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TOWARDS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF BORDERS:
BEYOND TERRITORIAL BORDERS, FROM
BORDERS TO BORDERING
Universität der Bundeswehr München
e-mail: bastian.sendhardt@gmx.de
Bastian Sendhardt
This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on borders by addressing rather theoretical
aspects concerning the ‘nature’ or the ‘character’ of borders. More precisely, this paper
departs from the almost banally sounding question “What is a border”?
Intuitively, when thinking of borders, one would probably think of state borders or
boundaries as political geographers call them, meaning “the lines that enclose state
territories” (Newman 2003: 123). Following this understanding, borders have a rather closed
character and their main function is to separate different entities, e.g. states. More precisely, in
this case, one should speak of territorial borders. However, territorial borders (such as state
borders) are but one type of border. Other types include, for example, functional or symbolic
borders (Stetter 2005b; Ferrer-Gallardo 2008). “Functional borders separate different
functional systems, such as politics, law, science, economy, sports, love or the health system”
(Stetter 2005b: 5), whereas symbolic borders “constitute collective identities and allow to
differentiate between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Through the marking of symbolic borders[,]
forms of political, ethnic or religious identity emerge” (Bonacker as cited in Stetter 2005b: 5;
see also Stetter 2005a: 335; Paasi 1996: 12–5). These three types of borders, however, do not
necessarily coincide. Therefore, territorial borders are in a “complex relationship with crosscutting
functional (and, at times symbolic) borders” (Stetter 2005b: 5). In a nutshell, instead
of clear-cut lines separating different (state) territories, borders have a rather ‘fuzzy’ character
which is a consequence of the interplay of the three aforementioned border types (see
Christiansen et al. 2000).
From this perspective, it seems more promising to shift the focus from an understanding of
borders as fixed and static entities to an analytical concept that emphasizes the ‘process-like’
and socially constructed character of borders, as for instance, the concept of debordering and
rebordering. Within this concept, debordering “is understood as an increasing permeability of
[territorial] borders together with a decreasing ability of states to shut themselves off” from all
kinds of cross-border activities (Albert and Brock 2000: 20). In other words, debordering
refers to the transgression of territorial borders, for example by functional systems (e.g.
economy) or symbolic systems (e.g. cross-border identities) and can be described as “the
dissolution of the territorial congruence of state, economy and society” (Brock 2004: 89). The
affected political entities – mostly states but also other political entities such as the European
Union – have to react to these challenges posed by debordering processes. One state
“response to this increasing permeability of borders” is the “adaptation of statehood” and the
adjustment of policies to debordering processes. Adaptation can result “in the emergence of
new political spaces that transcend territorially defined spaces [i.e. state borders] […], e.g. in