Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

BLURRED BORDERS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATIONS95FLUID BOUNDARIES: TOWARD A PEOPLE-CENTERED APPROACHTO BORDER ISSUES IN NORTH SULAWESIDjorina VelascoIntroductionThe border area where the national territories ofIndonesia and the Philippines blend into one another isa border that cannot be seen. Like any maritime border,it is a border continually washed away by unboundstreams of water and shifting ocean floors. It is a bordernot realized by physical markers—not a fence or wall,nor a river or a mountain range—but by the acts ofborder agents who patrol the waters that connect, ratherthan transect, insular Southeast Asia and its people.Indeed, the exact border coordinates have not beenofficially defined nor bilaterally agreed upon. It is, inevery sense of the word, a fluid border.This fluidity is an inescapable reality that conditionssocial processes that come to the fore in borderzones,especially the construction of identities. Drawing on fieldexperiences on the Indonesian side of the Indonesian-Philippine border in North Sulawesi, this paperexplores the issues and problems of identity formationin the borderzone. This is its first aim. A second aim isto develop a more people-centered perspective of “reallife” issues in borderzones that addresses some of theinadequacies of predominant approaches.My discussion is divided into four parts. The first sectionreviews common perspectives on borders and picks upsome theoretical threads to frame the discussion. Thesecond section explores the history and geography ofmy research area, while the third section problematizesthe social construction of identities in the borderzone.A concluding section presents proposals towards amore people-centered approach in understanding andaddressing border issues.Problems and possibilitiesBorders are a subject matter in a range of arenas. Itis a topic that occupies politicians and bureaucrats,economists and entrepreneurs, scholars and activists,law enforcers and lawless elements alike. As divergentas these voices may be, a discernible pattern is thatdiscussions on borders are invariably couched in termsof problems and possibilities.To law enforcement agents, borders present headaches.As marketplaces for contraband, escape routes forcriminals and rebels, and passageways for the illegal trafficof people, animals and goods—borders are a real testof states’ sovereignty. Borders cut through neighboringjurisdictions, creating sliced spaces where the power ofone state ends and the power of another begins. Who/what may be illegal on one side of the border finds asafe haven on the other side. Borders reveal the limitsof a regime, but also protect it from undesirable outsideforces. For this reason, they are sites of inclusion andexclusion, of sanction and surveillance. It is this kind ofthinking that underlies what is commonly known as the“security approach” to border issues, which essentiallyconsists of zealously guarding a nation’s territorialintegrity and economic resources.By contrast, internationalists of various stripes approachborders from a different set of assumptions. Toadvocates of (inter)regional integration, borders are fastlosing their significance. What is stressed is the imageryof the “global village” made possible through rapidadvances in travel and communication technology, aswell as the advancement of a globalizing informationbasedeconomy based on de-territorialized exchanges.Nations and regions are seen to be moving towardsa “borderless world” of exciting new possibilities andcreative solutions to transnational challenges.From a more bottom-up orientation, yet another set ofproblems and possibilities arise.Here borders are problematic where they seek to encasehuman activity and aspirations. Rarely do we find states’borders neatly hemmed. In most parts of the world,international borders are arbitrary, if not artificial,partitions. They are vestiges of colonial domination and“old-style” geopolitics that divide people of commondescent and homeland. In this sense, borders representrepressive control mechanisms of the center reigning incentrifugal movements at the margins.The other side of the coin is that precisely becauseborders are arbitrary, they are not sacrosanct. Thus,where there are borders, there is also resistance—Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows