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The last two decades have seen an increase in the number and intensity of shocks and crises. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 and the COVID-19 crisis of 2020/2021 have led to economic recessions. During the COVID-19 crisis, national borders and the impact of crises in border regions were often the subject of political debate and media coverage. Border-regional resilience has only been discussed in the academic discourse for the last few years. This article uses a diverse set of socio-economic indicators to examine the (border)–regional resilience of German regions in the wake of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. A distinction is made between border and non-border regions, urban and rural regions, and regions in the old and new German federal states. The results show, first, that the COVID-19 crisis had a stronger socio-economic impact than the financial crisis. Second, border regions tended to be more affected by the financial crisis than non-border regions. Surprisingly, this was not the case for the border-specific COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, the study shows that it is not so much the border location that determines regional resilience, but rather the socio-economic level, the degree of urbanization and the associated embeddedness in global networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ladakh region of India has been recently in the limelight due to border tension between India and China. The differing perception of borders and vague demarcation has led to contested claims in the Ladakh region. India and China have fought a war (1962) and are presently engaged in intermittent skirmishes in the Ladakh region. Following the conflict, the borderland of Ladakh witnessed increased troop presence in the area, which created problems for the Changpas, a semi-nomadic community of Ladakh that is primarily dependent on available natural resources for survival. The political tension between India and China leads to the militarisation of the region and restrictions on the movement of Changpas near the borders. These have unintended consequences for the borderland community. The areas with counter-territorial claims include pastures for grazing the herds, and due to the dispute, the Changpas cannot access them. As a result, Changpas suffer economically and socially. While there is much discussion on the India and China border dispute in the region and beyond, the Changpas hardly get required attention in the mainstream debate. Drawing from Border Studies, this article argues that Changpas are an alienated borderland community. Changpas, because of their semi-nomadic lifestyles, lack an agency to highlight their plight or to articulate demands. This article underlines the ordeals of Changpas to present how border communities in conflict zones are compelled to adopt a life forced by circumstances and controlled by external actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the necessity of the Armed Forces metamodel was analyzed on the criteria of the centralization of the sovereign state and the formation of a democratic civil society. The security of the border against the background of army building, including having a sacred meaning, has been proven with references and analyzed from a scientific-philosophical as well as a theological point of view. İn the article, the values of the border model in terms of an abstract approach, the importance of the democratic state and society in the prism of the multi-centered concept are elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary revisits the main elements of Paasi's ideas about the institutionalisation of regions and bounded spaces. It reviews his analysis of the identity of a region and the regional identity of its residents (as addressed in his TESG 2002 article). Next, it discusses how his work on bounded spaces contributed to the reinvention of border studies in political geography and how his innovative conceptual work grounded in and written from Finland, was inspiring for a whole generation of researchers working at the margins of the Anglo‐American academic world. Finally, it reasserts the enduring value of his heuristic framework in a time where the complexity of social spatialisation and of spatial socialisation has greatly increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents materials from the Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland dating from the beginning of the 20th century, deposited in the Department of Contextual Documentation of Cultures (archive) of the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. Their brief review and analysis of the dialectal lexemes show the value of historical materials collected by nonprofessional linguists for research on historical multilingualism and the current sociolinguistic situation at language borders, especially on the problems of mixed, transitional, and mixed-transitional dialects. The analysis of dialect lexemes demonstrates that the manuscripts also preserved forms which are not registered in the known lexicographic sources and dialect atlases. Therefore, these materials represent a novelty in studies on the language interference at the borderland in the field of Belarusian and Polish dialects, as well as in studies of border dialects as a language system of the micro-area of the Polish-Belarusian--Lithuanian borderland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Omran for Social Sciences is the property of Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper discusses the secrecies of border spirits within 20th century Finnish belief narratives. The aim is to explore how and in which contexts the imaginary aspects of border spirit narratives link to the idea of the "power of storytelling". The following study touches on areas such as the suspension of the fantasy and sociopolitical aspects within the narratives. The folklore materials focus mainly on the Finnish heartland and partly on the national borders. Especially, narrative research methods were used to analyse what is heard and seen of the border spirits and what contexts these narratives involve. Moreover, the results touch on the dynamics of belief narratives without limiting them to the territorial aspects of borders. Hence, the study also explores interpretative bridges between folklore and border studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity politics has garnered much criticism and debate over its efficacy as a tool for political organizing and mobilization amongst marginalized communities. A central critique of identity politics cautions that its essentializing tendencies can reify or reduce constructions of identity as an individualized category (Gimenez 2006, Carroll 2017, McGowan 2020). Marie Moran has similarly remarked on the ways in which neoliberalism has undermined identity in such a way that it, "has exaggerated the personal sense of identity over the social to such an extent that we have now reached a point in time where identity operates primarily to facilitate consumption on a global scale" (2018, 40). In doing so, identity as a politic is oftentimes limiting and not necessarily utilized in ways that echo shared histories amongst a group of people but instead connotes a false sense of representation and individual consumption under larger capitalist logics. This article ultimately finds itself negotiating the question of identity politics and grappling with both its efficacy for political mobilizations as well as centering debates inherent to it. Thinking about this conundrum within contemporary political organizing prompts turning to Cathy Cohen's question, "When and how are stable collective identities necessary for social action and social change?" (Cohen 1997, 439). I direct this inquiry towards the collective advocacy of Justicia Fronteriza, an El Paso, Texas based, progressive, political action committee. I argue that the group's utility of identity politics in their organizing work is emblematic of the ways in which marginalized communities, specifically, racialized communities along the US-México border, both make use of and continue to challenge limitations inherent within identity politics as a tool for political mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arte, Individuo y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents a synthesis of the sociolinguistic situation of the Polish-Belarusian borderland, on the territory of the former parish of Usnar. Field studies were conducted systematically in the years 2015-2020 and irregularly in the years 2021-2023. The author employed an original method based on using museum fund. The paper focuses on the influence of the border (the state one, as well as other types of borders) on the sociolinguistic situation of the microarea. Particularly noteworthy is the persistent division into settlements of the petty nobility and villages, along with the corresponding language codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border regions have often been analyzed regarding cohesion and convergence. However, their development in times of crisis is a relatively new field of interest. This study combines convergence and resilience measurement and explores how both concepts relate. The empirical operationalization is a time series based on GDP trends since the financial crisis for all European border and non-border regions. Firstly, results show that border regions have a lower resistance than non-border regions, but they show a higher recoverability. This finding calls for policy reflections on how to improve short-term resistance in border regions. Secondly, the overall convergence trends are more positive in border regions than in non-border regions. This finding reflects a general catching-up process due to border liberalization and cohesion policy. Thirdly, the more convergent the national state, the more resilient its border regions tend to be. Finally, this study shows that border regions must be seen as territorial objects with high potential and often a strength, but short-term vulnerability is highly relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author aims to briefly analyze the objective reasons for the growing interest in studying political, administrative, and cultural borders (border studies), which has over the past 30 years turned into an important interdisciplinary field, and the progress of their theory. Diverse approaches to study of borders can be divided into two large types: pragmatic and critical. The traditional pragmatic approach, based on analysis of border functions and mainly using historical cartographic, comparative typological, and statistical methods, has been significantly developed due to attention towards actors, in addition to the state: local authorities, business, NGOs, etc. The information base has been significantly enriched, and understanding of the importance of cross-border cooperation and border-related social practices has increased. The critical approach is aimed at studying the cognitive–symbolic functions of borders associated with their perception, representation as sign systems, the politics of memory, and discourse and narratives. Today, pragmatic and critical approaches are integrated, including in the practice–policy–perception model. To a large extent, influenced by geopolitical shifts in recent years, seven key topics have emerged in the growing flow of border studies, including analysis of the role of borders as a tool for controlling international migration and regulating other social processes, the widespread activation of the barrier function of borders at different levels, redistribution of functions between them, etc. One direction for further development of border research is noted: study of the relationship and isomorphism of borders at different levels. According to the author, isomorphism means the similarity of the functions of formal (state, administrative) borders at all levels, although in different ways and in different proportions. The reason for this similarity is that borders act as a means of adapting space to the redistribution of political influence between different actors and centers, changes in the geopolitical position, and territorial distribution of the population and the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as necropower discriminates between those who can and those who cannot live, post-mortem circumstances are explicitly affected by an irrefutable gentrification of memory and grievability. Drawing on the political dimension of mourning and on the concept of slow death, this paper proposes a necropolitical reading of All They Will Call You (2017), where Tim Z. Hernandez revisits the 1948 plane crash that killed 28 Mexican deportees at Los Gatos (California) and the subsequent oblivion that prevented their memorialisation except for a mass grave containing their remains and a protest song ("Deportees") composed by Woody Guthrie. My analysis focuses on Hernandez's attempts at dismantling the tropes of criminality and expendability that Latino immigrants are associated with as a result of their racialised vulnerability, which are distinctively aggravated in border contexts. Excavating in the background stories of these deportees seems to me an ironic contestation to the failed forensic work that left them unnamed and unritualised for seven decades. And, at the same time, I contend that, in line with the work of many activists and artists in the US–Mexico border, Hernandez mobilises solidarity while transforming our perception of migrant bare lives into one of migrant agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the memoryscapes of Cieszyn Silesia, Orawa and Spisz in a context of the border conflicts of the twentieth century. The regions located on the current Czech-Polish and Slovak-Polish border have lived through paralleled histories of the border demarcation after WWI, which was unprecedented there. In both cases the national minorities were left behind the border, outside of their home states. Their stories and memories are, however, not being researched together. This paper contrasts the patterns of memory production related to the border shifts in the landscape in both regions. Emphasis is placed on the memory sites, their narratives and memory activism related to the conflicting past. The results show that the main axes of both memory debates are contrasting. While the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was most shaped by the short war in 1919, the lesser-known dispute over Orawa and Spisz was marked by numerous smaller incidents, assimilation efforts and a layer of post WWII violence. This has important consequences for the memory production. The other important differentiating factor is the scope of memory activism inside of the national minority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of an independent Ukrainian state in 1991 posed some important historiographical questions to scholars. Starting with the collapse of the Ussr, the nation-building effort immediately involved history as well: it was necessary to separate the history of Ukraine from that common to the rest of the Soviet space and, at the same time, deal with national history. In the Ukrainian case, the attempt to employ the model of national histories – on which Western contemporary historiography was formed between the 19th and 20th centuries – was problematic, since the different territories of Ukraine came from multiple historical experiences. The essay analyzes the attempts made by historians to find an interpretative paradigm that would account for the complexity of Ukrainian history. Teleological vision, essentialism, ethnocentricity, ethnic exclusivity, linearity and absolutization of the historical continuity are the greatest risks that historiography has run into. Conversely, the regional approach and the inclusion of Ukrainian history in global history, seem to open new research perspectives and provide new interpretative keys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article considers the related projects of child as method and childism, as two critical childhood projects attempting to re‐engage childhood studies with wider geopolitical arenas. Firstly, each model's origins in their respective subject discipline are discussed, to, secondly, highlight how this shapes convergences as well as divergences in political project. Third, there is consideration of what is at stake in key conceptual tensions identified. It is suggested that the differences of address and contrasting (disciplinary and conceptual) sites of intervention work in complementary ways to strengthen the broader project of embedding childhood studies within sociopolitical theories and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakültesi Dergisi DTCF Dergisi is the property of Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakultesi (DTCF Dergisi) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ever-changing, always porous Mexican-U.S. border region has long been the site of intense and productive cultural and political exchange of every kind, particularly with respect to music. Today, mariachi performance in the United States provides a counternarrative to the discourse of anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican hate language deployed by Donald Trump and his supporters. Accordingly, the rapid spread of interest and proficiency in the production of mariachi music performed by Latino and non-Latino students in schools across the Southwest and as far northeast as New England can be thought of as a kind of social movement. Two case studies—the first a program developed by a Mexican American instructor working predominantly with Mexican American children in an overwhelmingly Anglo town in Connecticut and the second serving an ethnically diverse elementary school in Central New York State where neither the instructor nor more than a few current students are Latino—suggest the potential of this movement for breaking down ethnic and racial barriers. El siempre cambiante y siempre poroso espacio de la frontera México-Estados Unidos ha sido, durante mucho tiempo, el sitio de un intenso y productivo intercambio cultural y político de todo tipo, particularmente con respecto a la música. Hoy en día, las actuaciones de mariachis en los Estados Unidos nos brindan una contranarrativa al discurso del lenguaje de odio antiinmigrante y antimexicano desplegado por Donald Trump y sus partidarios. En consecuencia, la rápida difusión del interés y la creciente competencia en la producción de música de mariachi interpretada por estudiantes latinos y no latinos en escuelas de todo el suroeste de los Estados Unidos y tan al noreste como Nueva Inglaterra puede considerarse una especie de movimiento social. Dos estudios de caso, el primero un programa desarrollado por un instructor mexicoamericano que trabaja predominantemente con niños mexicoamericanos en una ciudad abrumadoramente anglosajona en Connecticut, y el segundo involucrando a una escuela primaria étnicamente diversa en el centro del estado de Nueva York, donde ni el instructor ni la mayor parte de los estudiantes actuales son latinos, sugieren el potencial de este movimiento para romper barreras étnicas y raciales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of the Soviet–Yugoslav conflict and the tense Hungarian–Yugoslav relationship had a fundamental impact on the lives of those living near the Hungarian–Yugoslav border. The aim of this study is to examine how the conflict affected the daily lives of those living near the border, examining the area from today’s Slovenian–Austrian–Hungarian border triangle to the confluence of the Drava and Mura rivers. The article sheds light on the various forms of border incidents, it shows how the conflict made the daily lives of those living near the border difficult, and it briefly illustrates the spying activities. The conclusions are primarily based on the papers of the National Border Guard Command kept in the National Archives of Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad is the property of El Colegio de Michoacan, A.C. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article documents and evaluates Carlos Morton's Trapped in Amber/Zaklęte w jantarze, a Chicanx teatro play commissioned and produced by the International Border Studies Center (IBSC) at the University of Gdańsk in 2022. It is divided into two sections. The first sketches the origins of the Chicanx Theater, introduces Morton, and explains IBSC's goals. It also documents the production process and, drawing on debates in American studies and border studies, offers an interpretetation of the piece and controversy it precipitated. Using social science method of survey reports section two analyses then the viewers' responses to the staged workshop production. The article mixes documentary style with analysis and data study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical focus of this paper is on the interethnic communication along the Russian–Chinese border. Language contact in this area has a long history; in the 18th century, it resulted in a contact variety, the so-called Kyakhta language, or Russian–Chinese pidgin, which fell into disuse after a century. The contact has resumed recently, and we are currently witnessing the emergence of new contact varieties in real time in the area. The reported research aimed to study language contact as a social practice and gain access not only to linguistic facts but also to speakers' perceptions of them revealed in interviews and conversations. The discussion is based on field data collected between 2008 and 2010 in Zabaykalskiy Krai in Russia and in the province of Inner Mongolia in China. The study reveals different non-standard varieties emerging through interethnic interactions in the border area, and uncovers linguistic features that were typical of Russian–Chinese pidgin (and impossible in Standard Russian) being 'reinvented' now both in the Chinese ethnolect of Russian and in some extreme forms of foreigner talk employed by Russian speakers professionally involved in regular communication with Chinese speakers. The paper stresses the role of the professionalization of communication for pidgin development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US‐Mexico borderlands used to host a wide range of natural and social environments, many of which have become irreversibly altered by the structures built to reinforce geopolitical boundaries. To rethink the form and purpose of these borderlands is a political objective of utmost importance, yet most future thinking about the border has remained restricted to imagining new versions of border walls euphemistically rebranded as "sustainable" alternatives. This essay analyzes the limitations of popular design projects that effectively greenwash the securitization imperative of the nation‐state. It then turns to a lesser‐known speculative project that reimagines the borderlands from the perspective of underground tunnels through a multimedia model. The essay draws on the insights of critical environmental media studies to illustrate the affordances of specific media forms for articulating future worlds with a greater focus on care. This analysis proposes ruinous speculation as an affirmative form of future thinking that orients toward infrastructures that enable human and nonhuman worlds to thrive and away from infrastructures that reinforce the violent hierarchies of the geopolitical divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at investigating two narratives about historical moments of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural crisis represented through literary descriptions of epidemics. I will focus on the subtext of the plague in one of the foundational texts of the Western canon, the Decameron, paying particular attention to the metaphor of contagion as a phenomenon allowing for the renegotiations of biopolitical borders in the Florentine society of the Trecento. Building on images of contamination as vehicles of contagion, I am interested in interrogating the roots and scope of the reconsideration of traditional norms and accustomed practices that Giovanni Bocaccio frames in biopolitical terms in the description of the 1348 plague in Florence. I will also take into consideration Philip Roth's 2010 novel Nemesis, which is set against the background of the polio outbreak in Newark in 1944. Nemesis depicts a prophylactic measure identical to the country retreat that famously frames the main narrative in the Decameron, yet in Roth's novel it represents a failed attempt to escape contagion. Another narrative trait that Nemesis shares with the Decameron is the context: a society on the verge of essential transformations in the political, cultural, and economic realm. Indeed, mercantile Florence of the Trecento was on the brink of a new era, the Early Modern period, likewise 1944 USA was involved in WWII, fighting for the geopolitical supremacy over a new world order (the Cold War) and shaping a new socio-economic model: neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a 'biographical' approach to national boundaries, this paper traces the history of the China‐Myanmar border—its formations, disappearances and rematerializations. In doing so, it identifies three alternative imaginaries that have characterized and shaped these borderlands throughout the past one and a half century. These imaginaries—terrain, technology and trade—sketch out some of the ways in which borderlands are seen, perceived and therefore acted upon by state authorities and powerful outsiders. They are central to how the boundary was demarcated, and to how it is managed today. These imaginaries, then, are reflected into specific practices—and thus have direct impact on everyday life along the China‐Myanmar border. Drawing on both archival and long‐term ethnographic research, this paper thus sheds light on the embedded processes of anticipation that underscore how the borderlands are envisioned today in dominant narratives centred around Belt and Road promises and fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International boundaries have been mainly considered as barriers in literature on the 'cross-border regional innovation system' (CBRIS), in line with their traditional understanding. In this paper, we underline that such a perspective presents limits, and argue in favour of an understanding of multidimensional borders that are subject to dynamic change over time. By mobilizing conceptualizations from the field of border studies, we examine the various functions of borders to explain the innovation-led development potential in cross-border regions. In this view, international borders can function as an interface, a marker of difference or a symbol, rather than a mere barrier that separates regions. Further, we suggest that these border functions are key factors in explaining the 'fluctuating' integration dynamics of regional innovation systems across the border. Mobilizing evidence from two case studies in European and North American contexts, the paper sheds light on the border as a potential resource for innovation and discusses implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates US immigration law as a spatial system whose application results in geographic confusion. I take the case of Barton v. Barr as a vivid example of this structure, where the petitioner was found to be simultaneously "outside" and "inside" the country under a legal perspective. Beginning from this paradox, I focus on the law's ability to produce extraterritorial folds within the country's interior, thus confining aliens into spaces that escape constitutional rules. Through an engagement with legal geography and Niklas Luhmann's work, I conceptualize immigration law as a system which lives off the repetition of operations that distributes rights and privileges to aliens by assigning a degree of foreignness to their location. The resulting paradox must not be confused for a mistake or a flawed logic. Instead, it constitutes the dispositive that allows the law to produce its effects and draw its territorial enclaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Space & Society / Tér és Társadalom is the property of Centre for Economic & Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 1958, the last train transporting war reparations left Parikkala, a southeast border town in Finland, for the Soviet Union. This marked the end of any normal cross-border traffic. Today, Parikkala is negotiating to change its border-crossing status from temporary to international. This article explores local and regional newspaper coverage of Parikkala's effort to get its new cross-border policy approved. Utilizing frame analysis, trauma studies, and border studies, the article aims to answer the following questions: Do any distinguishable frames emerge from the news texts? What is the message they convey? What kind of social, cultural, and historical trauma and its processes are involved in locally situated border narratives, and what is their place in border politics, information production, and distribution? Parikkala's situation raises complex questions about the role of the nation-state(s) in bordering practices and control as well as local border peoples' chances to influence bordering processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 3 decades, while ethnography has arguably become a popular and legitimate method to study geopolitics among geographers, anthropologists have increasingly turned towards geopolitics as a popular subject to investigate former and emergent empires as everyday phenomena. Yet, their efforts remain rather disjointed. Written by an anthropologist, this review essay aims to put these rather disjointed efforts into a programmatic conversation and think about how one might (re)calibrate geopolitics as an ethnographic object and agenda. To that end, the essay first takes stock of the existing ethnographic knowledge of geopolitics through a review of selected works by geographers and anthropologists. Then, to help students and scholars of geopolitics from within these cognate disciplines move this engagement forward, the essay concludes by proposing the 'cultures of geopolitical expertise' as a productive avenue to recalibrate geopolitics as an ethnographic object and agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with Gibraltar as a hybrid borderland in M. G. Sanchez's autobiographical works. Sanchez grew up in Gibraltar during the border closure in the 1970s and now lives in England, having traveled widely and lived for some years in Japan and India. A British Gibraltarian writer and in some ways a "nomadic subject," Sanchez keeps close ties with Gibraltar, where he has family and friends, visiting regularly and taking an active part in Gibraltarian cultural and political debates. In his work, Sanchez explores the palimpsestic quality of Gibraltarian culture, registering the changes in his birthplace while also attending to the traces of the past, the memories and the residue of a colonial culture. In particular, Sanchez sees Gibraltar as a borderscape and a culturally hybrid place preoccupied with borderlines. This article argues that with his approach to writing Gibraltar, Sanchez makes an important contribution to Gibraltar's current negotiation of identity in times of Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to explore cross-border and sedentary workers' job satisfaction, analyzing the role played by employability dimensions (occupational expertise, anticipation/optimization and personal flexibility), a job resource (autonomy) and job demands (job insecurity and toxic leadership), using the job demands–resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework. Moreover, this study tried to detect possible discrepancies between the two subsamples. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a sample of 250 employees, 40% of whom were frontier workers. Data were collected with a self-report questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS 25. A hierarchical regression analysis and t-test for independent samples were performed. Findings: The findings evidenced differences between the two subsamples concerning the job satisfaction predictors. Specifically, for cross-border workers, optimization/anticipation appeared significantly positively related to job satisfaction. For sedentary workers, toxic leadership and job insecurity were significantly negatively related to job satisfaction. Autonomy was positively related to the outcome for both samples. Furthermore, cross-border workers reported a higher level of optimization/anticipation, personal flexibility and job satisfaction than sedentary workers. Originality/value: This paper contributed to fill a gap currently present in the literature on the cross-border population, with a specific focus on job satisfaction. This study confirmed the existence of peculiar working dynamics for cross-border workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a theoretical essay inspired by the crisis of the central concept of American identity - the idea of the frontier - and by the belief that in a crisis lies a chance for a new beginning. Thus, the goal is to propose an image/narrative model of alternative universal borderlands. To do this I first briefly explain the notion of the frontier in American imagination. I then evoke archaic imagination and outline how the frontier and its epistemology first came into being and crossed the ocean ushering in a type of modern subjectivity. I then contrast this with local cartographies that had existed in the Americas before European contact. Together the two cartographies engender the transfrontera space. This both actual and mytho-poetic space engenders "contact subjects" and is explained by examples from works by Creole and Chicano theater artists. A third spatial imagining is then proposed after Native American storytelling and theater methodology. Circles upon circles upon circles is an epistemic/procedural model of how the world is (re)made through stories in the Native worldview. The essay is subtly experimental: as it charts multiple spatio-subjective models it hopes to work on the imagination of the reader, to build imaginary cognitive maps and, perhaps, effect a slight shift in consciousness, taking the reader to the borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centers the aesthetic re-staging of Santa Barbara after the devastating earthquake of 1925 in order to interrogate how the city mythologized a white heteronormative patriarchal version of California's history that persists today. Critiquing Santa Barbara's Courthouse Mural Room through a queer, postcolonial lens, I argue that contemporary wedding ceremonies held in the Mural Room can destabilize fixed borders between California's fantasy heritage past and present. Indexing sexuality as Western imperial history through the Courthouse Murals enables my analysis of Mural Room artist Daniel Sayre Groesbeck's "scenarios of encounter" between the Spanish and indigenous Chumash in 1542. I draw on scholar Valerie Traub's geo-spatial construction of race and sexuality in the Renaissance to explore Groesbeck's murals as erotic signifiers of white fantasy projections of a socially and erotically "stable" Santa Barbara onto indigenous bodies. Traub's reading of early modern European cartography as visual evidence of the elision of indigenous genders and sexual identity in the "New World" informs my critical intervention in Santa Barbara's contemporary marriages and material production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Sociology of Education & Socialization / Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung & Sozialisation is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Against the backdrop of global trends, the main directions, methodological approaches, and the most striking research results in the field of geopolitics and political geography in 2011–2021 are considered. Political geography is being widely integrated with neighboring scientific fields. Russian political geography and, to a much lesser extent, geopolitics are based on a wide range of concepts known in world literature. Researchers in these areas are promptly responding to current foreign policy and other challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. Particular attention is paid to geopolitical publications about the pivot of Russian foreign policy to the East and the Greater Eurasia concept. Since the 2010s, the theory of critical geopolitics has become more widespread in Russia, operating not with speculative reasoning, but with large amounts of information analyzed by modern quantitative methods. The flow of studies of state borders and frontiers is growing. In such publications, a large place belongs to the works devoted to the growing gaps in the pace and directions of economic development between former USSR countries. Shifts in the topics of border studies are associated with a deeper study of security issues. Many works reflect the desire to preserve the positive experience of cross-border cooperation between Russian and European partners in a deteriorating environment. Most of Russian publications on regionalization at different spatial levels involve the Baltic Basin. The body of research on territorial conflicts and separatism is growing. Russian geographers and other scholars have made a significant contribution to studying the problems of uncontrolled territories and unrecognized (partially recognized) post-Soviet states. Conflicts around them are considered in relation to their internal differences, complex composition, intricacies of formation and identity of the population, influence on neighboring regions and in historical retrospect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Humanidades (1130-5029) is the property of Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Centro Asociado de Sevilla and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues that four paradigm shifts have unfolded in boundary and border studies from the delimitation of the Durand line as the Indo-Afghan frontier. Three subsequent paradigm shifts relate to cooperative management of the Canada–US border after WW1, cultural hybridization across the Mexico-US border since the 1980s, and current networked assemblage of EU's external border. The paradigm-shift framework connects conceptual advancements in boundary making and border studies with the geopolitical prominence of given borders. The article claims that scholars draw ideal types from the paradigmatic borders of their times, either by accepting or contesting the values anchored in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borders on the Indian subcontinent are notable for the distinct lack of cross-border cooperation. Among the most intractable border dyads in the world, it is as volatile as it is securitised. Instead of facilitating trade and movement, both sides pursue a border policy to create a strong barrier. The puzzle that informs this article is the extent to which the bilateral border relationship is characterised by political animosity, despite a shared history and culture that the conventional approach to security communities would posit as enablers of coordination and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the work of conservation photographer Krista Schlyer, who, between 2009 and 2019, documented the impact of the U.S.-Mexico border wall on people, wildlife, and the land. While scholars in the environmental humanities have previously studied literary and artistic representations of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, this is one of the first analyses of how conservation photography portrays biodiversity in the borderlands. I examine three of Schlyer's works - Continental Divide (2012), a collection of photography; Embattled Borderlands (2016), a digital story map; and Ay Mariposa (2019), a documentary film - in the historical context of the controversy over the environmental consequences of border wall construction. As a whole, Schlyer's work depicts the border wall as a threat to both biological and cultural diversity. In her later works, she disrupts the human-animal and nature-culture binaries through visual rhetoric and narrative structures that weave together the stories of humans and wildlife impacted by the border wall. These representations of the borderlands employ ecological narratives that both disrupt binary logics, and illuminate connections across species and nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can we move fan participation and the co-creation of storylines outside the sphere of the culture industry to better understand their potential functions for constructing individual subjectivity and empowering social change? With an attention to experiences of migration, exile and detainment, and through close readings of documentary The Wolfpack (2015), HBO's bilingual horror comedy series Los Espookys (2019) and Manuel Puig's novel, El beso de la mujer araña (1976), I argue that it is necessary to move beyond a speaker–audience dialectic, as in traditional storytelling, and towards transmediated activity, where static or linear temporal and spatial orders are both reproduced and subverted. By converging performance studies with border studies and phenomenology, this contribution counters assumptions about submissive viewership while unpacking the political utility of entertainment. Ultimately, 'Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel' challenges what it means to be a 'storyteller' and what constitutes a useful 'story' in the context of political advocacy and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Brian K. Vaughan's and Marcos Martin's science fiction comics series, Barrier (2015–18), is a five-issue story set on the US-Mexican border and contributing to the continuing public discourse surrounding undocumented immigration in the United States. First appearing as a webcomic on Vaughan's Panel Syndicate website and later published in comic book form by Image Comics, Barrier's story of two characters, a Honduran refugee and a Texas rancher who struggle with and eventually come to rely on one another, depicts linguistic and cultural boundaries and borders, as well as the frustration and hostility they can generate. As comics, Barrier's very medium works by means of crossing boundaries and borders: binaries (like word and image) are complicated if not subverted, and the borders of each panel remain closed yet open for sequential art to function as a medium for narrative. Moreover, as a bilingual webcomic crossing into print yet all but encouraging an ongoing virtual engagement through web searches and Google Translate, the series demands further creative energy from the reader in reimaging various barriers, borders and positions of liminality. Although stories that represent various kinds of borders (social, cultural and geopolitical) and various ways of establishing, challenging, crossing or deconstructing borders are frequently found in graphic narratives, Barrier demonstrates the south-west border to be one the medium of comics is especially suited to explore. Barrier is a work that takes as its very subject, to borrow a phrase from Ramzi Fawaz, 'spatially drawn analogies' in order to engage graphically matters of genuine political import. In doing so, Barrier not only reflects obliquely on its own form, but also engages creatively with one of the most politically and culturally contested spaces in contemporary US culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the role of border in theories and policies of Latin American regionalism. It shows that neither the explanatory 'waves' of regionalism in studies of International Relations nor Latin American regional integration policies have addressed borders seriously. Accordingly, it argues for a view of border regions as key political and epistemological places for understanding spatial relations between state, region, and globalization. Though some academic and political initiatives have started to unpack the Cartesian reading of border in Latin American regionalism, the article argues that further steps can be taken by treating borders (peripheries) as epistemological centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista del CESLA is the property of University of Warsaw and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ways of studying illegal behaviour are important in the context of Indonesia, a country well known for its failure to deal adequately with the corruption that permeates every level of society. They are perhaps even more salient at the peripheries of the nation-state where government agencies struggle to contain the illegal practices that necessarily emerge where nation-states meet. This article reflects on our experiences conducting a decade-long study of an Indonesian borderlands that, while not initially focused on illegality, came – as a consequence of its ubiquity – to include it as a key construct. This experience led us to grapple not only with methodological questions about how to research illegality but also with assumptions about what illegality is and does. We argue that the only way to recognise and account for the quotidian nature of many kinds of illegal activity in the borderlands is to eschew an ethnography of exception in favour of an ethnography of the mundane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]