Borders are never purely local institutions, never reducible to a simple history of conflicts and agreements between neighboring groups and powers. Borders are already global, ways of dividing the world into regions and thus make possible place and a ‘mapping imaginary’. Borders are characterized by an intrinsic ambivalence that derives from their internal and external functions, as the basis of collective belonging and state control over mobility and territory. The construction of political space takes place through modes of translation between inside and outside that the border signifies.
Anderson, Benedict ( 1991) Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Routledge .
2.
Bauman, Zygmunt ( 1997) Postmodernity and Its Discontents. New York: New York University Press.
3.
Benjamin, Walter ( 1991 [1923]) ‘Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers’, Ü in Gesammelte Schriften Vol. IV 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser , pp. 7-21. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
4.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh ( 2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
5.
Foucault, Michel ( 1994 [1984]) ‘Des espaces autres’, in Dits et écrits, Vol. IV, pp. 752-62. Paris: Gallimard.
6.
Honig, Bonnie ( 2001) Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
Lyotard, Jean-François ( 1983) Le différend. Paris: Minuit.
