ABSTRACT
International boundaries are deceptively simple. As crisp lines on maps or concretely marked in geographical space they communicate clear-cut division between distinct state territories, between here and there, the inside and the outside. Yet this geometric clarity is superimposed upon multiple complexities that characterize international borderlands. While boundaries seldom separate two linguistic or cultural realms in any precise manner, it is commonplace to find international borderlands as amalgamations of two or more intermingling sets of linguistic and cultural resources, such as traditions, habits, historical narratives and customary ways of doing and understanding things. Moreover, decades and even centuries of state-based socialization through school education, political participation and the media, have resulted in borderlands evolving as the meeting points of two (or more) national societies with dissimilar institutional, legal and political systems, partly separate local economies and at times even different currencies.
