European border construction

Miniature
Summary

Since the spatial turn, space has most often been conceived from a relational standpoint, and the border concept has been abandoned as it did not seem compatible with this relation-oriented perspective on space. However, borders still often play an important role for the empirical studies of spaces. Therefore, the authors conceptualise borders in a manner likely to be integrated to a relation-based spatial theory. They conceive the border itself as a link between at least two spaces which it brings together. While it is true that specific differentiations are significant to the construction of spaces, borders can bring a spatial dimension to this difference and create territorial spatial constitutions. The authors demonstrate this mechanism using the empirical example of border constructions on the Balkan route during the migration movements of 2015.