Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper focuses on the processes related to the delimitation and government of the so-called external frontiers of the European Union (EU). The issue of border management has indeed featured very highly in the discussions unravelling in the European arenas in recent years, whether through the question of the setting-up of a European neighbourhood policy (ENP) or the elaboration of a so-called system of integrated border management (IBM). The government of the EU border(land)s has in this respect been a site of struggles among a variety of actors positioned within these arenas, focusing not so much on the matter of open or closed borders, but rather on the degree of mobility (in flows of goods, services, capitals but also and most importantly, persons) that common European practices in border control and surveillance should allow for.The paper seeks to provide an alternative take on these processes, by arguing the following. Debates around the question of the government of EU frontiers do not reflect the emergence, at the European level, of a new policy domain fuelled by original, EU-specific solutions, but rather the re-appropriation and re-formulation (the Europeanization) of practices originally developed in other transnational arenas (e.g. the UN-related constellation or international financial institutions), whether with regard to the control and surveillance side of border-management, or in the inclusion of border management as part of programmes promoting ‘good governance’ in third countries.The paper, finally, builds its case drawing from empirical evidence gathered through the mobilisation of a sociological methodology. It focuses on two specific developments, namely the setting-up of the ENP on the one hand, and the creation of the European agency for the coordination of operational co-operation at the borders of the EU and its Member states (Frontex). It includes results from a sustained process of interviewing among EU officials in Brussels, as well as fieldwork conducted in the republic of Moldova.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: "In the Classroom and on the Border" traverses the real and imagined boundaries between classroom and "the real world" by focusing on the intersection between pedagogy, theory, historiography, methodology, and experience in a borderlands setting. Based on several graduate and undergraduate courses and years of research into the histories of Indigenous peoples on the U.S.-Mexico Border, it has become apparent that disciplinary rigidity and arbitrary divisions between "the academy" and public life have undermined our ability to generate meaningful discussions about the multi-vocal perspectives of sub-altern groups living in the border region. Using the contributions of native and non-native scholars within and beyond the academy, this paper will seek connections (and disjunctures) between postcolonial and neocolonial perspectives, transnational experiences, oral histories, and recent debates over decolonization. It will blend the comments and writings of students in the classroom with the memories of Native peoples on both sides of the border. It will also propose useful strategies for translating sometimes dense and inaccessible theoretical discourse into pedagogically useful moments in which the students both comprehend critical arguments and generate their own intellectual contributions. Finally, this paper will reflect on the unique challenges (and opportunities) that transnational, borderland situations offer for public intellectuals seeking meaningful social change.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper aims at displacing ideas of politics in IR, usually centered around the inside/outside distinction, by analyzing the political processes involved in discussions on displacement among transversal subjects in border zones. Borders are central to the spatial, territorial imagination of IR. However, borders are also historical and contextual practices, situated in space and time, but increasingly, as Balibar remarks, 'no longer situated at the borders at all' (2002). I take the border as both a material, localized experience, but mostly as a symbolic site of construction of otherness and difference. I focus on refugees, asylum seekers and migrants as groups, traditionally constructed as significant others, for whom the border has become a life-defining moment/space, a condition of existence, a 'place where one resides' (Balibar, 2002, p.83).In 2004, Latin American Countries signed the Mexico Declaration on Refugee Protection, in which they made an explicit commitment to devise mechanisms for fostering 'borders of solidarity' within the region. I start from a discussion of the implications of thinking about borders as zones of solidarity in order to analyze the political negotiations and experiences of displacement among refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in the border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru. I discuss the relations between these groups and local and international officials, NGOs and social movements in Tabatinga, a small village in the heart of the Amazon Forest (on the Brazilian side of the Tri-Border) where life in displacement has become a norm. By unveiling the politics of this border zone, I seek to critically assess the implications of everyday experiences of mobility to the territorial imagination of the state and its borders. I argue that there is a need to rethink the border as a place of misunderstandings, contestation and conflict, but also as a zone of cultural encounters, of memory, of hopes, of potentially new political horizons and of important continuities as well. In that sense, the paper strives to contribute to the current scholarship on the non-spatiality of border zones and to the reclaiming of everyday practices as necessarily political experiences.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The U.S. southern border is a focal point for important politico-economic developments that determine the status of all working class immigrants of color. First the border has become increasingly militarized against “terrorists” who are actors in the Wars on Terror and Drugs, and the Mexican desire to “reconquer” the Southwest. That is, the ordinary unauthorized entrant is now being treated by policy makers, the public, and vigilante groups as a potential enemy rather than mere criminal. Consequently they are over-policed and their crossing is laden with meaning—they are social pollutants, disease carriers, and sexual deviants—all neatly wrapped up in the term “terrorist.” Not only are unauthorized entrants subjected to the discourse and policies of war but so are legal residents and naturalized citizens. The second development is older—the Border Industrial Program established in the 1960s as a model of an economic “free zone” and the herald of global economic dynamics. Seemingly in contrast to the militarization of the border, this area has had a history of lax environmental protection, fewer taxes and duties, and perhaps until recently, much fewer worker protections. Pictures of the maquila areas show: shanty towns; piles of rubbish with warning signs; the maquilas themselves, some encircled by barbed wire; and white crosses, marking the rape-murders of hundreds of the maquila workers. This gives a different picture of the border—one that is open to investment and business; a source of labor made “cheap” by the suspension of regulations and laws (or, lack of enforcement); and an area of extreme lawlessness and danger to women.
What I suggest is that the dynamics of globalization and what appears to be a sovereignty free area work symbiotically with the dynamics of America’s undeclared wars to simultaneously police and exploit working class immigrants of color. Migrants and border workers’ political status is closer to that of enemy than citizen. Consequently, they operate in a sphere marked by arbitrary power and violence, whether they actually experience that or not. Predominantly neoliberal policies unite economic and sovereign concerns making Mexican immigrants (among others) a group that can be exploited and policed, treated as crucial to the international economy and yet a threat to sovereignty.
This challenges conventional models of assimilation, citizenship, and economic integration (evident in the recent set of articles responding to Huntington in Perspectives). More broadly it disputes the autonomy and range of powers that immigrants are purported to have on the one hand and the primacy of the nation-state in understanding immigration on the other. If these two trends continue—a war without borders and a global economy of “free zones”—political solutions cannot be found in the nation-state but in supra- or sub-national understandings of political belonging (citizenship).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Mainstream treatments of the concept of"border town" reflect a narrowly top-down, militaristic understanding of border security. This paper presents an alternative perspective on urban nodes near disputed borders. Historical analysis of urban networks in the border between northeast India and southeast China, complemented by mapping of regional networks, highlights the past and potential gateway functions of these cities. The paper offers an alternative perspective on border dynamics, proposing a shift from the "radial" power structure governing urban function in border regions to a "capillary" structure.