The article covers several themes and concepts that have been important in the development of border studies over the last few years. In doing so, it addresses emerging research perspectives of a nature to bring about a conceptual change in the viewpoint of human geography. Based on the existing literature, the authors emphasise that current work on border is looking at the reasons underlying border production through the daily practices of the populations, and by understanding borders as institutions, processes and symbols all at the same time. Particular attention is paid to the process of reconfiguring state borders in terms of territorial control, security and sovereignty as well as the interrelations between the spheres of daily life, power and the construction of social borders.
There is an extensive growth in the number of international borders. At the same time goods, people and ideas are more mobile than ever before. A Companion to Border Studies brings together viewpoints on these developments by preeminent border scholars from the fields of anthropology, geography, history, development studies, political science and sociology. Case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, are presented. A comprehensive analysis of key characteristics of frontiers and borders, including topics such as security, cross-border cooperation, and controls, population displacements and migration, transnationalism and hybridity is provided.
In “Contribution B/Ordering in the Greater Region. Mobilities – Borders – Identities” Christian WILLE questions the quadrangle inhabitants' sense of belonging as predicted in the model for regional-political cooperation in the Greater Region. The author examines “which orders of self/other are apparent in the self image of the inhabitants of the Greater Region and to what extent they suggest a cross-border identity” (p. 52) and elaborates on three central features of identity constructions.
