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Materially and symbolically manifest, borders are shaped by history, politics and power. This second special issue of a two-part series brings together an international collective of authors who presented their papers at a conference on Technologies of Bordering convened by the editors at the University of Melbourne, Australia in July 2019. We invited presentations that critically engage with multiple and varied forms of bordering as expressions of power and oppression, as well as those that considered the possibilities and aspirations for more hopeful and progressive futures. Articles explored a range of issues from borders within and beyond detention centres and carceral systems to colonial and postcolonial forms of bordering. Drawing on a variety of empirical research across different spaces and scales, a range of theoretical perspectives and a diversity of methodological approaches, the articles collectively address the material, digital, virtual and human technologies that divide, exclude, contain, control and govern humans and non-humans.
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Bordering: Creating, contesting and resisting practice

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This article is an edited version of a conversation that took place on 4 August 2019 at the State Library of Queensland located on the traditional lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera peoples. This article is part of a series of published conversations between Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, author and translator (one instalment also includes interlocutors from a 2020 UK tour), about the book <italic>No Friend but the Mountains</italic> and Manus Prison theory. During the event Behrouz was speaking via Skype from Manus Island in PNG, and Omid was in Australia while on break from teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In this conversation they explore many of the central issues raised by the book and the accompanying translator’s essays.
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No Friend but the Mountains and Manus prison theory: In conversation

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Antarctica is arguably the only geographical territory left on Earth without political borders. Narratives of peace, science and environmental protection in the Antarctic Treaty System drive a collective governance system that avoids border discourse even though physical boundaries exist. This article fills a gap in Antarctic research by exploring the question ‘What borderwork is evident in the Antarctic Treaty System in relation to the construction and maintenance of its physical boundaries?’ through a study of a gateway to Antarctica—New Zealand. Borderscaping and borderwork concepts are used to examine territoriality in Antarctica. Enacted narrative analysis reveals effects of strategic narrative on practices, showing the Antarctic Treaty system has created an ‘implied’ border system that lacks some of the capabilities of an acknowledged border system. The article argues that understanding the full reach of the absences on practices and attitudes in this Antarctic system is important for the continent’s ongoing security and for border theory. It concludes that more needs to be known about the subtle effects on the many actors in this implied borderscape. Such further research will add to knowledge about Antarctic practices and governance and borderscaping theory.
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The implied border mechanisms of Antarctica: Arguing the case for an Antarctic borderscape

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In the context of the refugee crisis, seascapes are taking on new dimensions with borders shifting from the shoreline to being redrawn in the water itself. As such, refugees are now crossing waters that have become extended sovereign borders. This is manifest in increased maritime surveillance to prevent refugees arriving by boat and landing on Europe’s and Australia’s shores. In this context, materially and symbolically, lighthouses mark out the space between the sea and land and in so doing, delimit these territorial and maritime borders. Although the function of the lighthouse is to warn those at sea of the dangers on the coastline, steering them away from coastal hazards and guiding them through a safe passage, for many sea travellers it can also represent the safety of the land, of arrival. This article explores the ambiguous roles and effects of lighthouses; uniquely placed as sentinel posts along the coast they can aid military surveillance and control while at the same time enabling humanitarian assistance. It explores these conflicting functions focusing on how the lighthouse, as a border between land and sea, simultaneously protects and excludes offering beacons of hope as well as signalling danger. The article draws on the arrival of refugees at Korakas lighthouse on the Greek island of Lesvos to illuminate these variable functions.
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Between the land and the sea: Refugee experiences of the lighthouse as a real and symbolic border

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Notions of human rights and the technologies deploying those notions, legally, institutionally, in advocacy and social discourse, enact a tangled knot of contesting and asserting borders. Universalist assertions of human rights seek to transcend national borders, appealing to a wider grasp of the human, but the formal pursuit of rights establishes rights as mutually constitutive with the state. In advocacy, calling on human rights is a way of recognising people’s political, economic and socio-cultural needs, dignity and suffering, beyond state borders. The idea of the human and the universal implicit in prevailing notions of human rights, however, reproduces dominant Eurocentric ontologies of individual and collective life, and patrols a narrowly conceived territory of the universal. These ontologies can be profoundly counterproductive in practice. Because notions of human rights are one of the few internationally available tools for working against the systemic imposition of suffering, we need to work with them in ways that are more open to different ways of being human and of grasping our individual and collective lives. The discussion concludes by sketching a more relational, dialogic conception of human rights.
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Human rights and the borders of the human

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State sovereignty is customarily connected to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which it is argued established the ideal of political authority being tied to static geographical containers. While academic scholarship has demonstrated that this ideal fails to account for performative and fluid modes of political power, Westphalian sovereignty remains an influential feature of political discourse. This article argues that Westphalian sovereignty consequently fits Ulrich Beck’s description of a ‘zombie category’, a dead social institution kept alive in political and public discussion. This is demonstrated in the context of the Australian State’s exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as asylum seekers arriving by boat. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s theories of sovereignty, I contend that these populations are excluded from the Australian polity because of how they move, while other subjects including ‘genuine refugees’ and European settlers are included due to their ideal (im)mobilities. I argue that this underlying mobile logic of Australian sovereignty and exclusion is hidden by the zombie notion of a static Australian state, which delegitimatizes humanitarian and indigenous claims to sovereignty based on experiences of forced mobility and mobile expressions of political authority.
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Westphalian sovereignty as a zombie category in Australia

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Colonialism left numerous borders in its wake that subsequently became contested. These colonial borders have often been discussed as artificial, dividing communities, people or ethnicities that otherwise would belong together. Such an interpretation of colonial borders, I argue in this article, overlooks another important aspect of colonial boundaries: their role in creating nations as ‘imagined communities’ who in making reference to such borders can lay claim to a distinct national identity. While such an identity can be exclusionary and trigger conflict, it can also have a much more positive and ultimately hybrid function. I use the case of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa to demonstrate these multiple roles colonial boundaries can occupy and focus specifically on the creation and contestations of the borders of Eritrea. I argue that the acceptance of borders as markers of identity can be a prerequisite for finding innovative ways to overcome exclusions in the everyday lives of borderland groups. Thus, the example of Eritrea could hold wider lessons for addressing postcolonial disputes about borders and boundaries, if institutional arrangements are put in place that allow fluidity in everyday encounters.
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Colonial borders and hybrid identities: Lessons from the case of Eritrea

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 21 (2022): Issue 2 (December 2022)

Volume 21 (2022): Issue 1 (January 2022)

Volume 20 (2021): Issue 2 (October 2021)

Volume 20 (2021): Issue 1 (January 2021)

Volume 19 (2020): Issue 2 (October 2020)

Volume 19 (2020): Issue 1 (January 2020)

Volume 18 (2019): Issue 2 (January 2019)

Volume 18 (2019): Issue 1 (January 2019)

Borderlands Journal

Borderlands is a transdisciplinary journal of the humanities and social sciences that was founded in Australia in 2001. Since then, it has fostered radical thinking across the borders between disciplines, nations, sexualities, economies, identities, peoples and species, and fostered interplay between rigorous scholarship in philosophy, law, cultural studies, politics, sociology, geography, international relations and the environment. Borderlands' profile in areas such as refugees, indigenous politics, post-and de-colonial theory, biopolitics, post-Marxism, queer theory, race and gender, is especially strong, but the journal remains open to a range of concerns and disciplines.  As the complex discourse and reality of the Anthropocene evolves, Borderlands is opening its pages to work in the environmental humanities, posthumanism, STS, and environmental politics, theory and law. It aims to foster new conjunctions of justice, power, theory and bodies; to connect theory, event and structure in compelling and thoughtful ways.  You can read the Borderlands' manifesto to get a sense of the vision with which we began.  Writing for Borderlands  Borderlands has a global reputation for first-class theorising and innovative conjunctions of theory, event and situated analysis. Borderlands' editorial board includes some of the world's most important social theorists including Sara Ahmed, Jane Bennett, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Claire Colebrook, Michael Hardt, Donna Haraway, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Adi Ophir, RBJ Walker and McKenzie Wark. Our rigorous standards and double-blind peer-review process ensures that only the highest-quality work is published. Your work will be published with an open access license - for free - ensuring global and equitable access to your work from readers around the world. And, by publishing with Borderlands, you help support a radical publishing space untainted by big corporate profitmaking and neoliberal elitism.  Past issues of Borderlands  Borderlands issues from 2002-2019 were published under the ISSN 1447-0810 and can be viewed in the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive.  Open Access Policy  This journal provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions and all users are free to share the work (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), if the contribution is properly attributed and used for non-commercial purposes. The material published in the journal may not be altered or built upon.  All authors who wish to publish in Borderlands must agree to the licensing terms stated above.  ABOUT SOCIETY  The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Environment and Governance Research Group brings together leading international researchers in environmental politics, law and policy, biodiversity, climate security, food systems, and environmental ethics. Our work has a common focus on improving law, public policy and international cooperation in protecting ecosystems and managing the impact of human-induced environmental change. With planet Earth having entered the Anthropocene - the epoch of dramatic human impacts on the Earth’s ecology and systems - our work crosses disciplines and charts paths for improved governance that can support ecological sustainability, and key human interests in health, justice and security, into the long-term future.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process.