competence in border guarding and the performances of female border guards in the official media of the FBG organization, as well as discusses how the interrelations of border guarding and body politics become structured around questions concerning masculine romantics, the (in)capacities of female officers and the embodied nature of border monitoring. The study shows the pervasive, and also controversial, nature of gendered imaginations and rationalities in the domain of border guarding in contemporary societies.     

Border blocking effects in collaborative firm innovation

Border regions are not often associated with innovation and economic prosperity. And even when they are prosperous, cross-border interaction is still mostly limited. The opening up of borders in Europe has presented new opportunities for firms located in these border regions to co-operate for innovation and knowledge to flow across borders. Despite the reduction of the importance of borders, firms seeking to access cross-border knowledge resources need still to ‘cross’ the border and address the various effects it brings. This paper therefore asks the question of how the presence of a border affects the processes by which firms attempt to build up productive co-operations for innovation. We use a heuristic of collaborative innovation across borders as building up through four sequential cooperation stages, and each of these different stages is susceptible to different kinds of border effects. Using a case study of firms co-operating across the Dutch-Flemish border, we empirically explore these border crossing processes in order to shed further light on how border processes play out.     

Entre souveraineté indigène et sécurité nationale : Négocier la sécurité frontalière et la culture Mohawk à Akwesasne

Based on the case of the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne, wedged between Ontario, Quebec, and New York state, this paper provides an analysis of the links between the affirmation of indigenous culture and the implementation of security policies on borderlands. The focus extends beyond political conflicts over border issues to encompass the ways in which Aboriginal sovereignty is affirmed within processes of negotiation and cooperation in the matters of identification requirements, border agents’ cultural sensitivity, and law enforcement. We find that the enhancement of border security can paradoxically be a political opportunity for local leaders to reaffirm indigenous sovereignty, and that this reaffirmation through cooperation is, at the same time, emerging as a key factor in the implementation of border security policies.     

Forming an anti-imperialist national identity in Republican China: The Finnish interpretation

This article focuses on Finnish national identities because they expressed the shared experiences of newly established Finnish communities, and they were crucial in constructing a new nation. It also explores created images of the Finnish and Finland, as well as community construction in Republican China, especially after Finland gained independence in 1917. Another aim is to examine those Finnish political, cultural and economic activities that supported their identity construction in China. The specific emphasis will be on analysing the largest and sometimes cross-functioning Finnish groups in China: the governmental officials and the commercial community. By using qualitative methods, namely, discourse analysis and historical analysis, this study shows how the Finnish community created alternative, sometimes imaginative and frequently anti-imperialist national identities in the new Republican China. Indeed, by signing the Treaty Principles of Reciprocity and Equal Treatment, it was agreed that Finland and China ‘shall enjoy same rights, privileges, favours, immunities and exemptions which [might] be accorded to similar foreign agents in accordance with the principles of international law’. This article argues that Finnish aspirations were positively regarded by many Chinese, and they respected this quite unique national connection with Finland.     

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。     

Small nation,big ships winter navigation and technological nationalism in a peripheral country, 1878–1978

Finland is the only country in the world where all ports freeze over during a typical winter. Over the century 1878–1978, Finland developed a winter-seafaring system that broke the winter isolation and eliminated seasonal variation in shipping. By using diverse archival sources, we deconstruct the dominant narrative of Finnish winter seafaring through which national as well as technological development is often presented as natural, inevitable and straightforward. We reinterpret the Finnish winter navigation system as a tangible, historical experience and show that technological solutions in this domain cannot be understood outside the context of a decades-long process of nation-building. Finally, we argue that winter navigation became a central imaginary for Finland as a western, industrial and modern nation. As such, the Finnish winter-seafaring system presents a case of technological nationalism in which a small, peripheral country sought to integrate itself into a modern international order.     

Mapping Illegality: The i‐Map and the Cartopolitics of “Migration Management” at a Distance

Cartographies for “migration management” are part and parcel of controversial border practices far from conventional borderlines. Focusing on the i‐Map, this study renders how the European Union's current practices of remote border control are visualised among migration policy circles and expert security actors through a “mapping migration matrix”. The lines portraying migration flows in recurrent maps generate a shared expert language and a common geographical imaginary reinforcing practices of contention and classification of those assumed to move toward the European Union irregularly. It is argued that illegality is constructed in ways that target border crossing long before any border is crossed, making someone illegal at the very moment and place where s/he might decide to migrate. This paper analyses the cartopolitics and limits of cartographic expertise in the production of a “routes thinking” able to legitimise extra‐territorial interceptions and practices of remote border control.     

A history of transboundary storm water flows: flooding,tunnels, and the spatial incongruity of the U.S.–Mexico border

The benefits of transnational flows and the concern for national security have framed development in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the formative beginnings of both nations. As national discourses, trade and security work against each other in borderland spaces, the former requiring openings in the border, the later seeking to control it. This paper considers the material implications of these discourses on the border landscape with particular attention to historical boundary development, urbanization, and impacts of chronic flooding. It argues that material discursive dynamics not only constitute the contemporary landscape, but create spatial incongruities that influence the impacts of natural processes, such as storm water flow. Using the southern Arizona border as a case study, the paper uses archival research to explore the historical geography of chronic flooding in the twentieth century and the shift in dynamics of flooding due to border boundary build up.     

从地缘政治视角看美国边界安全的空间特征与政策变化——兼论对中国边界安全的启示

本文将美国边界安全置于地缘政治视角之下进行研究,通过对美国边界的空间形态与特征进行分析,总结美国边界安全在当前空间状态下存在的有利和不利因素。在全球反恐背景下,以"9·11"事件作为转折点,对比恐怖主义袭击前后20年美国政府在边界安全政策问题上的认知和态度变化,在对美国边界安全政策进行梳理后,阐述在新的边界安全环境下,美国所采取的保障陆海空边界安全的一系列强有力措施。在此基础上提出了美国经验对中国边界安全的五点启示,以期对中国的国家安全政策和实践提供借鉴。     

Dismantling the Soviet Security System. Soviet–Finnish Negotiations on Ending Their Friendship Agreement, 1989–91.

The Soviet Union had tied Finland to its security system through the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA) signed between the two in 1948. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate at the end of the 1980s, Finland exited the Soviet sphere of influence – the region controlled through a system of bilateral and multilateral agreements. This article analyses the Soviet–Finnish negotiations to discard the FCMA treaty as a case study of the changing Soviet European neighbourhood policy. It gives important insights into the disintegration of the Soviet foreign policy mechanism during the Gorbachev era as it elaborates on both the intra-bureaucracy conflicts between the Kremlin and the Soviet foreign ministry, MID, and later between the Soviet central government and the Russian republic. As Finland was part of the Soviet security system, analysing Finland's exit from it sheds light onto the crucial change that took place in the Soviet foreign policy doctrine during the perestroika years. The Gorbachev leadership's decision not to defend its sphere of influence with force paved way for the upheavals of 1989 which led to the Cold War's end.     

Frontier Landscape – Lapland in the Tradition of Finnish Landscape Painting

Abstract

Finnish artists depicted Lapland as a frontier. The position of the Lappish landscape as a part of the Finnish landscape painting tradition is explored through a framework based on art and cultural history as well as humanistic and cultural geography. Paintings from three historical periods are analyzed: the early and later period of Finland as an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy (1809–1917), the first decades after the independence of Finland (1917–1939) and the Second World War (1939–1945). Lapland is today the borderline of leisure and work and the frontier of Finnish and Sámi cultures. Earlier Lappish landscapes were places of Sámi nomadism and Finnish farming, which can be seen in the Lappish landscape paintings from the 1890s to 1920s. Finnish art tradition, however, was not ready to accept Lapland, the northern frontier, as a part of Finland. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s the meaning of the northern borderline grew and Lapponism, the golden years of Lappish landscape and tourism, began. During the Lapponism period there were few paintings depicting Sámi culture, because the Sámi were thought to be primitive or Mongolian, and were not accepted as part of Finnish culture.     

Constructing the border from below: Narratives from the Congolese-Rwandan state boundary

This article is about the simultaneous subversion and perpetuation of political borders ‘from below’. Using the state boundary between the cities of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gisenyi in Rwanda as a case study, this article shows how people make sense of their border-related social world. By analyzing everyday narratives and practices of people who live on both sides of the border, this article reveals popular geopolitics at work and demonstrates the inchoate character surrounding the idea of ‘the border’. Border talk is examined in key narratives and narrative clusters to emphasize the primacy of certain thematic plots and to reveal which aspects of the border people prioritize and how they attribute meaning to the idea of the border. Views of the border ranging from a desired barrier against the demonized ‘other,’ and as a means of exclusion, to its conception as an institution that may be in need of reform but is essential to economic survival, make clear that approaching the border through narratives means allowing for its historicity and relationality. Border narratives and practices reveal some neglected aspects of violent conflict in the study region and provide insights into state-society relations, an understanding of the state’s legitimacy, and an understanding of the effects of the border as a social construction that influences everyday life.     

Sami Counter-Narratives of Colonial Finland. Articulation,Reception and the Boundaries of the Politically Possible

Abstract

The Sami have articulated two kinds of counter-narratives of their treatment by the state of Finland: the state failing to provide welfare services and as a colonizer of the Sami. The Sami counter-narratives are discussed in light of their evolution and their perception in the interactional context of the Finnish state. The colonization narrative, which replaced the welfare narrative, has proven to be hard to legitimize in a Finnish context. Even though it lacks both external and full internal legitimacy, it is still used because of the international conventions building on the self-imagery of a colonized people. In addition, the most radical post-colonial researchers have chosen to use it, partly for ethno-political reasons. Numerous elements in the master narrative of Finland delegitimize the idea of Finnish colonialism: amongst other things, the idea of natural borders, the idea of being colonized by neighbouring empires, the long history of industrial nationalism and the economic growth and myth-building of the state of Finland as an anti-imperialist “good state”. A critique is advanced concerning the least nuanced academic practices and narratives.     

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。     

Internationalizing the Spatial Identity of Cross-Border Cooperation

The adoption of Schengen Agreement and acceleration of cross-border region building among European Union (EU) member states have considerably diversified the character of identity policies in European border areas. One important outcome is the formation of different spatial identities for improving the policies of cross-border cooperation. Using the formation of internationalized spatial identity of North European twin cities Haparanda (Sweden) and Tornio (Finland) as study example, this article argues that the promoters of cross-border cooperation still pay little attention to the strategic planning and coordination of identity policies. As a result, the promotion of an international spatial identity of cross-border cooperation remains unbalanced failing adequately to support the aims of cooperation policies. The ineffective integration between cooperation policies and international identity of cooperation complicates the building of competitive and dynamic cross-border regions in the EU peripheral areas as well as responding to challenges of EU's territorial cohesion.     

Bordering dynamics and the geopolitics of cross-border tourism between China and Myanmar

The impacts of border politics on tourist mobilities become even more explicit in unstable and geopolitically sensitive borders. The balance between security and economy in the course of tourism development can be easily disrupted at these unstable borders, as shown in the case between China and Myanmar. This article explores the enabling and disabling of cross-border tourist mobilities— legal day trips for sightseeing and illegal border-crossers for gambling—to reveal how these two tourist mobilities are driven by differences (exotic culture vs. sinful gambling) and regulated by Chinese law enforcements (protective control vs. stringent deterrence). We find that borders can both invoke a special type of fascination among tourists and become a territorial barrier to limit tourist mobilities into foreign countries. The article presents two arguments. First, the operation of bordering dynamics discursively produces the geopolitical difference between two sides of the border, a difference allowing state agencies to promote and order cross-border tourism. Second, no matter how much it can contribute to the local economy, the cross-border tourism industry is subordinated to security concerns caused by illicit activities and political instability, particularly when national governments can effectively exercise power in their border regions. Together, the interlinked pattern of debordering for tourist money and rebordering for national security generates an explicit spatial expression of bordering dynamics.