In “Europe as borderlands” Balibar first outlines the theoretical connections between borders, political spaces, and citizenship. In the second part, Balibar rethinks the notions of (de)territorialization in an attempt of analyzing the “’material constitution’ of Europe [and] the emergence of the ‘European citizen’ as a new historic figure” (p. 202). All topics are united in part three, where Balibar outlines his ideas of the new, cosmopolitcal or transnational citizen and their role in the borderland model of Europe.
This academic journal article discusses the two major dueling schools of thought on the significance of borders in contemporary politics and society, namely those who see an increasingly « borderless world » and those who see new meaning and contexts to studying borders. Here, borders are not only considered as phenomena located at the edges of territories, but rather everywhere in between in societal practices and discourses. In particular, Paasi explains the importance of theory in border studies and develops new conceptual perspectives in order to understand the persistence of bounded territorial spaces.
The special issue on “Regional Worlds,” edited by Martin Jones and Anssi Paasi, combines various current theoretical perspectives on the region and accompanies this with empirical examples from Europe, Africa, and North America. The issue attempts to address the still-current significance of the region in geography and breaks down old dichotomous conceptualizations of “region” as either territorial or relational, in order to unite the conceptualizations. The authors point out that regions are constructed according to various disciplinary perspectives on different scales (sub-national, national, supranational, cross-border). They contextualize regions in connection with globalization, border regions, agency/advocacy, social construction, and historical processes of development and change.
