The Routledge Research Companion to Border Studies (Ashgate Research Companions) - Hardcover

'Doris Wastl-Walter's excellent volume The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies brings together contributions from numerous distinguished authors, making a comprehensive and welcomed companion to the interdisciplinary field of border studies...The publication of this volume certainly is a step forward to institutionalize border studies as a distinctive research field. More than just empirically showing how international borders are manifested in different geopolitical contexts, this book also reveals how theoretically rich and methodologically complex border studies are today.The articles mainly focus on formal and practical border drawing practices, whereas creative cultural and popular performances of the border are not discussed in depth.The selection of articles and themes has been successful, for although the book brings together different theoretical approaches and empirical cases, all papers share an understanding that borders and bordering entail material consequences and unequal power relations.The book will definitely attract a wide interdisciplinary readership of scholars, students and professionals.' Progress in Human Geography '...a timely and current overview to the state of border-related scholarship in geography and nearby disciplines. It does not merely retrace and reframe the existing foundation of literature on borders, but it expands, extrapolates, and offers fresh insights and new perspectives along multiple dimensions of borders.' Annals of the Association of American Geographers 'The Ashgate companion is a worthwhile, if heavy, volume, for its diverse mix of conceptually informed, empirical cases spreading across many parts of the world (Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa) and its fascinating themes (border management, identity politics, labour migration, gender and borders, neighbourhood politics, nature and environment)' . The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

Throughout history, the functions and roles of borders have been continuously changing. They can only be understood in their context, shaped as they are by history, politics and power, as well as cultural and social issues. Borders are therefore complex spatial and social phenomena which are not static or invariable, but which are instead highly dynamic. This comprehensive volume brings together a multidisciplinary team of leading scholars to provide an authoritative, state-of-the-art review of all aspects of borders and border research. It is truly global in scope and, besides embracing the more traditional strands of the field including geopolitics, migration and territorial identities, it also takes in recently emerging topics such as the role of borders in a seemingly borderless world; creating neighbourhoods, and border enforcement in the post-9/11 era.