Signed in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement brought the three-decade civil war in Northern Ireland to an end. Most significantly, the treaty opened the Irish border, a move that played a key part in the peace process. But as Brexit looms, the border might be shut back once again.
Can a state exclude people in the name of the common good? What gives legitimacy to definitions of borders and belonging? In this work of political theory, B. Boudou argues for a pragmatic, democratic and shifting approach to borders: only shared interests can define a community.
David Miller takes a clear stance on immigration: states have the right to close their borders, but also, to a certain extent, the duty to welcome refugees. His arguments, however, are not entirely convincing.
The border between Bangladesh and India has created an artificial rift within a space connected by intense circulations. Thrown into illegality, the many migrants who continue to circulate between the two States face heightened risks of exploitation and increasing marginalisation.
How can a state expect its borders to be respected and at the same time deny the existence of borders to spread revolution? Historian Sabine Dullin’s unique reconstruction of Soviet political imagination gives provocative answers to this apparent paradox. Her new way of looking at frontiers also has tremendous relevance to explain Russia’s border politics of today.
The tragedy of Lampedusa has shed a harsh light on the effects of border control, which Europe is outsourcing and privatising in order to make responsibilities more opaque and sustain a market of fear. Claire Rodier reveals the ideological and economic implications of this process, and its perverse effects.
History cannot be written as if nations had always been around, and as if men had not found countless ways to ignore their frontiers. Historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam invites his peers to make use of the riches that lie in the multilingual archives of humanity to reveal connections that were once relevant to huge areas of the world.
