ABSTRACT
Borders are ‘constructs that become problematic at different historical junctures’ (Banerjee 2010: xii). The intersection of globalization, migration and sovereignty is one such juncture examined in this chapter. Research on the border has become a vast, interdisciplinary field (Newman 2006). Traditionally, geographers defined the border in static terms as a line on a map (Hartshorne 1936). Emerging definitions of the border reconfigure it as mobile in time and space (Weber 2006), disaggregated (Bigo 2005) or even personally embodied (Ortiz 2001; Khosravi 2010; Wonders 2006). As a symbolic determinant of national identity (Goff 2000), borders are increasingly ‘the primary site of expression of the exclusionary powers of the state’ (Weber 2002: 22). As such, borders are understood as operating in highly gendered, racialized and classed ways to ‘draw a line between Us and Them more rigidly’ (Bauman 2004: 68). This chapter examines the role of globalization in the transformation of sovereignty and its reassertion in response to transnational migrants.
