ABSTRACT
Bordering is the process that encapsulates both the establishment of a state border and its subsequent management in the context of border control. The Irish border was the product of partition from the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921). Irish nationalists opposed partition; Ulster British unionists eventually embraced it. Bordering on the island of Ireland was driven by state-building on both sides of the border and by antagonism between the Irish state and the Ulster British unionist administration in Northern Ireland. There was ‘quiet’, practical North–South cooperation led by senior civil servants, but ‘loud’ political efforts foundered. ‘The Troubles’, beginning in 1969, intensified bordering through an Irish republican insurgency and the British state’s securitisation response. The border region itself became a zone of dystopia marked by deadly violence, fear, loathing, and trepidation.
