Tracing the Busy Gap Rogues

Busy Gap is one of the earliest attested place names located along the line of the central sector of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, yet in Newcastle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a term of abuse, applied collectively to those who came from upland Tynedale and was synonymous with the Border Reivers. Archaeological and historical sources indicate that throughout the Middle Ages the place was located in a zone of seasonal settlement, characterized by groups of shielings probably associated with townships located in the valley of the South Tyne. The question is how to understand the role of Busy Gap, a place identified with a triangular earthwork on the north side of the Roman Wall. This paper will consider the results of recent archaeological investigations carried out by the author on the site and will investigate the place and its setting within the archaeological and historical context of early-modern Northumberland.     

A Syndetic Approach to Identification of the Historic Mission Site of San Cayetano del Tumacácori

This article explores the methodological considerations of a syndetic approach to archaeological inquiry. This multi-evidential approach involves crossing interdisciplinary boundaries to exploit data that reside with other specialists. The material evidence of a historically referenced place is sought in the archaeological record and evaluated using historical documentary data, ethnographic information, as well as data from other sources including assessment of occupational duration, intensity of residence, erosional patterns, and chronological placement. The case study involves location and verification of the 1690s through 1750s Sobaípuri-O’odham village of San Cayetano del Tumacácori in southern Arizona.     

试析15世纪中叶图们江成为中朝界河

15世纪之前,图们江两岸由中国的少数民族女真族所领,明王朝招抚女真族,在图们江两岸设置了地方行政机构,图们江南岸亦一度为明王朝领地。朝鲜李朝通过剿杀、驱赶女真部落,不断向北拓展领土,于15世纪中叶沿图们江南岸设置了六个镇,标志着图们江开始成为中、朝两国的界河。     

Scale in motion? Rethinking scalar production and border externalization

This paper signals how border externalization can inform geographical debates about scale and in turn, foster research on how scale intersects with recent forms of border and migration control. It interrogates what scales are being produced and struggled over, pointing to the contingency of scalar work in border externalization, specifically through the EU Migration Routes Strategy. Debates on scale and changing borders are worked through to arrive at the notion of “itinerant scale”, in order to highlight a very distinct spatial imaginary and implementation of border work. Instead of sitting at the edges of nation-states, staying in designated places for long, or pushing through some sort of region imagined as a buffer or frontline, borders are envisioned and designed to be mobile devices and reiterated along shifting migratory routes. This complex scalar production unfolds through a mix of policies, cartographies, surveillance infrastructures and atypical institutional agreements, reaching and acting simultaneously at local, national and regional levels, aiming at the management and contention of suspicious bodies on the move.     

Out of Sight,Out of Mind: Electronic Travel Authorization and the Interdiction of Asylum Seekers at the Canada–US Security Perimeter

In early 2016, Canada quietly announced the delay of its new electronic travel authorization (eTA) system, which will transform how millions traveling to Canada are screened. As with other parts of the developing Canada–US security perimeter, the announcement received little attention in the public sphere, which is problematic on at least two counts. First, it inhibits a better understanding of the distinctive regional governance structures that define North American integration. Second, it limits awareness of how the perimeter—by pushing decision-making from ports-of-entry in to points-of-departure beyond North America—enables interdiction, preventing asylum seekers from seeking protection from persecution in Canada and rendering them “out of sight, out of mind.” This article explores these gaps and effects through an analysis of policy developments and public debates (reflected in government and media documents) surrounding the perimeter’s emergence, consolidation, and—with the eTA—expansion since 1995.     

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.     

战时陕甘宁边区的劳动英模运动

典型人物英雄化或先进化是中共的一项重要政治仪式。抗战时期,中共在陕甘宁边区发动了大规模的劳动英模运动,创造和发现了一大批典型人物,形成中国历史上第一个劳动英模群体。该项活动既是中共在抗战时期根据地政权建设的基本内容,又是中共中央直接领导陕甘宁边区社会建设的新型组织形式。奖励劳动英模的根本目的在于使之在群众中发生作用,组织起一个群众性运动,以达到发展生产、巩固根据地、促进各项建设事业的目标。     

Australia's Indigenous Carbon Economy: A National Snapshot

Many Indigenous communities in Australia are well situated to provide greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration benefits, but little is known about the factors affecting the capability of Australia's Indigenous organisations to participate in climate change mitigation strategies. This paper provides a ‘snapshot’ summary of certain aspects of Australia's Indigenous organisations' participation in carbon offset schemes. The snapshot provides insight into the degree to which Indigenous organisations are aware of carbon market opportunities in Australia, the level that these Indigenous organisations participate in or engage with carbon‐based economic enterprises, and the key pathways through which Indigenous carbon market opportunities are pursued. Analysis of data collected from a national survey conducted between 2011 and 2012 show that most obstacles to Indigenous participation in carbon offset schemes relate to land tenure arrangements; geographic and biophysical factors; low levels of requisite technical, human and financial resources; and appropriate recognition of Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsibilities. The snapshot also highlights the value of supporting regionally specific capacity‐building strategies to enable Indigenous people to participate in emerging carbon offset activities and the generation of associated ecosystem services. Cultural, socio‐economic or demographic factors that are also likely to influence the ability of many Indigenous communities to participate in carbon market opportunities are identified as important areas for further research.     

Between colonising waters and extracting forest fronts: Entangled eco-frontiers in the Usumacinta River Basin

The eco-frontier concept has addressed the processes of certain territories that are subject to ecological concern and appropriation of different actors. This study approaches the underexplored interaction with the frontier. The article sharpens the focus on the relations between the eco-frontier and the frontier as both a naturally rich periphery with importance to political centres and as an advancing front. The research discusses empirical results in the case of the transboundary Usumacinta River Basin (URB), which extends from Guatemala's highlands and lowlands through three Mexican states to the Gulf of Mexico. Three historical stages of eco-frontiers—exploratory, epistemic, and institutionalised—are identified in the URB. Its entangled eco-frontiers transform wildernesses and waters to forest ecosystems with inhabitants both spatially and mentally, yet contain some colonial, geopolitical, and global components. This article suggests that the eco-frontiers are fundamentally created because of contemporary frontier dynamics.     

Deaths,disappearances, borders: Migrant disappearability as a technology of deterrence

This paper analyses migrant disappearances in connection to EU bordering practices and techniques. Drawing on fieldwork in various localities at Greek borderlands, I argue that death or disappearance, due to drowning, hypothermia, exhaustion, violence, deprivation of medical care, and road accidents, to name but a few examples, has become an integral part of border enforcement in the Global North. To engage analytically with such an instantiation of border violence, I propose to utilise the notion of migrant disappearability. This disappearability is a produced condition (as opposed to accidently or randomly appearing) of everyday existence that does not necessarily lead to death or disappearance but, nevertheless, exerts pressure towards certain kind of precarities and threats by limiting the horizon of possibilities racialised migrants from the Global South have ahead of them. Furthermore, the state of being disappearable is a social space one constantly enters, leaves, re-enters and leaves again; rather than being at the forefront at all times, it looms above like a ghost.