Border Resource

At first glance, apprehending borders as resources may seem like an oxymoron. In many cases and for many people, national borders refer rather to the idea of separation, barrier or hindrance. That being said, and in spite of their undeniable constraining aspects, borders also have some practical utility for human societies. Since their ‘invention’ at the beginning of the modern era, territorial borders have been widely mobilized to affirm the territorial sovereignty of states, either functionally through the control of mobility and flows or symbolically with the legitimization of the exercise of an authority over a portion of space. From an economic perspective, they have allowed the protection of market areas, the demarcation of public-goods based externality fields (i.e., the financing of public infrastructure) and, as an induced effect, the development of legal or illicit activities and trade based on cross-border differentials. Last, from a cultural point of view, borders have played a key role in the formation and perpetuation of national identities. The explicit reference to the notion of borders as resources is, however, relatively recent and denotes a change is the way borders are defined: from a physical outcome of socio-political processes to ‘dynamic institutions’ constantly made and remade through the practices of a great variety of actors (and not only the state).

In the contemporary era, the apprehension of borders as resources specifically refers to two contrasting perspectives. The first perspective, points to the context of opening borders (i.e., ‘de-bordering’) and the fact...