ABSTRACT
This chapter examines scholarly work that reveals how the relationship between borders and the nation-state has changed. It explains greater attention to the multiplication of borders that operate to flexibly constitute national authority. The chapter also explains recent theoretical developments to argue that the proliferation of borders and border control today plays a fundamental role in constituting subjectivity in ways that seek to fracture and divide possibilities for collective action and the construction of the common. The central role that borders play in creating the architecture of neoliberalism can be observed in the changing character of nation-states and sovereignty. S. Mezzadra and B. Neilson expose how the fragmentation of state sovereignty has facilitated the proliferation of borders, as nation-states in particular, but other nonstate actors as well, seek to maintain, exert or gain power in a heterogeneous and complex global environment.
