Introduces an exciting and expanding field of interdisciplinary research, through the writing of an international array of scholars, from diverse perspectives that include anthropology, development studies, geography, history, political science and sociology. Explores how nations and cultural identities are being transformed by their dynamic, shifting borders where mobility is sometimes facilitated, other times impeded or prevented.

Borders and border studies /Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan -- Partition / Brendan O'Leary -- Culture theory and the US-Mexico border / Josiah McC. Heyman -- The African Union Border Programme in European comparative perspective / Anthony I. Asiwaju -- European politics of borders, border symbolism and cross-border cooperation / James Wesley Scott -- Securing borders in Europe and North America / Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly -- Border regimes, the circulation of violence and the neo-authoritarian turn / John Borneman -- Borders in the new imperialism / James Anderson -- Contested states, frontiers and cities / Liam O'Dowd -- The state, hegemony and the historical British-US border / Allan K. McDougall and Lisa Philips -- Nations, nationalism and "borderzation" in the Southern Cone / Alejandro Grimson -- Debordering hte rebordering the United Kingdom / Cathal McCall -- "Swarming" at the frontiers of France, 1870-1885 / Olivier Thomas Kramsch -- Borders and conflict resolution / David Newman -- Chaos and order along the (former) Iron Curtain / Mathijs Pelkmans -- Border security as late-capitalist "fix" / Brenda Chalfin -- Identity, the state and borderline disorder / Dan Rabinowitz -- African boundaries and the new capitalist frontier / Timothy Raeymaekers -- Bandits, borderlands and opium wars in Afghanistan / Jonathan Goodhand -- Biosecurity, quarantine and life across the border / Alan Smart and Josephine Smart -- Permeabilities, ecology and goepolitical boundaries / Hilary Cunningham -- Borders and the rhythms of displacement, emplacement and mobility / Pamela Ballinger -- Remapping borders / Henk van Houtum -- From border policing to internal immigration control in the United States / Mathew Coleman -- Labor migration, trafficking and border controls / Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons -- Spatial strategies for rebordering human migration at sea / Alison Mountz and Nancy Hiemstra -- "B/ordering" and biopolitics in Central Asia / Nick Megoran -- Border, scene and obscene / Nicholas De Genova -- Border show business and performing states / David B. Coplan -- Performativity and the eventfulness of bordering practices / Robert J. Kaiser -- Reconceptualizing the space of the Mexico-US borderline / Robert R. Alvarez, Jr. -- Border towns and cities in comparative perspective / Paul Nugent -- A sense of border / Sarah Green.