The Emerging Politics of Border Management: Policy and Research Considerations.

This paper will explore some of the general political and economic dynamics of contemporary border management in North America from a comparative perspective. It operates both in terms of some basic policy analysis but mostly offers commentary on theoretical and research approaches to these issues. The paper will take as its framework the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent actions by some national governments around the world to reinforce their borders (re‐territorialization). In this regard, the paper pays particular attention to the issue of securitization of borders and mobility, both at the state's frontiers and within it, as a method of counter‐terrorism policy, migration control, and for other exclusionary ends. The securitization process will be traced through several key examples, particularly in North America and Europe. While noting the emergence of new forms of border management such as cross‐border policing in the European Union and bi‐lateral border management in North America, it will also acknowledge the persistence of more traditional border control efforts in many parts of the globe—particularly in the developing world—which are generally less technologically‐driven and often are much less strict as they deal with different security concerns. As such, the paper argues the emerging politics of border management remains differentiated and complex. The paper surveys several of the more interesting conceptual attempts to describe what is going on. To add my voice to this dialogue, I suggest that in order to have more meaningful and robust analysis of these developments, border scholarship needs to move beyond the de/re‐territorializing duality and consider a hierarchy of border security threats. Given the complexity of this picture, the paper ends by calling for a reinvigorated interdisciplinary approach to research on border security. I also suggest we need to think in terms of "risk management" rather than traditional "border security" as such. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]