Border Politics in a Global Era

Culled from decades of firsthand observations, this text is a cross-regional analysis of border people and borderlands of the North and post-colonial South. Focusing on themes of trade, migration, and security, Staudt highlights the importance of states, their length of time since independence, and border bureaucrats’ discretionary practices.

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Initially, research in border studies relied mainly on generalizations from cases in the US-Mexico borderlands before subsequently burgeoning in Europe. Border Politics in a Global Era seeks to expand the study further to include the post-colonial South in response to the major challenge of interdisciplinary border studies: to explore borderlands in many contexts, with and across a variety of states, including the so-called developing, post-colonial states.

Culled from decades of firsthand observations of borders from around the world and written with a critical and gender lens, the text is framed with attention to history, geography, and the power of films and travelogues to represent people as “others.” Professor Kathleen Staudt advances border concepts, categories, and theories to focus on trade, migration, and security highlighting the importance of states, their length of time since independence, and border bureaucrats’ discretionary practices. Drawing on her Border Inequalities Database for a global perspective, Staudt calls for reducing inequalities and building institutions in the common grounds of borderlands. The book features maps and other visuals with lists of links at the close of most chapters.

Broadly comparative in nature, Border Politics in a Global Era will appeal not only to students of border studies; it will also stimulate attention in comparative politics, international studies, and political geography.