Presentation 1

“Revisiting Borders: New Ideas in Border Studies”

Dr. Fuminori Kawakubo

Associate Professor Department of Law Chuo Gakuin University


Abstract

Borders are generally understood as lines and edges. They also signify the spatial separation or division between distinct entities. However, such recognitions have increasingly become obsolete in understanding how borders function in the immensely complicated world we live today. From this perspective, we face the risk of an increasing disconnection between the complexity of the world on the one hand, and the lack of imagination with which borders and bordering practices continued to be dealt with on the other. Therefore, we need to revisit borders in terms of the constantly changing political and social contexts to comprehend their “undetermined” nature in time and space. Some new approaches to Border Studies have offered new understandings of border spaces as processes. Borders are constantly being imagined and reimagined. What needs to be examined is the following: By whom, how, and why are borders created? Whose interests and motivations are served? How may we conceptualize the multifaceted and ever-changing nature of borders? These questions lead to the pursuit of a critical understanding of “the socially constructed nature of borders.”