ABSTRACT

This book critically challenges the usual territorial understanding of borders by examining the often messy internal, transborder, ambiguous, and in-between spaces that co-exist with traditional borders. By considering those less visible aspects of borders, the book develops an inclusive understanding of how contemporary borders are structured and how they influence human identity, mobility, and belonging.

The introduction and conclusion provide theoretical and contextual framing, while chapters explore topics of global labor and refugees, unrecognized states, ethnic networks, cyberspace, transboundary resource conflicts, and indigenous and religious spaces that rarely register on conventional maps or commonplace understandings of territory. In the end, the volume demonstrates that, despite being "invisible" on most maps, these borders have a very real, material, and tangible presence and consequences for those people who live within, alongside, and across them.

chapter 1|18 pages

Geographies of Visibility and Invisibility

Strategies of Spatial Control and Differentiation

part I|86 pages

Invisible Borders of Political Control

chapter 2|16 pages

No (Wo)Man's Land

Risking Detention along the South Ossetian Administrative Boundary Line

chapter 3|21 pages

“It's All One Place”

Geographic Networks in a West African Borderland since Independence

chapter 4|20 pages

Transboundary Water Management in Separatist Regions

Towards a Geography of Hydro-Political Tensions

chapter 5|23 pages

Bordering the South China Sea

Maritime Claims, Contested Sovereignty, and Novel Territorialities

part II|110 pages

Invisible Borders of Socioeconomic Control

chapter 6|18 pages

Navigating Invisible Border Spaces in Switzerland

What Rejected Asylum Seekers' Lives Can Tell Us about Everyday Bordering Practices

chapter 7|15 pages

Airbnb and the Boundaries of the Tourist Center

How Peer-to-Peer Rental Platforms Have Altered the Tourist Zone in San Sebastian, Spain

chapter 8|32 pages

Losing Ground

Indigenous Territoriality and the Núcleo Agrario in Mexico

chapter 9|20 pages

Layers and Ranges of Disabling Borders

Post-Soviet Uzbekistan

chapter 10|19 pages

“Not … Places of High Consequence”

The Great Plains, Internal Colonization, and Pipelines in American Media Coverage

part III|58 pages

Invisible Borders of Technological Control

chapter 11|19 pages

Encrypted Geographies

Invisible Cryptographic Borders

chapter 12|15 pages

Borders in Cyberspace

The Limits to the Space of Flows

chapter 13|12 pages

Hiding in Plain Sight

The Power of Biometric Border Technologies

chapter 14|8 pages

Invisible Borders into the Twenty-First Century

Towards a Research Agenda for Invisibility