Mobility & Politics

Series Editors: Martin Geiger (Carleton University, Canada), Parvati Raghuram (Open
University, UK) and William Walters (Carleton University, Canada)

Global Advisory Board: Michael Collyer, University of Sussex; Susan B. Coutin, University
of California, Irvine; Raúl Delgado Wise, University of Zacatecas; Nicholas De Genova,
Goldsmiths, University of London; Eleonore Kofman, Middlesex University; Rey Koslowski,
State University of New York; Loren B. Landau, Wits University; Sandro Mezzadra, University
of Bologna; Alison Mountz, Wilfrid Laurier University; Brett Neilson, University of Western
Sydney; Antoine Pécoud, University Paris 13; Ranabir Samaddar, Calcutta Research Group;
Nandita Sharma, University of Hawaii at Manoa; Tesfaye Tafesse, Addis Ababa University;
Thanh-Dam Truong, Erasmus University

Human mobility, whatever its scale, is often controversial. Hence it carries with it the potential
for politics. A core feature of mobility politics is the tension between the desire to maximize the
social and economic benefits of migration, and pressures to restrict movement. Transnational
communities, global instability, advances in transportation and communication, and concepts
of ‘smart borders’ and ‘migration management’ are just a few of the phenomena transforming
the landscape of migration today. The tension between openness and restriction raises
important questions about how different types of policies and politics come to life and influence
mobility.

Mobility & Politics invites original, theoretically and empirically informed studies for academic
and policy-oriented debates. Authors examine issues such as refugees and displacement, migra-
tion and citizenship, security and cross-border movements, (post-)colonialism and mobility, and
transnational movements and cosmopolitics.

Titles include:
Chris Rumford
COSMOPOLITAN BORDERS

Mobility & Politics

Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–34594–3 hardback
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact
your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title
of the series and the ISBN quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21
6XS, England

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0001
Also by Chris Rumford
EUROPEAN MULTIPLICITY (co-edited with Didem Buhari-Gulmez)
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY-EU RELATIONS (editor)
THE GLOBALIZATION OF STRANGENESS
TWENTY20 AND THE FUTURE OF CRICKET (editor)
CRICKET AND GLOBALIZATION (co-edited with Stephen Wagg)
HANDBOOK OF EUROPEAN STUDIES (editor)
CITIZENS AND BORDERWORK IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE (editor)
COSMOPOLITAN SPACES: EUROPE, GLOBALIZATION, THEORY
COSMOPOLITANISM AND EUROPE (editor)
RETHINKING EUROPE: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (co-authored
with Gerard Delanty)
THE EUROPEAN UNION: A Political Sociology
EUROPEAN COHESION? Contradictions in EU Integration

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0001
 Cosmopolitan Borders
Chris Rumford
Department of Politics and International Relations,
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0001
© Chris Rumford 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-35139-5
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-46883-6 ISBN 978-1-137-35140-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137351401
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
www.palgrave.com/pivot
 To Füsun and Lara

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0001
 Contents
Series Editors’ Foreword vii

Acknowledgements ix

1 Introduction 1

2 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 22

3 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards

Multiperspectivalism 39

4 Fixity/Unfixity 55

5 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 73

6 Concluding Comments 88

References 92

Index 102

vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0001
 Series Editors’ Foreword
Reflecting on the character and function of the wall with
regard to the Medieval town Lewis Mumford, the noted
American historian and architectural critic, drew his
readers’ attention to the matter of the ‘town gate’.* The gate
was far more than an opening. It was, in fact, the meeting
point of two worlds, the zone at which the urban encoun-
ters the rural, and the insider meets the outsider. As places
where ‘the river of traffic slows down’ it was at these gates
that economic activity also started to thicken, and where
all sorts of control functions, including customs houses,
passport offices, storehouses and inns, would gather.
Mumford also reminds us that the original meaning of
the word ‘port’ comes from ‘portal’, and that originally the
word ‘porter’ referred to the merchants who settled in this
part of the city; only later would they pass this name on
to their ‘menial helpers’. Mixing up settlement and flow,
protection and hospitality, commerce and control, citizen
and alien, the portal was surely a most dynamic region in
the landscape of the Medieval power.
We envisage that Mobility & Politics will serve not just as
a pivot but as a portal, resonating with some of the themes
that Mumford highlights. First, our series is intended to
further push the boundaries of the social sciences in terms
of their encounters with mobility, migration and power. To
say the disciplines are still walled is no doubt too strong.

* Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transforma-

tions, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961,
pp. 304–5.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0002 vii

viii Series Editors’ Foreword

That said, deeply ingrained tendencies towards disciplinary thinking do

sometimes seem to inhibit creativity and insight in studies of migration
and mobility. We hope publications in this series will exemplify the best
of, and potential for, counter-disciplinary thought. Second, we hope that
Mobility & Politics will grow into a zone of encounter where the bounda-
ries demarcating domestic and foreign, citizen and stranger, resident and
migrant will appear less settled and assured. Porters of the world unite!
To be both pivot and portal is, of course, far from easy! But what bet-
ter way to inaugurate this series and to take up its difficult challenge than
with the publication of Chris Rumford’s Cosmopolitan Borders. While
commonplace as well as many academic understandings of the border
still equate it overwhelmingly with practices of control and enclosure,
Chris Rumford shows us the great many ways in which borders not
only divide but join, enclose but also bridge, separate but also connect
people and places. Moreover, he demonstrates that these connections are
not limited to contiguous peoples and territories. They can be far flung:
topological as much as topographical. As such he shows that the study of
borders can illuminate how we understand the global and the cosmos,
and new forms of affiliation as well as division.
Martin Geiger, Carleton University
Parvati Raghuram, Open University
William Walters, Carleton University

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0002
 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Anthony Cooper and Chris Perkins,
both of whom have co-authored papers with me in which
some of the ideas contained here were first aired.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0003 ix
 1
Introduction

Abstract: The relationship between cosmopolitanism and

borders is established via discussion of the changing nature
of borders and a critique of the main characteristics of
contemporary cosmopolitanism and its likely future trajectory.
An alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism is offered,
emerging from a critique of the idea of ‘openness’, and founded
on a different understanding of the relationship between
globalization and cosmopolitanism. The four cosmopolitan
dimensions of borders are introduced – vernacularization,
multiperspectivalism, fixity/unfixity and connectivities – each
having a chapter in the book devoted to it. The idea of borders
as ‘cosmopolitan workshops’ is also introduced.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0004.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0004 
 Cosmopolitan Borders

What is a cosmopolitan border? An oxymoron, perhaps. For many peo-

ple a border could never be cosmopolitan; a ‘cosmopolitan border’ is a
contradictory term. My usage of the term is not intended to signify a
cosmopolitan age in which all things, including the most unlikely, have
become cosmopolitan. I do not subscribe to the ‘cosmopolitan realism’
thesis advanced by Beck, among others (Beck, 2006). The term ‘cosmo-
politan border’ signifies not that the world has become more cosmopoli-
tan but that borders are changing rapidly and in many different ways: in
terms of their nature, their function, their location and their ownership.
But these wide-ranging changes would not by themselves necessitate the
designation ‘cosmopolitan’. The main reason for labelling some borders
‘cosmopolitan’ is that they are no longer only a project of the (nation-)
state.
Borders are increasingly shaped by forms of governance beyond
the nation-state, the European Union (EU) being the most obvious
example, and by citizens working from the ‘bottom-up’, this activity
being termed ‘borderwork’ (see Chapter 2). In short then borders are
cosmopolitan because they are no longer only under the control of the
state; other actors and agencies may also be involved. This represents an
important shift from state to society as the locus of bordering, but as yet
the literature on borders does not adequately reflect this change. Border
studies’ scholars have already embraced many dimensions of the chang-
ing nature of borders (‘borders are everywhere’, ‘remote control’, offshore
bordering etc.), but studying the cosmopolitanization of borders is still
in its infancy. If the term ‘cosmopolitan border’ signifies a major change
in the nature of borders, it also says something about how we can best
approach cosmopolitanism. It is argued that borders are good vantage
points from which to observe cosmopolitanism, and more importantly
perhaps studying ‘cosmopolitan borders’ leads us to challenge the
assumption that cosmopolitanism equates to ‘world openness’. In fact,
the line taken here is that cosmopolitanism is better thought of as the
possibility of connectivity under conditions where globalization closes
in on us and restricts our options, the border being a prime site for such
‘cosmopolitan encounters’.
The existence of cosmopolitan borders impacts other debates. For
instance, there is an increasing dissatisfaction with the state/security/
mobility agenda which continues to dominate the field of border studies.
The need to identify new meanings of the border not tied to the state
(Bauder, 2011) has emerged as a key theme in the critical literature as

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 Introduction 

has its corollary, the inadequacy of many existing conceptualizations of

the border (Rovisco, 2010). In this book I seek to advance this emerging
agenda by shifting the focus towards the role of ordinary people in mak-
ing, shifting and removing borders – the idea of ‘borderwork’ (Rumford,
2007, 2008b, 2012) and the variety of roles that borders can fulfil in
addition to being markers of (state) division. A border studies which
embraces the vernacularization of borders shifts the emphasis from state
bordering, securitization and the regulation of mobilities to a concern
both with the role of borders in ‘the politics of everyday fear’ (Massumi,
1993) and bordering as a political resource for citizens who are able to
both contest nation-state bordering practices and institute their own
versions of borders. Rather than simply existing as manifestations of an
‘iron cage’ borders can be appropriated as political resources; they can
be drawn upon by a range of actors who seek to either selectively regu-
late mobility, use the border as a staging post to connect to the wider
world, or simply use the border as a way of navigating the multiplicity
of spaces which characterize a world in perpetual motion. Arguably, the
single most important conceptual development laying the ground for
the recognition of cosmopolitan borders is Balibar’s insight that borders
are increasingly diffused. To sit alongside this I propose a second key
innovation; the idea of borders as ‘engines of connectivity’. Borders not
only divide; they also connect, both to the other side of the border and, on
occasions, far beyond. Borders can be prime sites for connecting indi-
viduals to the world by creating cosmopolitan opportunities through
the possibility of cultural encounters and negotiations of difference. In
this way the centrality of borders to cosmopolitan thinking can be fully
understood.

Unpacking cosmopolitanism

When borders and cosmopolitanism are considered together it is fre-

quently assumed that the cosmopolitan ‘lives across borders’ (Holton,
2009: 40). In reality, the relationship is much richer and more complex
than that. Focusing on the ease with which some individuals can cross
borders results in a rather one-dimensional perspective. Moreover,
it gives little clue to the changing nature of borders or the range of
possibilities emerging from contemporary thinking on cosmopolitan-
ism. The argument here is that borders have the potential to be sites of

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

‘cultural encounters of a cosmopolitan kind’: connecting individuals to

the world, bringing them into contact with Others and causing them
to reassess their relations with the (multiple) communities to which
they may or may not belong. Furthermore, borders serve a very useful
function in that they offer up connections to the world, which contrary
to received wisdom are not that plentiful. According to Delanty (2006:
27), cosmopolitanism is concerned with the ‘very conceptualization
of the social world as an open horizon in which new cultural models
take shape ... and wherever new relations between self, other and world
develop in moments of openness’. It can be argued that connecting
with the world is, in fact, far from straightforward and ‘moments of
openness’ are not always readily available (Rumford, 2008a: 14). In
this sense, cosmopolitans do not automatically have the access to the
world that is often supposed, and the ‘self, other, world’ triad gives the
impression that the world is more open than it actually is. The cosmo-
politan challenge is to find manoeuvre room in an environment where
the world, others and community can appear to smother rather than
nourish the self.
Cosmopolitanism is now recognized as offering an important perspec-
tive on contemporary affairs, and is an increasingly important research
theme across the social sciences. The rise of cosmopolitanism has been
aided by the publication of several ‘cornerstone’ texts in the past few
years which have helped consolidate the field and provide a road map for
extending cosmopolitanism into fresh realms. Two edited collections are
particularly significant: Delanty’s Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism
Studies (Delanty, 2012), and Rovisco and Nowicka’s Ashgate Research
Companion to Cosmopolitanism (Rovisco and Nowicka, 2011). These
scholarly compendia stand alongside a number of other key texts in
the study of cosmopolitanism that have also been published in the past
few years. Of these, the following have been particularly important in
shaping the field: Beck’s Cosmopolitan Vision (Beck, 2006), Archibugi’s
The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy
(Archibugi, 2008), Holton’s Cosmopolitanisms (Holton, 2009), Delanty’s
The Cosmopolitan Imagination (Delanty, 2009), and Kendall, Woodward
and Skrbis’ The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism (Kendall et al., 2009). These
books have made cosmopolitanism more relevant to researchers in many
disciplines, help instil in researchers the confidence to work within a
cosmopolitan frame, and to extend the applicability of cosmopolitanism
to new areas of investigation.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0004
 Introduction 

Alongside the growing social scientific legitimacy of cosmopolitan-

ism we have seen an important shift to ‘cosmopolitan realism’ as the
default perspective. Cosmopolitan realism, as represented by the work
of Beck and Delanty, for example, insists that the world is/has all along
been cosmopolitan, although it is only now that we are beginning to
acknowledge this (it being the victim of ‘methodological nationalism’ for
a long period). This is a very confident vision of cosmopolitanism and
a much more assertive iteration vis-à-vis its relevance to understanding
the contemporary world than was evident just a few years ago. Beck’s
argument is that although the national imagination continues to hold
sway in intellectual life and in explanatory frameworks, everyday life is
cosmopolitan, although this is not necessarily acknowledged in many
efforts to account for, or explain, everyday life. One consequence of the
‘cosmopolitan turn’ which has been a feature of the social sciences over
the past decade or so (Beck and Grande, 2010) is the growing confidence
with which the existence of ‘cosmopolitan reality’ has been proclaimed.
The journey from the first claims for a ‘new’ cosmopolitanism – origi-
nating with the ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ project for greater democracy
between nation-states launched by Archibugi and Held (1995) – to a
range of assertions that modernity has been cosmopolitan all along (even
though we did not recognize it as such) has taken place in a relatively
short time. For some this cosmopolitan reality finds fullest expression
in the European Union (Beck and Grande, 2007), for others it signals a
shift in emphasis in concern from ‘sociality to humanity’ (Ossewaarde,
2007). The popularity of cosmopolitan realism should not mask the fact
that it is by no means the only way to understand cosmopolitanism. In
the remainder of this section we will examine the claims of cosmopolitan
realism, offer a critique and suggest an alternative basis for a cosmopoli-
tan social science.
Ulrich Beck is the primary advocate of cosmopolitan realism. He
argues that the ‘cosmopolitan condition’ is the reality of contemporary
society: social reality has become cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan reality
can be discerned from the fact that people are living in an intercon-
nected world and experience it as such. This then is what is termed
‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (Beck, 2006: 19) and it characterizes everyday
life: ‘the many-coloured mixture of food, drinks, nourishments, res-
taurants, music, etc. that characterises the cities all over Europe’ (Beck
and Grande, 2007: 72). Banal cosmopolitanism is experienced in the
supermarket where culinary cultures and a steady growing variety

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

of produce from around the world are made available to shoppers as

a matter of course. Banal cosmopolitanism is an unconscious cos-
mopolitanism rather than a reflexive cosmopolitanism. Beck draws a
distinction between cosmopolitanism, as a set of ideas and beliefs, and
‘cosmopolitanization’, which results from unconscious decisions but
which is leading to the reality of ‘becoming thoroughly cosmopolitan’
(Beck, 2006: 21).
Providing ballast for Beck’s perspective is the idea that we are witness-
ing a ‘cosmopolitanization of reality’, the full dimensions of which can
only be understood once we dispense with the ‘methodological national-
ism’ which pervades the social sciences. ‘Methodological nationalism’
refers to the ways in which ‘social scientists in doing research and theo-
rizing take it for granted that society is equated with national society’
(Beck and Sznaider, 2006: 2). Cosmopolitan realism has three facets: a
critique of methodological nationalism; the recognition that ‘the twenty-
first century is becoming an age of cosmopolitanism’ (ibid.: 3); and a
recognition that what we need is ‘some kind of “methodological cosmo-
politanism”, which can dispense with the dualisms that have informed
globalization theory: global/local, national/international, inside/outside’
(ibid.). Beck and Sznaider seek to mark a distinction between their
vision of cosmopolitanism – the ‘really-existing processes of cosmopoli-
tanization of the world’ (ibid.: 7) – and the more commonly held view
of cosmopolitanism as a set of normative principles, for example the
project of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ advanced by Held and Archibugi.
Interestingly, Daniele Archibugi also looks at the EU and sees ‘actually
existing cosmopolitanism’, or the nearest thing to it, thus demonstrating
that these contending perspectives on cosmopolitanism do share some
common ground.
Beck seeks to uncover ‘dormant’ cosmopolitanism. For example, the
European Union has brought about the cosmopolitanization of Europe
even though this was never the intention. Europe possesses a cosmo-
politan reality which ‘normal social science’ tends to overlook; the ‘real
Europe’ can only be understood through the cosmopolitan lens (Beck,
2008). Beck’s belief is that once we have learnt to transcend the restric-
tions placed on social science by ‘methodological nationalism’ we will
discover ways of studying transnational reality and in doing so discover
(cosmopolitan) dimensions to Europe that we never realized existed. It is
possible that Beck’s cosmopolitan version of Europe is the result of what
Philip Schlesinger has termed the ‘cosmopolitan temptation’, whereby

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 Introduction 

wishful thinking about cosmopolitanism gets in the way of clear analysis

(Schlesinger, 2007).
The encounter between cosmopolitanism and globalization (in the
contemporary context) is normally seen as one in which the latter has
encouraged the former (creating the grounds for ‘cosmopolitan real-
ism’). On this conventional reading, cosmopolitanism is stimulated by
globalization and is dependent upon it. But such interpretations are the
result of very broad brush strokes indeed: what is meant by globalization
and cosmopolitanism varies greatly from formulation to formulation,
and the assumed relationship only ‘works’ if cosmopolitanism is viewed
as a form of consciousness which corresponds to contemporary proc-
esses of globalization.
Inglis and Robertson (2011: 296–7) summarize the connections
between globalization and cosmopolitanism advanced in the recent
literature in the following way. They identify four such connections.
First, globalization generates ‘cosmopolitan conditions’ such as the
‘global capitalist market ... cosmopolitan political structures and legal
norms ... cosmopolitan modes of citizenship ... cosmopolitan life-
styles ... cosmopolitan cultures ... and cosmopolitan forms of conscious-
ness’ (ibid.: 296). Second, what are previously thought of as processes
of globalization can also be seen as processes of cosmopolitanization
(as understood by Beck) in the sense that these undermine boundaries
both within and between nation-states. This feeds the tendency towards
‘cosmopolitan realism’ identified above. Third, ‘[g]lobalization produces
needs for, and generates forms of, social science which can analyse its
deepening complexity’ (Inglis and Robertson, 2011: 297), Beck’s cos-
mopolitan sociology being a good example. On this understanding,
cosmopolitanism is called forth to help make sense of globalization.
Fourth, some cosmopolitan theories are an attempt to correct or ‘tame’
tendencies associated with globalization. In this sense, globalization
is the backdrop against which cosmopolitan perspectives emerge and
‘make sense’. There is also a sense that cosmopolitan perspectives can
hold a degree of optimism which has been difficult to sustain in many
readings of globalization. Many accounts of globalization emphasize
the transformations which are wrought by global processes, and these
may be associated with negative subjective experiences of globalization
as ‘something that happens to you’ and which is largely beyond your
control. At the same time, cosmopolitanism is seen to be more about
shaping the world according to a normative vision. If globalization is

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

a ‘done deal’, cosmopolitanism embodies the hope that other forms of

(human) connectivity are possible.
So what more is there to say of the relationship between globaliza-
tion and cosmopolitanism? Actually, quite a lot. In the literature the
consensus is very much that accelerating (technologically driven)
processes of globalization over the past 30 years or so have caused the
renewal of interest in, and new forms of, cosmopolitan thought. There is
every reason to question this line of causality: the relationship between
cosmopolitanism and globalization in this book is understood in very
different terms. It is argued that cosmopolitanism is a strategy of con-
nectivity resulting from a particular experience of globalization: ‘global
closure’. Cosmopolitanism is often thought to depend upon ‘global
openness’ but, it is argued, such a state of affairs occurs a lot less often
than many scholars of cosmopolitanism optimistically believe to be the
case. Globalization, in the way that it is experienced at the level of indi-
vidual experience, often ‘presses down’ on people and restricts access to
the world. This then provides a corrective to accounts which emphasize
that globalization opens up the world to experience and imagination.
Cosmopolitanism becomes a strategy for living under conditions of
‘global closure’. In the contemporary context cosmopolitanism allows
for the possibility of breaking out of the constraints imposed by this
experience of globalization, by creating ‘room for manoeuvre’ in what
are experienced as the closed spaces of globalization. More specifically,
cosmopolitanism can be thought of as a political strategy which draws
upon resources of the imagination in order to constitute an alternative
social connection between previously unconnected individuals. On this
reading cosmopolitanism is not a social reality or existing state of affairs,
rather it is the product of subjective experience and the need to open up
new possibilities for human sociality. To the extent that this points to a
link between cosmopolitanism and globalization, it is a contingent one.
Not all attempts at cosmopolitan connectivity are the result of a troubled
experience of globalization. New forms of sociality can be advanced by
‘entrepreneurial’ cosmopolitans, rather than being driven by global flows
and mobilities.
According to Kendall et al. (2009: 14–22) there are four problems with
contemporary approaches to cosmopolitanism. First, ‘indeterminacy’ –
cosmopolitanism can stand for almost anything. Second, ‘identifica-
tion’ – who are the cosmopolitans? Third, ‘attribution’ – what constitutes
cosmopolitan behaviour or culture? Four, ‘governance’ – what forms

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0004
 Introduction 

of rule are envisaged under the cosmopolitan banner? Up to a point

I would agree with this sketch of deficiencies in cosmopolitanism but
would also want to argue that it goes nowhere near to constitute a rep-
resentative critique of contemporary cosmopolitanism. The dominant
strands of cosmopolitan thinking contain these problems and embody
others. Cosmopolitanism as a normative model of a new world order
(Held and Archibugi’s neo-Kantian ‘Cosmopolitan Democracy’ project),
cosmopolitanism as a European quality (Derrida and Habermas) and
cosmopolitan realism (Beck and Delanty) all come together on one
point: that the European Union is an example of ‘actually existing’ cos-
mopolitanism. Kendall, Woodward and Skrbis also advance this claim,
and in doing so succumb to the temptation of cosmopolitan realism.
They hold that the EU
is an illustration of what we call imaginative realism because the building
and strengthening of the European agendas is fundamentally about the
combination of a cosmopolitan vision in conjunction with the recognition
of the need to take this vision through the process of public and institu-
tional deliberation. (Kendall et al., 2009: 53)

When cosmopolitanism was deemed idealistic and utopian – was it ever

meaningful to imagine oneself as a ‘citizen of the world’? – it was widely
acknowledged that cosmopolitanism was difficult to achieve and that
there was not much of it around, except in the form of lofty aspirations.
The ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in academia over the past decade or so has not
only seen the application of cosmopolitan ideas to new domains, for
example transnational governance (Parker, 2012), but social scientific
assumptions about what counts as cosmopolitanism have also changed
dramatically. The rise to prominence of cosmopolitan realism has worked
to fix cosmopolitanism in the everyday routine; cosmopolitanism is now
held to be part of the fabric of the workaday world.
I wish to dissent from this view of cosmopolitanism as a common-
place reality (while tacitly approving the attempt to democratize cosmo-
politan ideas). The problem with cosmopolitan realism is that it makes
cosmopolitanism appear to be nothing out of the ordinary (and easy
to realize). I think there is considerable value in holding on to the idea
that cosmopolitanism is a rare commodity and is difficult to actualize,
and the core of this value lies in its ability to explain unusual or singular
events. Another problem with cosmopolitan realism is that is assumes
an unrealistically high degree of openness in the world. This, in my view,

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

stems from the assumption that cosmopolitanism is intimately related to

globalization. According to Delanty cosmopolitanism is dependent upon
globalization: globalization provides ‘the external preconditions for the
emergence of cosmopolitanism’ (Delanty, 2009: 251), and cosmopolitan
reality is constituted by the intertwining of the global and the local.
I prefer to view cosmopolitanism as the exception rather than the run-
of-the-mill, and see it not as an underlying reality but an intervention, or
series of interventions, attempting to establish new forms of association
in a far from cosmopolitan world. Cosmopolitanism thus can only be
apprehended in fleeting glimpses and as partially formed and transient.
The existence of cosmopolitanism is rarely planned or intended and
certainly does not take the form of a generalized reality. It is mostly acci-
dental and unexpected. Rarely do cosmopolitan actors know themselves
as such. According to Beck we live in an age of reflexivity when we are
all able to contextualize and reflect upon the consequence of human
actions. Cosmopolitanism sits uneasily with such an account as it is rarely
brought into being by people who believe themselves to be cosmopolitan.
In this sense cosmopolitanism is an elusive state of affairs which can be
achieved but not programmed. Cosmopolitanism cannot be a new reality
because it is evidence of incompleteness; its very existence is indicative
that societies are characterized by fragmentation, transformation and
multiplicity. Cosmopolitanism is likely to appear only under conditions
in which identities are partially fixed and there is no firm barrier between,
for example, inside/outside, self/other, individual/group. Moreover, there
is no perspective from which we can view ‘cosmopolitan reality’: the
multiperspectival foundations of cosmopolitanism make it impossible
to posit anything like a manifestation of cosmopolitan reality. In sum,
cosmopolitanism is best thought of as an escape from permanence and
solidity. A ‘cosmopolitan moment’ would be fatally undermined by an
attempt to make it more permanent and durable.

Cosmopolitanism and borders

Cosmopolitanism cannot be limited to questions of world citizenship,

identification with the ‘Other’, choosing to belong to (or not belong to)
particular communities or establishing justice beyond the nation-state.
Nor can cosmopolitanism be reduced to a generalized mobility, or even
a particular kind of mobility: the ability of individuals to cross and

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 Introduction 

re-cross borders. Today it is not only ‘tourists and vagabonds’ (Bauman,

1998) who are designated as cosmopolitans, there remains a strong
suspicion that cosmopolitanism is an elitist lifestyle aspiration enjoyed
by the lucky few: business tycoons, media executives and conference-
attending academics. The idea of cosmopolitan borders can counter
this perceived elitism; border-crossing (and indeed border-making) is
not only the business of elites, it is part of the fabric of everyday life.
At the same time it must be remembered that cosmopolitan borders are
not experienced in the same way by everyone, leading to what we might
call a ‘cosmopolitan paradox’: that borders are diffused throughout
society, differentiated and networked also increases the chance that they
are experienced differently by different groups, some of who encounter
them as anything but cosmopolitan.
Many accounts of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and
borders suppose that the key aspect of the relationship is an enhanced
cosmopolitan agency which makes borders easier to cross, but such
accounts do not give proper consideration to the changing nature of bor-
ders. These changes are, in fact, extensive and wide-ranging. In any case,
under conditions of globalization the ability to cross borders is not nec-
essarily an impressive achievement. When a national border is marked
by nothing more substantial than a signpost at the side of the (open)
road, as with many national borders internal to the European Union,
what freedom or mobility is represented by crossing such a border?
A major shift in border studies in recent years has been away from
an exclusive and primary concern with conventional nation-state bor-
ders (the perimeter of a polity) towards the recognition that borders
are increasingly dispersed throughout society and found ‘wherever the
movement of information, people and things is happening and is con-
trolled’ (Balibar, 2004b: 1). This move towards the study of the diffused
or generalized border has been partially offset by the post-9/11 preoc-
cupation with securitization and surveillance. Rosiere and Jones (2012)
have noted the ‘hardening’ of diffused borders through the construction
of walls or fences, a process they term ‘teichopolitics’. The resultant and
somewhat contradictory dynamics of contemporary border studies are
summed up by Lyon (2013: 6) in the following terms:
Even national borders, which once had geographical locations – however
arbitrary – now appear in airports distant from the ‘edge’ of the territory
and, more significantly, in databases that may not even be ‘in’ the country
in question.

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

The ‘biometric border’ (Amoore, 2006) is emblematic of these major

shifts, as is the idea of ‘remote control’ (obliging airlines to conduct
their own security checks on passengers and their travel documents, for
instance) (Lahav and Guiraudon, 2000). The study of borders, which
no longer only take the form of securitized perimeters, and which are
sometimes enacted by commercial agents and which can possibly be
controlled from a distant centre, suggests a radically transformed land-
scape of borders and bordering. However, certain key aspects of borders
(and the way we study them) remain largely untouched by current
thinking, including a continued preoccupation with the borders of the
state. Similarly, the role of citizens in bordering activity remains largely
the same in the border studies imagination despite the ability of ‘remote
control’ to recruit a range of actors to carry out work on behalf of the
state.

The changing nature of borders

There is a peculiar inertia at work in border studies: the assumption that

meaningful borders exist only as the political edges of a nation-state.
According to this logic borders exist to divide one country from another
and the possession of these mechanisms of territorial control is a mark
of state sovereignty. However, in contrast to, and in parallel with, such
statist accounts the idea that borders can now be diffused throughout
society (Balibar, 2002) has gained traction within the social sciences
(but, it should be noted, it is by no means accepted by all commenta-
tors). Balibar’s notion has opened the door on a whole new border stud-
ies agenda, but it could not have done so without the prior recognition
that borders are changing and that these changes needed to be explained
(coupled with the idea that there exists a greater variety of borders and
bordering processes than has been acknowledged hitherto). Expressed
slightly differently, we can say that Balibar’s insight provided the focal
point around which many other ideas quickly condensed. As reflected
in the contemporary literature, the following can be identified as the key
changes in the nature of borders.
The first change is the idea mentioned above that ‘borders are every-
where’. This is the recognition that multiple sites of bordering now exist;
not only at airports, Eurostar terminals and maritime ports, but also in
other locations, many of which would not be thought of as borders in the

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 Introduction 

conventional sense (i.e. the nation-state’s edges): in travel agencies and

other offices where travel documents are issued and databases checked,
along motorways where trucks are scanned and car number plates moni-
tored, and on the internet where credit card shopping makes possible
the ‘transaction mining’ of information for security purposes (Amoore
and de Goede, 2008). In March 2007 The Independent carried the story
that the UK security and intelligence service M15 had been training
supermarket checkout staff to detect potential terrorists. According to
the article, the aim of the training was to enable supermarket staff to
identify ‘extremist shoppers’, clues being the mass purchase of mobile
phones or bulk buying of toiletries ‘which could be used as the basic
ingredient in explosives’. There are two aspects of this story which make
it particularly interesting in relation to our discussion of borders. One
is that agencies of the state are under pressure to be seen to be doing
something to reassure the public in the face of heightened perceptions
of a terrorist threat, with echoes of Rosiere and Jones’ (2012) idea of ‘tei-
chopolitics’, the ‘hardening’ of diffused borders. The other is the degree
to which the supermarket checkout now resembles a border-crossing
or transit point where personal possessions, goods and identities are
routinely scrutinized. What this example suggests is that the techniques
and practices regularly employed at the border are being introduced to
the supermarket, an idea nicely captured in John Urry’s (2007) notion of
‘frisk society’. The supermarket checkout has come to resemble a border;
a border in the midst of society.
It is possible to advance a critique of the ‘borders are everywhere’
thesis along the lines that it finds borders where they previously did not
exist through its preference for a narrative that sees everything in terms
of borders (and in so doing is guilty of the very thing that ‘cosmopolitan
realism’ was accused of). In defence of ‘borders are everywhere’ (or rather
the author’s relationship to that position) there are several points that
should be made. One is that if what counts as a border can only be those
things that have traditionally been borders then we cannot properly grasp
the dynamics of contemporary bordering, and the debate about borders
will not be advanced significantly. Second, the ‘borders are everywhere’
thesis should not be taken literally: ‘borders can be anywhere’ is perhaps
a more accurate statement of affairs: the point is to ascertain what is oper-
ating as a border at any particular time and where it is being deployed.
This is a dynamic not a static situation; borders tomorrow may not be
what or where they were today. The third point that needs to be made is

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

that as van Houtum argues, ‘borders are the product of our knowledge
and interpretation and that they as such produce a disciplining lens
through which we perceive and imagine the world’ (van Houtum, 2005:
674). Looking at the world through the lens of borders and bordering
produces (potentially) an important and possible unique perspective,
which it is acknowledged is one such perspective among many. Finally,
it has to be said that ‘borders are everywhere’ is a thesis only supported
with heavy qualification in this book. The cosmopolitan borders under
consideration are not well served by the attempt to characterize them as
a ubiquitous field of securitized bordering. Looking at borderwork, at
multiperspectivalism, at fixity and unfixity and at connectivity reveals
borders that cannot be everywhere. They certainly cannot be everywhere
for everyone, and it is more likely to be the case that (with many of them)
they appear to be nowhere at all, unless they are targeted at particular
groups. The vernacularization of borders, it is argued, makes borders less
obvious and less generalized. In this sense, the book offers an extended
critique of the ‘borders are everywhere’ thesis rather than unconditional
support for it.
The second change is the recognition that borders mean different
things to different people and act differently on different groups: borders
are designed to separate and filter. This shift is captured by Balibar’s
(2002) idea of polysemy, which suggests that borders are becoming
‘asymmetrical membranes’ (Hedetoft, 2003) or acting like ‘firewalls’
(Walters, 2006). All of these metaphors point to borders being designed
to allow the passage of ‘desirables’ while keeping out ‘undesirables’. The
UK has developed polysemic borders in its attempt to create ‘security in
a global hub’ (Cabinet Office, 2007) through e-borders designed to be
‘open to business but closed to terrorists and traffickers’. The border is
polysemic precisely because it works very differently on those who have
‘trusted traveller’ status compared to those on whom suspicion falls at
the point of (or before) entry, for example those travelling on a student
visa, or those without adequate documentation.
Taking up this theme in a recently published reference volume Wastl-
Walter (2012) writes that borders
are manifested in diverse ways, and have various functions and roles. They
can be material or non-material and may appear in the form of a barbed-
wire fence, a brick wall, a door, a heavily armed border guard or as symbolic
boundaries ... while a brick wall may represent security for some, for others,
it may be a symbol of suppression.

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 Introduction 

It could be argued that Wastl-Walter does not go far enough in this state-
ment. Many kinds of borders exist between brick walls and ‘symbolic
boundaries’, such as e-borders and the ‘juxtaposed’ borders found along
the Eurostar route. Nevertheless, what is particularly relevant in Wastl-
Walter’s formulation is the recognition that borders can mean different
things to different people; security or suppression, walls or bridges, bar-
riers or turnstiles.
In this context it is worth mentioning that in this book no distinc-
tion is drawn between borders and boundaries, the former term being
preferred throughout. There is a sense in the literature, particularly
the anthropological work, that boundaries denote cultural or ethnic
discontinuities. My view is that many different types of border exist –
ethnic, national, linguistic, gendered, racial and generational amongst
them – but that there is no added value in designating some of them as
boundaries and others borders (van Houtum, 2005). Moreover, with the
emphasis on bordering as a process characteristic of the contemporary
period it makes little sense to continue to talk about boundary demarca-
tion. Perhaps more problematic is the danger of the inflexibility which
would accompany the assertion of fixed or unchanging meanings to
borders and boundaries. One of the themes developed throughout the
book is that there can be no hard and fast distinction between borders/
non-borders. This said, it would be rather odd, to say the least, to argue
for a borders/boundaries distinction.
The third change is further recognition that the location of borders is
changing, away from the edges of a nation-state. In fact, borders can now
be remote and distant from the territory they are designed to protect.
For the past decade or so the UK has been developing ‘offshore borders
all over the world’ (Home Office, 2007) in order to prevent undesirables
from starting their journey to the UK. The Eurostar train link has intro-
duced ‘juxtaposed’ borders so that UK passport control takes place at
Gard du Nord and French passport control at St Pancras. In Lahav and
Guiraudon’s (2000) terms ‘borders are not always at the border’.
The fourth change follows logically from the first three: borders are
developing into mechanisms to ‘control mobility rather than territory’
(Durrschmidt and Taylor, 2007: 56). The traditional idea that borders
lock down territory or form a security perimeter for the sovereign
nation-state has given way to the idea of the border as a manageable
conduit, speeding up transit where necessary, blocking passage when
required. The fifth change in understanding was in fact introduced

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

above: that borders are conceptualized less as things (lines on a map)

but as processes. This is a shift of emphasis from borders to bordering.
We have seen that the diffusion and dispersal of borders, their polysemic
qualities and their remoteness means that borders are not what or where
they used to be. It is for these reasons that it makes more sense to talk
about processes of bordering rather than fixed or territorial borders.
The sixth change is that borders are increasingly ‘messy’. They can be
thought of as messy in several senses. First, they comprise an untidy
collection of activities and sites of action littered across society (and
beyond). Even if we limit ourselves to thinking about national security
borders for a moment, the bordering activity associated with this takes
place in a variety of settings. In the UK this would include inter alia
e-borders located ‘offshore’ and all around the world, juxtaposed’ pass-
port controls in Paris and Brussels, UK border controls at Heathrow and
other airports, railway stations along the Eurostar route (e.g. Ebbsfleet,
Ashford), the ‘ring of steel’ surrounding the City of London (Coaffee,
2004), checkpoints at various points along the motorway system and, on
occasions, in banks, internet cafes, travel agencies, shopping malls and,
as we have already seen, even supermarket checkouts.
Second, borders can appear messy because the responsibility for bor-
ders is no longer clear-cut, and the role of each border in relation to oth-
ers can no longer be assumed. Paradigmatic of this is the phenomenon of
‘remote control’ in which a range of actors and agencies, such as airline
companies and universities, are co-opted to carry out bordering tasks
which serve to shift responsibility ‘from central state to private actors
such as employers, carriers, and travel agencies’(Lahav and Guiraudon,
2000: 58). Third, not all of the processes and sites of activity are visible to
all: some bordering activity takes place beyond the nation-state (e.g. off-
shore borders), and other activity is targeted at excluding specific groups
rather than everyone. Preventing someone from travelling at an ‘offshore’
border is likely to be far less visible than detaining the same traveller at
Heathrow airport. Fourth, the range of actors involved in borderwork
mean that we could never be sure where and when bordering processes
will be set in motion. Borderwork means that bordering has become an
unruly business, difficult to map and difficult to govern. For all of these
reasons an overview (or a complete picture) of bordering activity at any
given time will be almost impossible to establish. Bauder (2011: 1132)
has identified this as a key issue, and he too draws attention to the wide
range of ‘uses of a border and border practices’. Moreover, he takes the

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 Introduction 

view that ‘various aspects of the border represent meanings and material
practices that cannot be unified into a stable and coherent concept’. This
is the most significant sense in which the border can be said to be messy:
there is no longer a societal vantage point or privileged political posi-
tion from which we can reliably know where all borders are to be found,
what forms they take, what purpose they serve and who is involved in
maintaining them (Rumford, 2008a). Borders take so many forms, are
constituted by such diverse practices and are influenced by so many
people that the very idea of the border lacks coherence. Put another way,
bordering practices are many and various and do not aggregate together
to form a seamless, tidy whole.

Four dimensions of cosmopolitan borders

The many ways in which borders have changed in recent times means
that the conventional tools with which we attempt to understand them
are no longer adequate. Importantly we have come to realize that not
all borders are linked to security concerns. This undermines one of the
long-standing assumptions shared by the border studies community:
that borders are markers of territorial ownership and are one of the most
treasured possessions of nation-states. Borders do not always function for
security, especially those borders which are driven by citizen initiatives.
Expressed slightly differently we can say that borders can no longer be
reduced to ‘lines in the sand’, as a range of scholars have realized (Parker
et al., 2009),1 and in response the study of borders has become much
more multi-disciplinary and much more diverse: if borders increasingly
take many forms and exist in many possible locations then it is not sur-
prising that they are studied in a variety of ways by scholars looking at
unconventional places and using innovative investigative tools.
We have already seen the extent to which borders are changing. One
result is increasingly ‘messy’ borders which do not follow the conven-
tional ‘rules’ of bordering. I am suggesting that these messy borders
pose a major challenge for border studies. In response I propose a new
framework for border studies, a framework which is able to apprehend
‘cosmopolitan borders’. The new framework comprises four dimensions
of bordering: vernacularization, multiperspectivalism, fixity/unfixity
and connectivity. The four dimensions of this framework are reflected
in the structure of the book, with a chapter being devoted to each. What

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

is required at this stage is for each of these dimensions to be introduced

in turn.

Vernacularization
In many ways the ‘final frontier’ for border studies (no pun intended),
in the sense that it is the least well-covered in the literature, vernacu-
larization is an important, and perhaps the most distinctive, dimension
of the cosmopolitan borders thesis as it marks a shift in emphasis from
a study of the borders of the state to a study of societal borders, and
in doing so makes meaningful the question of ‘who borders?’ In this
book one particular aspect of vernacularization is looked at in detail;
borderwork, the bordering activity of ordinary people. Borderwork can
be best thought of as bordering activity not driven by needs of the state
or dominated by national security concerns. Importantly, borderwork
demonstrates that borders can perform a range of functions in society
and can lead to many different political ends. Borders are revealed as a
political resource utilized by a broad range of interested parties. There
are degrees of vernacularization: at one end of the spectrum we can cite
citizen borderwork, and the activity taking place at places such as Melton
Mowbray, Stroud and Berwick-upon-Tweed (as outlined in Chapters 2
and 4). At the other end of the spectrum would be the sort of activity
which encourages ordinary people to work on behalf of the state, but
retain a good deal of autonomy. For example, the ‘remote control’ which
obliges universities in the UK to check the documentation and attend-
ance record of their overseas students is ‘low level’ borderwork; activity
which is carried out by ordinary people who do not work for the Borders
Agency and whose jobs are not formally integrated with the security
services. Nevertheless, this work constitutes bordering activity and is in
the service of the state. What is of real value in the idea of borderwork is
not the extent to which ordinary people are drawn into the orbit of state
security but the recognition that bordering can be a project which is
unrelated (or even contrary) to the needs of national security and driven
by an agenda which does not dovetail with other types of bordering
activity. Borders can march to the beat of different drums.

Multiperspectivalism
We are routinely encouraged to see the border from the perspective
of the state. A cosmopolitan border studies recognizes the importance

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 Introduction 

of including a perspective from the border. There is a precedent for

identifying the border as a key cosmopolitan site. Walter Mignolo has
argued that ‘border thinking’ is a core component of critical cosmopoli-
tanism. For Mignolo, critical cosmopolitanism comes from the ‘exterior
of modernity’, in other words coloniality (Mignolo, 2000: 724). Border
thinking – ‘the transformation of the hegemonic imaginary’ from
the perspective of the excluded – is a tool of critical cosmopolitanism
(ibid.: 736–7). We can usefully extend this and propose that ‘seeing from
the border’ is a key dimension of the cosmopolitanization of borders.
‘Seeing from the border’ cannot be reduced to the idea that it is possible
to view a border from both sides. More than ‘looking both ways’ across
a border we need to aspire to look from the border. As borders can be
found ‘wherever selective controls are to be found’ (Balibar, 2002: 84–5)
seeing like a border does not equate to ‘being on the outside and looking
in’ (or looking out from the watchtower to the wilderness beyond). As
we have seen, borders are not necessarily always working in the service
of the state. When seeing like a state one is committed to seeing bor-
ders as lines of securitized defence. Borders do not always conform to
this model. In a desire to shore up what may be perceived as the inef-
fectual borders of the nation-state borderworkers may engage in local
bordering activity designed to enhance status or regulate mobility; gated
communities, respect zones, resilient communities of CCTV watching
citizens: these borders are not necessarily designed to enhance national
security. It is clear that cosmopolitanism is crucial for understanding
borders. Equally, placing border perspectives – thinking and seeing from
the border – at the core of cosmopolitan thinking has important conse-
quences, not least of which is the centrality of borders to understanding
the world: borders are increasingly central to the study of political and
social transformations.

Un/fixity
By themselves border guards, passport controls, body scanners and bio-
metrics do not make a border. A collection of things and activities only
becomes consolidated as a border if the bordering functions are rein-
forced from day to day in the activities of a range of key actors (border
guards, passengers, traffickers), and all concerned share common border
narratives. It may be tempting to believe that a border is immovable –
because of its physical presence, as with a massive wall, a multitude of
CCTV cameras or the visibility of weapons and soldiers – but even in

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

such cases unfixity is still possible. Take the USA–Mexico border as an

example. The most heavily policed border in the world (on the US side)
it features high walls (in places), security patrols, infra-red sensors and
a range of other detection devices, and, despite all this, large numbers of
illegal immigrants cross from Mexico to the US every year, many origi-
nating from countries in Latin America.2 The solidity of the US border
cannot mask the spectre of unfixity. The fixity of the border – its degree
of institutionalization – can never be taken for granted nor is its fixity
achieved once and for all; borders must be made and remade on a regu-
lar basis if they are to be fit for purpose. Considering the fixity/unfixity
of borders allows us to view borders as provisional and incomplete (by
accident or by design), and as political resources which can be utilized
not only by agencies of the state but also by a whole range of other actors,
thereby supporting the cosmopolitan borders thesis.

Connectivity
Borders can be thought of as connective tissue. Borders are convention-
ally thought to divide one nation-state from another but they are also able
to connect, not just proximate entities, it is argued here, transnationally
and globally. In other words, the border does not only allow for ‘local’
connectivity with the other side of a border but creates the potential for
transnational networking. This means that we must take issue with the
idea, expressed, for example, by Häkli and Kaplan (2002: 7), that ‘cross-
border interactions are more likely to occur when the “other side” is
easily accessible, in contrast to when people live farther away from the
border’. But people can possess an interest in, and connection to, distant
borders, for example the locals in an Australian bar who spend time
online monitoring the US–Mexico border via live webcam links. In fact
the US–Mexico border can now be policed by anyone with an internet
connection, hence it is being dubbed the ‘google border’.3 ‘Once logged
in the volunteers spend hours studying the borderscape and are encour-
aged to email authorities when they see anyone on foot, in vehicles or
aboard boats heading towards US territory from Mexico.’4 Borders
can work to provide transnational or global connectivity by allowing
people to project themselves beyond their locality by constructing new
networking opportunities. This connectivity also lends credibility to the
vernacularization thesis: borders, as political resources, offering routes
to empowerment for ordinary people.

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 Introduction 

Recognition of cosmopolitan borders not only necessitates changes in

the way we study borders but also throws new light on the dynamics
of cosmopolitanism. Contrary to the mainstream view, borders are sites
where cosmopolitan activity can be observed – they are ‘workshops of
cosmopolitanism’ – and, it is argued here, processes of bordering can be
better understood through the lens of cosmopolitanism.

Notes
 This is a reference to the ‘Lines in the Sand’ manifesto authored by Noel Parker,
Nick Vaughan-Williams and 15 other collaborating authors, including the
author of this book.
 In 2007 more than 850,000 people were caught trying to illegally cross the
nearly 2,000-mile-long border. Elizabeth Dwoskin ‘The u.s.-Mexico border
got secured. Problem solved?’ Businessweek, 21 February 2013, http://www.
businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/the-u-dot-s-dot-mexico-border-got-
secured-dot-problem-solved
 I am grateful to Anthony Cooper for bringing this to my attention.
 ‘Patrol watches texas-Mexico border-from pub in Australia’ by Richard
Luscombe, The Guardian, 23 March 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/
world/2009/mar/23/texas-mexico-patrol-webcam-australia

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0004
 2
Citizen Vernacular: The
Case of Borderwork

Abstract: The chapter offers a novel non-state centric

approach to the study of borders, building upon Balibar’s
‘borders are everywhere’ thesis. One dimension of
vernacularized borders studies is explored in detail:
borderwork, societal bordering activity undertaken by
citizens. This bordering activity is not necessarily linked to
national securitization. Borderwork is explored at two UK
sites, Melton Mowbray and Berwick-upon-Tweed, in order
to demonstrate the ways in which borders are not always
the project of the state, that they can exist for some (but not
all) and can be ‘engines of connectivity’, linking people to the
world beyond the ‘local’ border.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0005.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0005
 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

Origins of a concept

The range and scope of border studies, and a sense of what counts as a
border, for a long time, have been circumscribed by assumptions about
the primacy of nation-state borders. Such assumptions make it very
difficult to view borders which do not conform to prior expectations
to be viewed as ‘proper’ borders at all. It is still the case that for many
commentators the ‘external’ borders of the state are to be found at the
geographical limits of national territory rather than at airports, for exam-
ple.1 (This also, in part, explains the popularity of studies which focus
on cross-border communities and/or the ways that borders divide those
communities, e.g. Armbruster and Meinhof, 2011.) Even if it is accepted
(and it often isn’t) that, following Balibar, ‘borders are everywhere’ (or at
least can potentially be everywhere) the statist assumptions underpin-
ning border studies encourage scholars to look in new locations, but still
look for borders of the state. By itself then, allowing that ‘borders are
everywhere’ only shifts the agenda a little, and does not by itself form
the basis for a more reflexive and radical border studies. What is needed,
it is argued, as a corollary to the idea that ‘borders are everywhere’ is
the recognition that it is not only the state that can be responsible for
making and dismantling borders.
The value of asking the question of ‘who borders?’, aside from the
obvious benefit of causing us to reconsider one of the ‘givens’ of bor-
der studies, is that it brings into view a whole range of borders, not
hitherto considered as ‘real’ borders. In doing so it shifts the study of
borders from an almost exclusive focus on the state to the broader ter-
rain of society wherein citizens are in fact involved in constructing and
contesting borders: creating borders which facilitate mobility for some,
while creating barriers to mobility for others; creating zones which can
determine what types of economic activity can be conducted where;
contesting the legitimacy of or undermining the borders imposed by
others. Borderwork, as I have termed it – the activity of ordinary people
leading to the construction or dissolution of borders, and driven by their
own ‘grass roots’ agendas rather than those of the state (Rumford, 2007,
2008b, 2012) – can take place on any spatial scale from the geopolitical
(knocking down the Berlin Wall) to the local neighbourhood (construct-
ing zones which control flows of people into a locality, such as the ‘cold
calling exclusion zones’ and ‘respect zones’ which have been established
in many UK towns and cities).

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

The idea of borderwork puts people at the centre of the study of bor-
ders by allowing for the possibility that they are important not just as
crossers of borders but as active borderers as well. Borderwork, I would
want to argue, goes hand in hand with the idea that ‘borders are every-
where’: borders are often not only more ‘local’ than previously thought
and appear in unexpected or unconventional places, but they are also
the results of societal activity with a definite ‘bottom up’ orientation.
Moreover, the range of concerns that ordinary people have is not always
identical with those of the state. It is not surprising, therefore, that bor-
ders appear in all sorts of places, located in response to societal rather
than state-led issues.
It is worth emphasizing that all of this is important because borders
now form part of the opportunity structures of globalization. The role
of borders under conditions of globalization has not been dealt with
adequately by a literature heavily influenced by the idea of the coming of
a ‘borderless world’ (Rumford, 2008a). In fact globalization has led to a
proliferation of borders (Multiplicity, 2005) and to a wider range of actors
involved in borderwork; indeed the two developments are strongly con-
nected (Rumford, 2008b). Ordinary people, economic enterprises and
autonomous ‘civil society’ agencies can be engaged in forms of border-
work which provide a range of new political opportunities. At the same
time, borders are not always experienced as an unwelcome imposition;
there is a sense in which people welcome border management in order
to feel secure and in control of their own lives in a time when, as a result
of globalization, many traditional reference points are being eroded (van
Houtum and Pijpers, 2003; Bauman, 2006).
Borderwork offers a new framework for studying borders which does
not share the conventional assumptions that we know what borders
are for, who owns them, who benefits from them and where they are
to be found. In short, borderwork represents an invitation to look at all
borders differently. The value of the idea of borderwork then is that it
can form the nucleus of a new agenda for border studies: a cosmopolitan
border studies. Borderwork betokens a form of cosmopolitan agency
and allows for an important role for ordinary people; cosmopolitanism
can no longer be equated only with the activity of elites. Borderwork
encourages us to see borders not as distant, remote and impersonal but
as part of our everyday lives and, importantly, portals to the wider world.
We have become habituated to borders, many different kinds of borders,
as part and parcel of everyday life. Borders can constitute openings and

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

opportunities – the starting point for a business trip or a holiday abroad –

and for many of us (although by no means all) border-crossings have
become a routine part of our lives. Some of us no longer (if we ever did)
see borders as restrictive, oppressive and controlling. People are aware
that national borders can be rather impotent in the face of the activities
of terrorists, drug smugglers and people traffickers despite their high-
tech, highly securitized nature. In the face of such threats borders can
be welcomed and appreciated, in particular those borders over which
citizens can exercise a degree of control.
Furthermore, people feel confident that borders – even those borders
which are designed to increase security – offer opportunities for enhanced
mobility (for some), facilitating movement for those with the right profile
and right credentials. Borders are not always only constraining, but there
is more to this than seeing the border as a high-tech turnstile granting
preferential mobility to privileged professionals from Western countries.
Not only are we becoming more blasé about borders – accustomed to the
regular appearance of new borders; the creation of new nation-states in the
decade following the collapse of communism, the continued expansion of
the EU’s external land border and, at a more local level, the securitization
and the zoning of cities, for example – but we also tend to support their
creation (in the name of national or personal security). Some people go
further and call for greater immigration controls or restrictions on the
mobility of workers from new EU member-states, or support the crea-
tion of a new border police force (in the United Kingdom), or, in a move
to domesticate the border, choose to live behind the borders of gated
communities. Creating a gated community can certainly be interpreted
as a form of citizen borderwork; ordinary (but relatively affluent) people
erecting a highly localized border in order to create the sort of secure
(or exclusive) living environment which they believe that the state is no
longer able (or willing) to provide.
The advent of borderwork as a framework through which we can
view borders and bordering requires us to select more carefully the sort
of borders we study and where these borders are found. Borderworking
can be observed at different ‘levels’; the national and supra-national
(Bialasiewicz, 2012) in addition to the societal and ‘local’. The examples
used throughout this book reflect the novel perspective afforded by
borderwork and the borders selected will not (often) be the conventional
borders of the nation-state. It will be easier to show the value of the
borderwork framework by concentrating on unconventional borders;

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

the sort of borders not accorded the status of ‘real’ borders in standard
border studies scholarship. For example, in this chapter borderwork
will be explored at two UK sites, Melton Mowbray and Berwick-upon-
Tweed. These cases will demonstrate the ways in which borders can be
heavily influenced by citizen activity, be invisible to some (but not all),
and can be ‘engines of connectivity’, linking people to the world beyond
the ‘local’ border. Particular focus will fall on the ways in which borders
can be utilized as political resources by a range of actors. In doing so it
will highlight a way in which a borderwork-inspired agenda takes us
away from a narrow association between borders and (national) security.
Although this issue tends to dominate the literature on borders it is worth
remembering that not all borders are related to (state) security issues.

Borders as a political resource

Borderwork then is a core component of the cosmopolitanization of
borders as it allows for a shift of emphasis from state bordering, securi-
tization and the regulation of (contested) mobilities to a greater concern
with the role of borders in the politics of everyday life and bordering
as a political resource, which provide opportunities to ordinary people
as well as agencies of the state. Borders can be political resources in
the sense that they can be drawn upon by a range of actors who seek
to either selectively regulate mobility (for themselves or others) or use
the border as a staging post by means of which to connect to the wider
world. In this sense, the vernacularization of borders outlined here refers
not only to a neglected ‘bottom up’ dimension of border studies but also
to a more general appreciation that borders can be utilized for a variety
of purposes. Thus, borderwork is one part of a wider range of vernacular
or cosmopolitan practices.
The role that ordinary people play in the construction of borders
is under-represented in the border studies literature. This statement
requires further qualification. Borderwork identifies the ways in which
people construct, shift and dismantle physical borders. The emphasis is
very much on constructing and dismantling borders rather than utilizing
existing borders: this is a very important distinction. There have been
many studies examining the ways in which people become involved in
the business of the border or take advantage of the opportunities that
borders offer: trafficking, smuggling and other criminal activity, and

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

tourism, for example, but this literature confirms that the actors involved
in border-crossing activity require the (state) border in order to func-
tion; they benefit from the border but do not seek to dismantle, shift or
construct it anew. Borderwork, as outlined here, is different in that it
centres on the ability of ordinary people to make borders, not the ability
of people to use borders to reinforce identity or seek material gain. The
opportunistic use of borders is well debated in the literature. For example,
Anzaldua advances the idea that the borderlands-inhabiting, hybrid ‘mes-
tiza’ subverts the border in order to resist the division of the Mexicana
community. Conversely, Wright’s ‘maquiladora mestiza’ experiences the
border in a very different way, taking advantage of the border’s ability to
divide and fragment in order to increase social and economic standing:
the border works to differentiate groups and individuals, and those in a
position to take advantage of this can benefit at the expense of others.
The idea of borderwork is different in that it points to bordering
activity which is being conducted by actors other than the state (or the
EU). Borderwork highlights the ways in which non-state actors can be
involved in the process of bordering, not just as advocates of stronger
borders (nationalists) or as actors who utilize borders for their own ends
(traffickers, ‘booze cruisers’). Citizens increasingly make, shift and dis-
mantle borders of all kinds, for example knocking down the Berlin Wall,
building ‘peace walls’ in Northern Ireland (Diez and Hayward, 2008),
and, in an example from an earlier period, constructing the Cutteslowe
Walls to exclude the working classes from a middle class housing devel-
opment in Oxford in the 1930s (Collinson, 1963).
Borderwork can result in novel forms of political empowerment (for
some) and corresponds to what Isin and Nielsen (2008) term an ‘act of
citizenship’. For Isin and Nielsen (2008: 2) it is through an act of citizen-
ship that people constitute themselves as citizens (‘those to whom the
right to have rights is due’) and this is indicative of an active rather than a
passive (Marshallian) form of citizenship. The description of acts of citi-
zenship offered by Isin and Nielsen (2008: 10) could also be a summary
of some of the key points associated with borderwork: they ‘create new
possibilities, claim rights and impose obligations in emotionally charged
tones ... and ... are the actual moments that shift established practices,
status and order’. The link between acts of citizenship and borderwork
is established by Nyers, for whom ‘[a]cts of bordering are also acts of
citizenship in that they are part of the process by which citizens are
distinguished from others: strangers, outsiders, non-status people and

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

the rest’ (Nyers, 2008: 168). Moreover, acts of citizenship and border-
work alike are not restricted to those who are already citizens; they are
means by which ‘non-status persons can constitute themselves as being
political’ (ibid.: 162). The ‘people power’ represented by borderwork is
an example of a particular kind of grass-roots political activity, which
is transnational in nature (Kramsch and Dimitrovova, 2008). Such
grass-roots politics and ‘acts of citizenship’ have not yet been properly
accounted for in the literature on either transnational civil society or
border studies, an omission identified by Papadopoulos et al. (2008: 23)
who argue that citizenship, conventionally understood (i.e. Marshallian
rights and representation), cannot ‘accommodate or address the life of
the majority of people in transnational conditions’.
Borderwork builds upon the insights that borders can be located ‘away
from the border’ and dispersed throughout society and recognizes that in
many instances the construction of a border ‘away from the border’ may
mean that borderwork is not necessarily working to enhance national
security. In extreme cases borderwork may take the form of vigilantism
(Sen and Pratten, 2008). In some instances, for example, the ‘Minutemen’
patrols along the US–Mexico border, vigilantism is a form of borderwork
which claims to enhance national security. Borderwork alerts us to the
wide variety of bordering activity that may exist, the diversity of interests
at work in this bordering and the varied spaces within which this activity
occurs (and which can result from this activity).
The borderwork cases detailed below exemplify certain core aspects of
a cosmopolitan border studies: bordering processes which do not neces-
sarily require consensus; borders which may be invisible to many, but
extremely pertinent to a few; borders as connective tissue – ‘dividing what
is similar, connecting what is different’ (van Schendel, 2005: 44; Simmel,
1994: 1); and ordinary people (citizens) engaging in bordering activity. It
should be noted that in order to distinguish borderwork from more stand-
ard accounts of bordering the focus here falls on sites other than predict-
able border locations, such as airports, Eurostar terminals, maritime ports,
such places being the homeland of conventional border studies.

Berwick-upon-Tweed

Berwick-upon-Tweed is an English town close to the historic border

with Scotland. In the contemporary context it is thought of more as a

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

non-border, England and Scotland both being part of the UK and the
‘border’ at Berwick marking nothing more than an ancient cultural divi-
sion, on the one hand, and different UK administrative regions, on the
other. However, Berwick-upon-Tweed has witnessed a large amount of
bordering activity in recent years, partly as a result of the rebordering
which has occurred between England and Scotland both as a result of
the devolved powers to the Scottish parliament and recent attempts by
some Scottish nationalist activists to ‘redraw’ the Scottish border around
Berwick.2 To a certain extent this nationalist rebordering is already
underway. Berwick features in the Scottish tourist guide Undiscovered
Scotland, whose webpage explains Berwick’s inclusion in terms of cul-
tural affinity and commercial pragmatism. ‘Why include it [Berwick] in
“Undiscovered Scotland”? In part because it played such an important
part in Scottish history; in part because Berwick Rangers football club
plays in the Scottish rather than the English league; in part because it’s
such a magnificent place to visit; and in part because it nicely rounds off
the south eastern corner of our coverage.’3
A ‘referendum’ conducted in the town in 2008, commissioned for a UK
television documentary on the ‘Tonight’ programme, found that of those
polled 60 per cent favoured a move to Scotland. This followed another
poll conducted a week earlier by a local newspaper which found that 78
per cent of respondents wanted Berwick to relocate north of the border.
The resulting media interest surrounding the TV ‘referendum’ stimulated
Nationalist MSP Christine Grahame to lodge a motion in the Scottish
parliament urging people in Berwick to ‘return to the fold’. However,
the extent to which local campaigning was mainly driven by nationalist
sentiment is a moot point. The ‘Tonight’ TV programme chose to focus its
journalistic enquiry on the disparity between public service provision and
living standards north and south of the border as a way of highlighting
problems with the political project of Scottish devolution, not least that it
requires ‘English’ support and funding (i.e. from the national parliament
in Westminster). The Campaign for an English Parliament makes the valid
point that ‘Scotland may well have better public services thanks to money
from England, but if the UK splits up those public services will undoubt-
edly become a thing of the past. Then ... the fickle people of Berwick may
then decide that the grass is in fact greener in England’s pleasant lands.’4
Because of this activity Berwick has become a place which offers an
interesting perspective on England. Seen from the border the level of
public services and welfare provisions compares unfavourably with what

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

is on offer in Scotland. In this sense, the results of the TV referendum

can be interpreted as being less concerned with the national belonging
of Berwick and more with the inequalities in public service provision
between Scotland and England, with the Scots better off in terms of fee-
free university places, free personal care for the elderly, free central heat-
ing provision for pensioners, free school meals for some children (with
plans to extend them to children of all ages), free prescription charges for
all and free dental check-ups and eye tests. But Berwick’s relationship to
the English–Scottish border is more complex than suggested by the pos-
sibility of an either/or choice between belonging to England or Scotland.
Kiely et al. (2000) explored Berwick’s ‘unusual’ identity construction
strategy that allows the town’s inhabitants to ‘side-step’ dilemmas relat-
ing to national identity. People from the town regularly transgress some
of the most common identity rules and develop alternative ones of their
own. Indeed, people in the town turned out to be claiming, attributing,
rejecting, accepting and side-stepping national identity, in ways that we
had seldom, or never, previously encountered (Kiely et al., 2000: 1.6).
The study found that the majority of Berwick inhabitants believed the
town was neither Scottish nor English. It also found that the majority of
residents did not consider themselves to have a strong Northumberland
(English regional) identity and did not feel part of the Scottish borders
region, considering this to be equivalent of being Scottish (Kiely et al.,
2000: 1.6). Instead of feeling compelled to choose between England and
Scotland they preferred another option: emphasizing the uniqueness of
Berwick in being neither English nor Scottish.
In relation to borderwork, the possibility of a nationalist reborder-
ing of Berwick is far less significant than the incredibly rich network-
ing opportunities which exist through the border and which work to
connect Berwick internationally and globally. Berwick’s location on a
historical (national) border has facilitated a large amount of transbor-
der networking, not only between England and Scotland but in a way
that orientates Berwick ‘towards the global socio-cultural landscapes
rather than towards immediate neighbours’ (Durrschmidt and Taylor,
2007: 54). This can also be traced through the history of Berwick’s
involvement in the fishing industry, the grain trade and whaling
(Menuge and Dewar, 2009). Borders are conventionally thought to
divide one polity from another but they are also able to connect, not
just proximate polities, but, as is evident here, transnationally or even
globally.

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

Constructing the border, not as a national divide between England

and Scotland but as a space which is unique to Berwick and a gate-
way to the wider world, is the thrust of local borderworking activity.
Examples of Berwick’s growing distinctiveness and embrace of inter-
national networks include membership of the ‘slow cities’ movement
(Cittaslow), one of the first UK towns to gain this recognition.5 A
branch of the ‘slow movement’, first developed in Italy in the 1980s,6
Cittaslow prioritizes sustainable living, the availability of high quality
local produce and the quality of life in towns (no larger than 50,000
population).7 Interestingly, Berwick’s membership of Cittaslow was
reported by the BBC in the following terms: ‘A Northumberland town
has joined an elite worldwide club, which helps small communities
retain their identity in the face of globalisation.’8 However, this is not
accurate with respect to the movement’s appreciation of globalization.
The ‘slow movement’ has been shaped by an awareness of globaliza-
tion, particularly an increasingly technological interconnectedness
which values speed, disposability and simultaneity, not a rejection of it
(Parkins and Craig, 2006; Miele, 2008).
There exist other international connections. Berwick is a member of
The Walled Towns Friendship Circle, an international association which
encourages the sustainable development of walled towns and cities in
Europe and elsewhere.9 As reported in the local newspaper:
Berwick town walls are ... a major asset to the town but are underutilised
and undersold as a focus for heritage, tourism and town centre purposes.
Whether or not a bid was successful, bidding for Walled Town status would
provide the impetus and best practice framework for a major improvement
in the way we all promote and utilise the walls.10

Since 2005 Berwick has hosted an annual international Film and Media
Arts Festival.11 Some of these festivals have been themed events drawing
attention to Berwick’s border location: ‘Crossing Borders’ (2005), ‘Inner
States’ (2008), ‘Drawing the Lines’ (2009). Berwick was the recipient of
one of the UK’s first Low Carbon Community Awards, an initiative of
the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The award, one
of only ten in the UK at the time, is aimed at developing solar power
capacity and preparing the town, by working towards low carbon emis-
sions, for Transition Town status in the next few years. The Transition
Movement is an international networking movement which seeks to
raise awareness of the unsustainable dependency of industrialized

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

societies on oil, seeks new ways of reducing carbon emissions and offers
an alternative framework for making sense of the environmental crisis.12
Borderwork activity in Berwick is rooted in the search for a border
identity which transforms an historical national divide into a gateway,
not to England or to Scotland, but to Europe and the world beyond. This
conforms to van Schendel’s (2005) idea that borderlanders are able to
‘jump’ scales (local, national, regional, global) through their everyday
practices and their ‘mental maps’, and therefore do not experience the
national border only as a limit: what forms a barrier to some can present
itself as a conduit to others. People can ‘invoke’ the scale of the border
themselves; as a ‘local’ phenomenon, a nation-state ‘edge’ or as a transna-
tional staging post, thereby allowing them to reconfigure the border as
portal. Borders can provide the possibility of transnational or global con-
nectivity by allowing people to project themselves beyond their locality
by constructing new networking opportunities. Berwick is a ‘traditional’
border which finds itself at the hub of a large amount of non-traditional
borderwork activity which has resulted in a high degree of transnational
connectivity. The historical border town remains a tourist attraction,
but Berwick is a meaningful border town in a very contemporary sense;
its border identity is shaped by the entrepreneurial vision of a range of
active cultural and economic borderworkers.
When studying an historical border it is difficult to look beyond its
legacy as a symbol of division and nationalist antagonism. But Berwick-
upon-Tweed today is an example of a very different border, or more
accurately perhaps, a border which has been reinvented in accordance
with contemporary needs. Rather than efface the border in order to
emphasize connectivity, both between Scotland and England, and
between Berwick and Europe and beyond, the cultural entrepreneurs
of the town have used the historical border location as a resource with
which to project Berwick as a gateway to the wider world. The cultural
encounters and networks of connectivity within which Berwick now
operates have been established by means of the border, not by attempt-
ing to erase its existence.

Melton Mowbray

England’s self-styled ‘Rural Capital of Food’, Melton Mowbray, is a small

town in the English Midlands most famous for producing pork pies and

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

Stilton cheese. It is not on a border at all, in any conventional sense. It is

not close to the edges of the UK polity, and it is not home to an airport
or other site at which visitors arrive to the UK. A cosmopolitan border
studies, however, reveals it to be the site of a border resulting from
citizen borderwork, and in this sense it gives substance to the idea that
‘borders are everywhere’. In 2008 the town was granted EU Protected
Geographical Indication status for its pork pies (thereby joining Cornish
Pasties, Cumberland Sausages and Whitstable oysters, among others),
meaning that only pies made within a designated region centred on
the town can carry the name ‘Melton Mowbray’.13 The creation of this
new EU-sanctioned border was the outcome of grass-roots activity and
the result of the borderwork conducted by a small number of culinary
entrepreneurs.
The award of PGI status was the result of a ten-year campaign by
the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association (MMPPA). The lengthy
recognition process cannot be attributed to the laborious nature of the
EU application procedure. Over the years many legal objections were
filed and cases argued in the British courts by those producers falling
outside of the proposed pork pie boundary. Although it is claimed that
the boundary is drawn based on the history and geography of local
pork pie production, the new economic border surrounding Melton
is very much the outcome of contestations around economic interests,
centring on the needs of small producers versus much larger, national
food producers. It is in this context that we can understand the com-
ments of Matthew O’Callaghan, chair of the MMPPA: ‘We must protect
regional food; otherwise large manufacturers can plunder food inher-
itance, change recipes and deliver a substandard product.’14 The PGI
attempts to balance the need to protect the reputation of regional foods
with opportunities to protect the intellectual property that results from
the registration of a product name. There is considerable economic
advantage to be gained from PGI status to those making a successful
application.
The original boundary proposed by the MMPPA, based on an evoca-
tive history of pork pie production, was drawn at a distance of ‘no more
than a day’s travel (by horse) from Melton Mowbray across routes with
no tolls’. The official PGI application defended this on the basis that:
[e]xtensive research by a local historian has demonstrated that during the
early and middle 19th century when the pies were first being produced on
a commercial basis geographical and economic barriers would have limited

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

production of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie to the town of Melton Mowbray
and its surrounding district.15

This initial attempt at boundary setting was unpopular as many exist-

ing producers of Melton Mowbray pork pies fell outside the boundary.
Saxby Brothers, a producer of Melton Mowbray pork pies since 1904,
raised concerns in a letter to the industry magazine The Grocer in May
2003:
[W]e are under attack from people who should really be our allies. These
people make up the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association (MMPPA) of
which O’Callaghan is chairman. Its attempt to create, under EC regulations,
Protected Geographical Indication status for this product will, if success-
ful, prevent Saxby’s from continuing to market our main product, simply
because our factory happens to fall outside a new arbitrary and artificial
boundary.

As a result of the dissatisfaction with the proposed PGI border, and

subsequent lobbying, it was extended south to include the Saxby’s
factory.16 The new demarcation contradicted the historical rationale for
the boundary, particularly its extension north to include another large
producer, Northern Foods. The originally proposed boundary was based
on calculations of the distance a ‘pieman’ could travel in a day. On this
basis, the justification for the original boundary not extending beyond
the River Trent (to the north of Melton) was ‘because a pieman would
not have paid a fee to a ferryman’. The new demarcation still left some
producers unhappy. For example, Graham Booth of George Adams &
Sons was quoted as saying, ‘[o]ur factory is 26 miles from the centre of
Melton Mowbray and we’re excluded. Yet Saxby’s, which is 35 miles away
from the centre, was included.’ After basing the original pork pie border
for the PGI application in terms of an historical area of production the
revised boundary required a new rationale and legitimacy. The official
application to the EU acknowledges that the proposed region ‘is larger
than the original area of production’ and ‘recognises that production of
the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie ... has taken place for 100 years in the
wider area surrounding Melton Mowbray’.17
The creation of this new EU-enabled border was the outcome of local
entrepreneurial activity pursued by economically motivated borderwork-
ers and channelled through the complex structures of EU (and national)
governance (Jullien and Smith, 2008). Melton Mowbray has embraced
a new form of EU bordering (which overlays European borders on UK

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

space) which has had important ramifications for those pie producers
falling outside of the protected zone. Melton Mowbray’s new pork pie
border is invisible to all but other food producers, yet impacts on a wide
range of people and activities through the links it provides to Europe
(and beyond).
A sign at Melton Mowbray railway station reads, ‘Welcome to Melton
Mowbray, Rural Capital of Food, Home of Stilton Cheese, Melton
Mowbray Pork Pies.’ This culinary branding and the pork pie border-
work have brought with it a significant potential for international
connectivity. PGI status has encouraged Melton Mowbray to position
itself as a centre of food excellence, placing Melton on the ‘global food
map’ by, for example, hosting the annual East Midlands Food and Drink
Festival, ‘the largest regional celebration of British produce in the UK’,18
and securing Fairtrade Town status (in 2007).19 The new border also con-
nects Melton to Europe, not only because it empowers Melton to label
itself as the UK’s ‘Rural Capital of Food’ with greater legitimacy through
EU recognition, but also because Melton finds itself on a European
border, placing its pork pies alongside other PGI/PDO products such
as Champagne, Parma ham and Camembert cheese. The potential for
enhanced connectivity which PGI status brings was not lost on former
Europe Minister Caroline Flint. Speaking in 2009 she said, ‘officially
recognising and protecting the names of our finest regional products
can bring huge benefits including publicity and access to new markets.
And soon with the opening of a direct rail link from Melton Mowbray to
London, there will be even more opportunities for local businesses to tap
into the European market.’20
The new border around Melton is a very good example of borderwork.
It represents a form of empowerment (for some economic actors) and
can be understood as an act of citizenship whereby claims-making based
on intellectual property rights bestows a new form of legitimacy on those
successfully pursing economic interests. It is also a good example of the
construction of a border – but not a conventional polity-edge border,
rather a ‘border away from the border’ – which results in a new inside/
outside, inclusion/exclusion relationship. As with the case of Berwick-
upon-Tweed an exploration of the borderworking activity allows us to
understand what it means to ‘see like a border’: from Melton the UK
is proximate with and connected to the rest of the EU in a direct and
non-abstract way. ‘Seeing from the border’ also places Melton in a very
different relation to the rest of the UK; as a ‘capital’ (of food), and as

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

a vanguard of environmental planning (Transition Towns). In Rajaram

and Grundy-Warr’s terms Melton embraces ‘other senses of the border,
of experiences, economies, and politics that are concealed’ (Rajaram and
Grundy-Warr, 2007: xxix). This is an ‘invisible’ border whose ‘concealed’
nature is revealed only by a cosmopolitan border studies.

Concluding thoughts

Borderwork is the key with which to unlock cosmopolitan borders.

Borderwork encourages a very different perspective on borders and
bordering and initiates new lines of enquiry for border studies scholars:
who claims the border? How is the border utilized as a political resource?
Why is the border drawn in a particular place? The move away from an
exclusive study of state borders means that these are fresh and urgent
questions.
The shift away from a statist focus is important. Borderwork follows
a different logic and creates the need for fresh insights into the process
of bordering which do not start and end with questions of security.
This dovetails with the wider trend to view borders in terms other than
simply a frontline of national defence. For example, the recent wave of
interest in the airport (Cresswell, 2006; Fuller and Ross, 2005; Salter,
2008; Urry, 2007). In this literature we can locate the idea that the
border can be studied outside of a narrow nation-state context; in the
case of the airport the global connectivity of these ‘non spaces’ (Auge,
1995) is arguably of much greater importance. If a vernacularized bor-
der studies is the ambition, freeing the study of the border from an
essential and irreducible relation to the nation-state is an important
first step.
We have seen that a cosmopolitan border studies can make an impor-
tant contribution to the study of borders. It recasts borders as a societal
issue and places people centre stage. In doing so it also places borders
more centrally in respect of research on social and political transforma-
tions in the contemporary world. Similarly, border studies can contribute
to our understanding of cosmopolitanism. Borderwork democratizes
cosmopolitanism; new forms of bordering are just as likely to be devel-
oped from the ‘bottom up’ as well as ‘top down’. In other words, a focus
on borderwork vernacularizes cosmopolitanism and acts as a corrective
to the tendency to equate cosmopolitans with elites.

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 Citizen Vernacular: The Case of Borderwork 

Notes
 The following comparison is instructive. Heathrow airport is used by 70
million passengers annually (The Independent, 14 January 2013). St Pancras
International railway station is used by 45 million passengers (railway-
technology.com). The port of Dover, the UK’s busiest port, was used by 13.3
million passengers (in 2005) (coastalkent.net).
 If Scotland achieves independence in the near future it is likely that this
debate will be reignited.
 http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/berwick/berwickupontweed/index.
html
 ‘Berwick wants to join Scotland,’ Campaign for an English Parliament,
Oxfordshire, 17 February 2008, http://cepoxfordshire.blogspot.com/2008/02/
berwick-wants-to-join-scotland.html
 Ludlow in Shropshire was the first town in the UK to be admitted to
Cittaslow (2003), Alysham in Norfolk was the second and Diss, also in
Norfolk, was the third. Mold became the first Cittaslow in Wales (2006) and
Perth the first in Scotland in 2007.
 The Slow Food movement began in 1986. McDonald’s opened a branch at
the site of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Some locals were angered by this and a
writer, Carlo Petrini, started a campaign for an alternative to the ‘fast life’.
 In 1999 several Italian towns pledged themselves to reducing traffic,
increasing green spaces and pedestrian zones, promoting local produce,
protecting the environment and enhancing quality of life. The Cittaslow
movement now consists of 120 towns in 18 countries across the world.
 ‘Border town wins “slow” accolade” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/
tyne/7011699.stm
 The WTFC was ‘founded in 1989 as an International Forum to promote
the many mutual interests shared by walled towns throughout the world’.
Current membership is 152. http://wtfc.obsidianinternet.net/
 ‘Berwick to make bid for walled town award’, The Berwick Advertiser, 13
September 2007, http://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/news/Berwick-to-
make-bid-for.3197888.jp
 http://www.berwickfilm-artsfest.com
 http://transitiontowns.org/
 Stilton Cheese was awarded Protected Designation of Origin status in 1996.
There are several key differences between Protected Geographical Indication
(PGI) status and Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. PDO status
requires foods to be produced, processed and prepared exclusively within the
specified geographic area, while PGI status requires foodstuff to be closely
linked to a specific area with at least one of the preparation stages taking
place within the designated boundary. Both geographical indicators require

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

preparation and processing of the foodstuff to adhere to strict standards,

rooted firmly in local tradition (European Commission, 2007).
 Quoted in The Independent, 31 July 2004
 Official Journal of the European Union 2008/C85/11, http://eur-lex.europa.
eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2008:085:0017:0020:EN:PDF
 Saxbys ceased pork pie production in 2007 after being sold to General Mills
UK.
 The pork pie region was eventually delineated as follows: ‘The town of
Melton Mowbray and its surrounding region bounded as follows: – to
the North, by the A52 from the M1 and the A1 and including the city of
Nottingham, – to the East, by the A1 from the A52 to the A605 and including
the towns of Grantham and Stamford, – to the West, by the M1 from the A52
to the A45, – to the South, by the A45 and A605 from the M1 to the A1 and
including the town of Northampton.’ Official Journal of the European Union
2008/C85/11 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2
008:085:0017:0020:EN:PDF
 http://www.eastmidlandsfoodfestival.co.uk/
 The Fairtrade Town movement aims at encouraging more ethical forms of
international trade, ‘guaranteeing a better deal for farmers and workers and
great products for consumers. Action in your area can and does have an
impact on communities thousands of miles away’ (webpage blurb). Of the
815 Fairtrade Towns in 18 countries over half (479) are in the UK http://www.
fairtradetowns.org/
 http://www.porkpie.co.uk/news.asp

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 3
‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards
Multiperspectivalism

Abstract: The chapter offers a critique of consensus (mutual

recognition of borders) in border studies. It is argued
that borders do not have to be visible to all in order to be
effective. The case for a multiperspectival border studies is
then outlined: borders cannot be properly understood from
a single privileged vantage point and bordering processes
can be interpreted differently from different perspectives. The
idea of ‘seeing like a border’ is introduced as a development
of (as well as critique of) the work of Mignolo and Mezzadra
and Neilson, amongst others. The chapter revisits Berwick-
upon-Tweed and demonstrates that ‘seeing like a border’ and
borderwork complement each other.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0006.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0006 
 Cosmopolitan Borders

In a world of heightened security risks, enhanced personal mobility

(for many, but not all) and transnational flows of goods, finances and
services – all commonly associated with globalization – we encounter
not a borderless world but a plethora of borders which are found not just
in places where we normally expect to find borders. Borders proliferate
and ‘occupy “a multiplicity of sites” and “seep into the city and the neigh-
bourhood” in addition to existing at the edges of a polity’ (Amoore et al.,
2008). This means that we experience borders not always at a remove,
but also in more intimate or domestic arenas. Borders are an aspect of
everyday life. Familiar spaces may be saturated with ‘borders, walls,
fences, thresholds, signposted areas, security systems and checkpoints,
virtual frontiers, specialized zones, protected areas, and areas under
control’ (Multiplicity, 2005). This multiplication and diffusion of borders
normally goes under the banner of ‘borders are everywhere’ which, as we
have already seen, is an idea which has transformed the study of borders
and bordering. In addition to this, borders are no longer seen only as
lines on a map but as spaces in their own right (as in the idea of ‘border-
lands’ and ‘borderzones’) and, more importantly perhaps, as processes;
in short, there has been a shift from borders to bordering (Parker and
Vaughan-Williams, 2012), or rebordering on some accounts (Andreas,
2000). The argument advanced here is that the changes to borders are
in fact more far-reaching than can be captured by the ideas that ‘borders
are everywhere’, or that bordering processes are more important than
borders-as-things, or even that security concerns have led to massive
rebordering.
Scholars studying borders must now routinely address a wide range
of complex ‘what, where, and who’ questions. What constitutes a border
(when the emphasis is on processes of bordering not borders-as-things)?
Where are these borders to be found? Who is doing the bordering?
It is still possible to ask these questions and receive a straightforward
and predictable answer: ‘the state’. But this is less and less a satisfactory
answer in many cases. The increasing diversity and multiplication of
bordering sites provoke a key question: from what perspective should
this multiplicity of borders be viewed? We need to guard against the
possibility that even when acknowledging that borders can be diffused
throughout society we still choose to look at borders from the perspec-
tive of the state, by restricting debate to, for example, the extent to which
the development of borderlands is compatible with conventional notions
of securitized borders.

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

‘Seeing like a border’ shifts the emphasis in border studies in several

important ways. First, as borders can be found ‘wherever selective
controls are to be found’ (Balibar, 2002: 84–5) ‘seeing like a border’ does
not equate to ‘being on the outside and looking in’. Bordering processes
permeate everyday life, well captured in Urry’s (2007) notion of ‘frisk
society’ in which passing through public spaces is akin to the experience
of airport security. In aspiring to see like a border, the constitutive nature
of borders in social and political life must be recognized. Second, borders
are not necessarily always working in the service of the state. When ‘see-
ing like a state’ (Scott, 1998) one is committed to seeing borders as lines
of securitized defence. Borders do not always conform to this model: we
have seen how borderworkers may engage in local bordering activity
designed to enhance status or regulate mobility: gated communities,
respect zones, ‘resilient’ communities of CCTV watching citizens.
Third, ‘seeing like a border’ does not necessarily mean identifying
with the subaltern, the dispossessed, the downtrodden, the marginal.
We have already seen that status enhancement, or mobility regulation,
is prime mover behind borderwork. The border, and the borderwork
which has led to its construction, may be the project of those seeking to
gain further advantage in society: entrepreneurs or affluent citizens, for
example. Why remain passive in the face of other peoples’ borders when
it is possible to obtain advantage by becoming a proactive borderer? If
borders are networked throughout society and more and more people
can participate in borderwork, then the capacity to make or undo bor-
ders becomes a potential source of political capital. ‘Seeing like a border’
means taking into account perspectives from those at, on, or shaping the
border, and this constituency is increasingly large and diverse.
Fourth, borders can be ‘invisible’ (to some, but not to all). This asser-
tion runs counter to one of the most established truths in border studies
which is that, ‘a border that is not visible to all has failed its purpose’ (van
Schendel, 2005: 41). The possible ‘invisibility’ of borders has largely been
overlooked by border studies scholars because of the assumption that a
border cannot be invisible to those who are designed to be bordered out
(but see, for example, Kotef and Amir’s (2011) account of the function of
the ‘imaginary line’ at Israeli border crossings). In other words, an invis-
ible border would neither deter nor prevent illegal border crossings; it
would have no functionality. This may be true but it is also largely irrel-
evant; borders can certainly be ‘invisible’ to the majority of the popula-
tion that the border is designed to protect. This is true of borders located

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

in one place but projected in another entirely, as with the ‘juxtaposed’

borders established by the UK along the Eurostar routes, UK passport
control being situated at the French terminus Gare du Nord in Paris,
French controls at London’s St. Pancras. While the invisibility of the ‘jux-
taposed’ border may be queried there are other examples where it would
be less so. As in cases where the invisibility of borders, including national
state borders, is deemed desirable (by some). For example, in the past
few years the UK government has invested heavily in e-borders, offshore
borders and juxtaposed borders, developments designed to ensure that
UK borders are ‘open to business but closed to terrorists and traffickers’
(Cabinet Office, 2007; Home Office, 2008a, 2008b). The location of these
borders remains invisible to many; not to those attempting to cross them,
for whom they are palpable, but certainly to many of those living within
these invisible borders. The maintenance of EU borders by Frontex, the
EU borders agency, would be another good example (boat patrols in the
Mediterranean and along the coast of West Africa) designed to contrib-
ute to a formidable physical barrier to those beyond the EU’s border
while not necessarily registering in the consciousness of, or impacting
on, those living on the inside. Borders can be highly selective and work
to render them invisible to the majority of the population, who do not
recognize the border as a border, or for whom no such border is deemed
to exist. In this sense, ‘seeing like a border’ leads to the discovery that
some borders are designed not to be seen.

Resources for a multiperspectival border studies

The aim of a multiperspectival border studies is not to occupy

the ‘standpoint of the subjugated’, which is but one perspective.
Multiperspectivalism in this case is not synonymous with ‘bottom up’,
although it may incorporate it. Moreover, the borders in question are by
no means always at the periphery. A multiperspectival border studies is
concerned with borders that are diffused throughout society as well as
those at the edges.
The development of the multiperspectival borders thesis has been
stimulated by an array of influences originating from several academic
disciplines all of which have questioned why the study of borders is
conducted in a certain way. The following can be singled out in a brief
review. Newman and Paasi (1998) have highlighted the connectivity of

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

borders, thereby helping shift the discussion of borders away from an

exclusive concern with division (a staple of state-centric border studies).
More importantly perhaps in the present context they have recognized
that locals do not necessarily see borders in the same way as govern-
ments (Newman and Paasi, 1998: 195). Sibley (1995) understands borders
as societal and notes that groups use borders symbolically to further
their own ends (e.g. securing sociospatial/ethnic homogeneity). Ulrich
Beck (2000: 51–2) has recast borders, rather provocatively, as ‘mobile
patterns that facilitate overlapping loyalties’, probably the most funda-
mental re-imagining of the core function of borders yet encountered
(see Rumford, 2013 for an extended critique). Walter Mignolo’s work on
borders is centrally concerned with multiperspectivalism, in particular
his idea of ‘border thinking’ (‘critical cosmopolitanism’). For Mignolo,
‘border thinking’ originates from the ‘exterior of modernity’, in other
words coloniality (Mignolo, 2000: 724). Border thinking is ‘the trans-
formation of the hegemonic imaginary’ from the perspective of the
excluded – (ibid.: 736–7). Border thinking implies that marginalized
voices bring themselves into the conversation, rather than waiting to
be invited. In Mignolo’s words, ‘everyone participates instead of “being
participated” ’ (ibid., 2000a: 744).
Multiperspectivalism has also emerged from a critical engagement
with the work of authors who are ostensibly working towards similar
goals. A good example is the work of Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (2007)
who bring together the themes of multiperspectivalism, territory and
individual experience to bear on the study of borders in their edited
collection Borderscapes. The idea of ‘borderscapes’ allows for the ‘study
of the border as mobile, perspectival, and relational’ (Rajaram and
Grundy-Warr, 2007: x), thus pointing in the direction of a multiper-
spectival border studies. They hold that ‘the border is a landscape of
competing meanings’ (ibid.: xv) thereby acknowledging the need to
move beyond consensus. They recognize the possibility that some bor-
ders may be invisible: ‘knowledge operates by making perceptible that
which has reason to be seen ... while making imperceptible that which
has no reason to be seen’ (ibid.). The role of borderwork – the ability
of ordinary people to construct borders – is also alluded to with the
acknowledgement that the state does not exhaust the meaning of the
border. The work of Rajaram and Grundy-Warr has many affinities with
the multiperspectival border studies advanced in this chapter. However,
they place continuing emphasis on the role of the state in processes of

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

bordering. On my account, borderwork stands at the centre of a multi-

perspectival border studies but Rajaram and Grudy-Warr, in contrast,
gravitate more towards a study of national borders, and borderscapes
are cast in relation to state borders. So, for example, while different
interpretations of the border are possible it is the state border that is
being contested rather than Balibar’s diffused borders. Likewise, the
border may be more complex than hitherto realized but the border in
question is still a ‘zone between states’ (ibid.: x).
Another key approach is Mezzadra and Neilson’s ‘border as method’,
which aims to study the world from its borders: ‘the border is for us not
so much a research object as an epistemological viewpoint’ (Mezzadra
and Neilson, 2013: 18). Mezzadra and Neilson are also keen to move the
debate onto new terrain and explore Balibar’s ‘different borders’. ‘Our
aim is to bring into view a series of problems, processes and concepts
that allow us to elaborate a new theoretical paradigm that differs from
that constructed about the image of the wall or the theme of security’
(ibid., 2012: 65). ‘Border as method’ allows the authors to cross discipli-
nary and geographical divides and take a truly global and postcolonial
angle (ibid., 2013: 16). Borders provide an important window on global
processes: ‘we take the proliferation of borders as a distinctive feature of
contemporary globalization. From this point of view the border becomes
for us a strategic angle on actually existing global processes’ (ibid., 2012:
64). Importantly, Mezzadra and Nelison try to connect global processes
to the experience of individuals: ‘we trace processes of the doing and
undoing of borders and boundaries ... [w]e also try to map from the point
of view of subjects in motion the elusive geography resulting from these
processes’ (ibid.: 65). Moreover, ‘border as method’ involves ‘negotiating
the boundaries between the different kinds of knowledges that come to
bear on the border and, in so doing, aims to throw light on the subjec-
tivities that come into being through such regime conflicts’ (ibid.: 66). It
is because the border is conceived as a site of struggle (around changing
relations of exploitation, domination etc.) that ‘borders as method’ gains
purchase on understanding society (ibid., 2013: 18).
‘Borders as method’ is an important contribution both to thinking dif-
ferently about borders and thinking from borders. There is much in this
approach which is to be applauded. However, it might just lead us back
to consideration of the same old borders. The kind of borders which
become sites where different kinds of knowledges are brought to bear
and which provide a window on global processes are likely to be those

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

borders which are recognized as being significant by all concerned. In any

case, ‘border as method’ reserves a special, privileged role for borders.
They are the keys to interpretation which can unlock our understanding
of global processes. This is akin to what Albrow (1996: 211n) terms the
‘Mecca effect’: ‘where one place appears to be the focus for the whole
globe.’ In the section that follows we explore borders in a context where
consensus over what constitutes a border may not exist and where bor-
ders may be invisible to sections of the population. ‘Border as method’
sets borders up as (potentially) priority sites of knowledge about the
world. In contrast, the multiperspectival border studies advanced here
starts from the assumption that borders are not always this prominent or
visible. We need to be able to understand borders which do not announce
themselves or draw attention to themselves. Ironically, some of the most
important borders are those which (to many people) do not appear to be
borders at all.

Challenging consensus and visibility

Acknowledging the contribution of Balibar (2002, 2004a, 2004b) to the
field of enquiry by taking seriously the idea that ‘borders are everywhere’
(Paasi, 2011) is important but can only take us so far. An essential com-
ponent of the argument advanced here is that we should dispense with
an exclusive nation-state frame when studying the border. The diffusion
of borders noted by Balibar suggests not simply that ‘national edges’
are spread more thinly across a territory, but that very different types
of borders are also emerging. To investigate these ‘different borders’ we
need to develop an approach which does not rely on the assumption that
important borders are always state borders, representing divisions and,
more importantly, which does not reinforce the tendency to always ‘see
like a state’ when viewing borders. An approach which views the border
as an instrument of exclusion constructed between two nation-states (a
state-centric view) has ready-made answers to questions such as ‘what
constitutes a border?’, ‘where are borders to be found?’ and ‘who is doing
the bordering?’
This chapter aims to demonstrate, through an exposition of a mul-
tiperspectival border studies, the case for studying borders differently
(more accurately, for studying Balibar’s ‘different borders’ differently).
This involves generating a new set of questions about borders which

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

do not presume that the borders in questions are necessarily seen as

borders by all concerned, or in the same way. Newman and Paasi (1998:
200) include the following in their agenda for border studies: ‘the need
to acknowledge alternative boundary narratives from within different
cultural traditions.’ It may be the case that alternative boundary nar-
ratives exist also within common cultural traditions. We do not have
to step outside of our own culture in order to discover contrasting
accounts of borders. For example, one feature of the border studies
literature in recent years has been the inclusion of ‘auto-ethnographies’
of borders (e.g. Khosravi, 2010; Kapllani, 2009). Seeing the border
from the perspective of Khosravi’s ‘illegal traveller’ is an important
dimension of a rounded border studies. But adding this perspective
to a statist perspective and, say, a global or geopolitical perspective on
borders, does not add up to a multiperspectival border studies. Framing
borders as sites of ‘cultural encounters’ (Rovisco, 2010) is central to a
multiperspectival border studies. This accords with Amin et al.’s (2003:
6) idea that territories should be seen as relational spaces in which ‘all
kinds of unlike things can knock up against each other in all kinds of
ways’. Borders as sites of cultural encounter also make it easier to study
borders diffused throughout society and constructed by a whole range
of actors. If the aim is to re-frame borders as sites of cultural encounters
rather than simply mechanisms of division then a key step is to under-
mine the underlying assumption of consensus – that borders have to
be recognized as divisionary by all concerned – which does still exist
in scholarly accounts, and argued here to be probably the biggest factor
inhibiting the development of a multiperspectival border studies.
The assumption of consensus is a key feature of the study of national
(state) borders. Consensus over the location and meaning of a border
is most evident when two countries deploy troops on both sides of a
common border, for example, or when the borders of a new nation-state
gain international recognition (or are disputed), or when a conflict
arises over territorial rights in a contested border region. In other words,
consensus is implicit when interested parties are all drawing the border
in the same place on the same map of the world. The border itself may
be hotly disputed (in terms of where it should be drawn or who may
cross it) but there is a high degree of consensus as to its location and
importance. Consensus is also evident when borders become accepted
as ‘world defining’ borders; the ‘Iron Curtain’, the Mexico–US border
(‘tortilla curtain’) and the Israel–Palestine border are all widely thought

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

to ‘divide the world’ in a geopolitical sense. National borders rely upon

the acknowledgement of others in order to become legitimate. Border
disputes may occasion war but they also denote consensus: that it is a
common border that is being disputed. This consensus means that
borders ‘work’ because more than one party recognizes the existence,
location and form of the border (even if that recognition takes the form
of contestation).
The logic of consensus is also reproduced in studies which emphasize
bordering as a process rather than as ‘lines in the sand’. Consider the
following statement, which appears in a recent discussion of the chang-
ing nature of borders. ‘Borders have become predominantly interpreted
as the communication of practices, as stories narrated by some and
contested by others’ (DelSordi and Jacobson, 2007: 100). There is much
to agree with in this formulation, which draws attention to the way
in which borders can work to connect as well as divide. The point to
highlight in the context of understanding consensus is the way in which
borders require mutual recognition, ‘narrated by some and contested by
others’, and the assumption that they need to be recognized by all parties
as borders in order to function. Consensus inheres in the recognition
of the existence of the border, and need for the border, not necessarily
agreement over its purpose, location and function.
During the Cold War everyone in Europe would have known, and
broadly agreed upon, where the borders of divided Europe were to
be found, and which borders were the most important ones to the
antagonistic blocs: the militarized lines dividing Germany and Cyprus,
for example. This consensus was not simply a product of the territorial
fixity or physical presence of those borders or the political and military
resources devoted to inscribing them upon the European landscape.
The borders that divided Europe also divided the world; they marked
the geopolitical division between East and West. There existed Cold War
consensus on the global significance of borders, encapsulated in the fol-
lowing terms; ‘while all borders are important, some borders are more
important than others’ (Zureik and Salter, 2005: 1).
For Balibar the fact that a border can have a significance that goes
beyond its ability to mark territory in a particular location is termed
‘overdetermination’ (Balibar, 2002). For example, the border which
separated West Germany from East Germany during the Cold War was
a national border and a symbolic border between the Western world
and the Eastern bloc whose representation took the form of an ‘Iron

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

Curtain’. The Iron Curtain divided Europe, and, because this Cold War
division was exported to other parts of the world, it was an overdeter-
mined border, also working to signify a global division. Borders serve
‘not only to separate particularities, but always also at the same time, in
order to fulfill this “local” function, to “partition the world” to config-
ure it ... Every map in this sense is always a world map, for it represents
a “part of the world” ’ (Balibar, 2004b: 220–1). On this line of thinking,
a national border is not always only a border between two states: local
borders can also signify global divisions. In the contemporary context
the legacy of such overdeterminations continue to be important. The
‘Green Line’ separating Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus
has been reinforced by a new border between the EU and non-EU
member states. The ‘Green Line’ now not only divides an island but
also demarcates EU from non-EU and as such represents a new kind
of division. The notion of overdetermination is proposed by Balibar
as a way of explaining why some borders are deemed more important
than others. It helps us understand why some borders have a symbolic
significance which exceeds any local importance. According to Balibar
(1998: 222) the overdetermined border calls down civilizational differ-
ences and in that sense brings a ‘world of difference’ to bear on local
demarcations. But overdetermination is also a form of consensus-
generation. A border that has a significance beyond the local requires a
high degree of consensus as to its importance. However, this consensus
is constructed at a remove from the actual border in question and
is not related to any features of the border itself, except its ability to
symbolize difference.
In the contemporary context far less consensus exists on what con-
stitutes a border, where borders are to be found or which borders are
the most important. This is partly because we are no longer constrained
to inhabit particular worldviews within which the symbolic meaning
of borders is organized as ‘givens’. It is also partly because important
borders are no longer just nation-state borders. For example, the EU is
active in establishing and shifting borders in Europe and indeed defining
where Europe’s border is located. The patrols carried out by Frontex off
the coast of Africa operationalize a border which is not mutually agreed
by those on either side of it. The ‘Frontex border’ is a new sort of flex-
ible border, deployed whenever and wherever it is needed and works to
constitute the EU border as a world-defining frontier – the Great Wall of

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

Europe, in Balibar’s (2006) formulation – projected some distance from

the borders of EU member states.
When we take seriously the idea that ‘borders are everywhere’
we must dispense with the assumption that consensus must exist.
However, such assumptions have deep roots. Aristotle believed that
there was an optimum size for a nation: its borders should be vis-
ible from a high point in the centre. This high point would be a city
whose position would allow the whole territory to ‘be taken in at a
single view’ (Aristotle, 1996: 164) because ‘in a country that can easily
be surveyed it is easy to bring up assistance at any point’ (ibid.: 406).
For Aristotle, the high point from which the territory can be ‘taken
in’ or viewed is necessary for the security and military defence of the
territory; ‘a country which is easily seen can be easily protected’ (ibid.,
1996: 164). Military logic aside, Aristotle’s ‘high point’ perspective on
territorial rule has an enduring legacy: the idea that borders must be
visible in order to function. In order to study borders beyond assump-
tions of visibility and consensus it is argued that we must dispense with
Aristotle’s ‘high point’ from which everything, including borders, can
be rendered visible and knowable. But this is easier said than done.
The ‘global frame’ through which we must view borders now actu-
ally encourages ‘high point’ thinking as it is widely held that global
space can be viewed in totality (one consequence of seeing the world
as a single place). In other words, ‘space is no longer that of a single
country ... but that of the world as a whole’. What we are witnessing,
according to Elden (2005) is a geographical extension of a pre-existing
territorial calculus rather than a change in the way space is conceived.
That this ‘abstract space is now extended to the globe’ means that the
world ‘can be divided, or ordered as whole’. Another good example of
a monoperspective on globality is the popularity of the idea of ‘empire’
associated with the work of Hardt and Negri (2000) but also taken up
recently in different ways by others, for example Zielonka (2007) and
Beck and Grande (2007). What these very different accounts of empire
have in common is that they all posit the existence of a ‘high point’
from which perspective the novel spatiality of empire can be seen to
have unity. The idea of empire, while promising a novel understanding
of space under conditions of globalization, actually works to suggest
that global spaces are integrated spaces given cohesion by the privileged
vantage point from which the new imperial domain can be viewed.

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

Borderwork and ‘border seeing’

A multiperspectival border studies builds upon Balibar’s innovations in

studying borders, particularly the idea that borders exist at multiple sites
within and between polities, that they mean different things to different
people, and work differently on different groups. A multiperspectival
border studies goes further though by drawing attention to the fact that
some borders remain invisible, not usually to those on the outside but
those living within, and that some borders exist for some people and
not others. Rajaram and Grundy-Warr also make a significant contribu-
tion by acknowledging that borders can be viewed from a multiplicity
of (sometimes contradictory) perspectives. These ideas are developed
in this chapter in an important new direction: a multiperspectival bor-
der studies encourages ‘border seeing’ – as a counterpart to Mignolo’s
(2000) ‘border thinking’. This involves more than a recognition that it
is possible to view a border from both sides, which simply reproduces
the ‘consensus’ view of borders discussed above. Rather than ‘looking
both ways’ across a border we need to aspire to look from the border and
more importantly ‘see like a border’.
In Chapter 2 we saw how actors other than the state can be involved
in bordering activity. Citizens, entrepreneurs and ‘civil society’ actors,
amongst others, can engage in bordering, or what is here termed bor-
derwork, the efforts of ordinary people leading to the construction,
dismantling or shifting of borders. We saw how the borders in question
are not necessarily those (at the edges) of the nation-state; they can be
found at a range of sites throughout society: in towns and cities, in local
neighbourhoods, in the countryside. It was noted that borderwork does
not necessarily result in borders that enhance national security, but pro-
vides borderworkers with new political and/or economic opportunities:
borders work to ‘strengthen some people while disempowering others’
(van Schendel, 2005: 57). The importance of borderwork is that it causes
us to rethink the issue of who is responsible for making, dismantling
and shifting borders, rather than rely upon the assumption that this is
exclusively the business of the state. It also introduces us to a world of
bordering which is not governed by consensus: there is no guarantee
that the borders constructed by borderworkers will be recognized by
everyone.
In this section I would like to revisit Berwick-upon-Tweed, first
explored in the previous chapter as an example of borderwork, and this

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

time focus on the link between borderworking and ‘seeing like a border’.
On our first visit we saw the ways in which Berwick-upon-Tweed is a
prime borderworking site, but not so much because of the ‘rebordering’
which has occurred between England and Scotland in recent years as a
result of the devolved powers to the Scottish parliament and the recent
attempts by some nationalist activists in the community to ‘redraw’ the
Scottish border around Berwick (although of course this could change
if Scotland achieves independence). At the moment the nationalist
dimension to the rebordering of Berwick is far less significant (although
certainly more newsworthy) than the incredibly rich networking
opportunities which borderwork has generated. Berwick is a ‘traditional’
border (arguably an ex-border, as the demarcation between England
and Scotland these days is only an administrative one) which finds itself
at the hub of a large amount of non-traditional borderwork activity.
Interestingly, Berwick’s borderworkers have worked to (re-)construct
the border, not as a national divide between England and Scotland but as
a gateway to the wider world. Re-defining and strengthening the border
between England and Scotland would be an example of consensus bor-
dering. Constructing the border as a staging post for global encounters
is the product of a narrower, more exclusive, non-consensual form of
borderwork. What is significant is that in order to gain access to a range
of networking opportunities Berwick has been (re-)cast as a border.
Consequently, borderworkers choose to ‘see like a border’ when they
look at the wider world.
In 2012 it was announced that Berwick would be applying to
UNESCO for World Heritage status. Two aspects of this were particu-
larly significant from the point of view of ‘seeing like a border’. First, in
pursuing this initiative Berwick sought to also strengthen its status as
a border town by, for example, drawing attention to the proximity of
the site of a major sixteenth-century battle between the English and
the Scots. The Battle of Flodden took place only 15 miles away and the
town of Berwick-upon-Tweed had a minor role in the events. Second,
and somewhat in contradiction to it, in preparation for the UNESCO
application it was recognized that it was insufficient to emphasize the
historical border status of Berwick. In a reference to Berwick’s member-
ship of the Walled Towns Friendship Circle, which is a Europe-wide
initiative, one local cultural entrepreneur said, ‘[t]here are many walled
towns in the UK. We need to enlarge our area of geographical interest
and focus our attention on taking Berwick out of the walls.’ This point

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

deserves discussion. ‘Taking Berwick out of the walls’ is both an attempt

to envisage a larger geographical hinterland for Berwick which includes
places such as Flodden and Holy Isle (Lindisfarne), an association with
which is calculated to help the town secure World Heritage status. It is
also an attempt to project Berwick beyond the currently available range
of networking opportunities (Transition Towns, Cittaslow, Walled
Towns Friendship Circle) and aim for true global status. Berwick’s walls
are both emblematic of its networking status and its historical role as
a border town, but may also work to constrain future opportunities:
Berwick could be ‘hemmed in’ by its own walls. In this sense, ‘seeing
like a border’ involves much more than looking across to the other side
of the border; coupled with global ambition it can also mean ‘seeing far
beyond the border’.

Concluding thoughts

A multiperspectival border studies is proposed as an alternative to the

conventional focus on nation-state borders with its restricted monop-
erspective – or view from the ‘brilliant space platforms of the power-
ful’ – in Haraway’s (1991) memorable phrase – and its corollary, the
assumption of consensus and visibility. The many changes in border
studies at work over the past decade or so have transformed the way we
study borders, both in terms of shifting the focus away from the edges
of a polity and in the sense that border studies now has ambitions to
greater interdisciplinary dialogue. The argument here is that although
these shifts are valuable, they are not by themselves sufficient. For exam-
ple, the spatiality of borders, which has been one key feature of the shifts,
has led to a heightened interest in the borderland as an object of study
(van Schendel, 2004; Konrad and Nicol, 2008). We can study the border
as a region or zone which can extend far beyond the borderline (as with
Konrad and Nicol’s idea that Canada is a borderland stretching north-
ward from the US–Canada border). But studying the borderland rather
than the borderline does not necessarily challenge the need to ‘see like a
state’ nor does it alter the perception that the borders of nation-states are
always the most important borders to study.
The critical reflection on consensus and visibility in the early part of
the chapter led us to consider the importance of ‘seeing like a border’ for
a multiperspectival border studies. It is important to recognize that the

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 ‘Seeing Like a Border’: Towards Multiperspectivalism 

multiperspectivalism championed here be carried forward into the proc-

ess of ‘seeing like a border’. As a consequence, there is not only one way
to ‘see like a border’ and each border (potentially) offers a multiplicity of
perspectives. It follows then that as a result of ‘seeing like a border’ we
become aware of the increasing bespoke nature of borders. Some people
will encounter borders which are ‘invisible’ to others and this may lead
to an experience of borders which suggests that they are highly selective
and individualized.
In his novel The Trial Franz Kafka offers the parable known as ‘Before
the Law’. The Trial is often read as a story about the intransigence of the
law and its ability to trap people in a nightmarish world of bureaucracy
under the weight of which no escape is possible. The ‘Before the Law’
section of the story can be read of a parable about the workings of the
law, but it is also remarkably prescient concerning the bespoke nature of
borders. A quote from the parable highlights this:
A man from the country ... wishes to gain entry to the law through an open
doorway, but the doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the
present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper
says that it is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the
doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes,
but tells the man that he accepts them ‘so that you do not think you have
failed to do anything.’ The man does not attempt to murder or hurt the
doorkeeper to gain the law, but waits at the door until he is about to die.
Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone
seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers
‘No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was intended only
for you.’ I am now going to shut it.

In the context of the novel the parable works as a chilling reminder of the
power of authority to make us internalize the rules by which we might
gain admittance to the law. Arguably, the parable actually works better
as a metaphor for contemporary bordering processes where, in some
ways, we all have our own personalized borders, and the borders which
regulate one person do not necessarily apply to others (for a different
reading of Kafka’s parable vis-a-vis borders see van Houtum, 2010). We
all experience borders in different ways and in that respect diffused
borders or generalized borders are no different to ‘lines in the sand’: they
are palpable to some while being ‘invisible’ to others. Poalo Vila (2003)
takes the idea one step further by declaring that, ‘[n]ot infrequently the
same person, in different settings, could construct the border in various

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

ways’. Borders not only work differently for different people but can vary
according to the settings we find ourselves in.
We have seen in this chapter that one of the biggest challenges fac-
ing border studies now is the need to understand the transformations
represented by globalization. These cannot be adequately summarized
under the headings of ‘borderless world’ or even ‘border proliferation’.
Under conditions of globalization individuals can become disaggregated
and because of differential mobilities (Elliott and Urry, 2010) they enjoy
their own relation to the borders which may constrain them but equally
may connect them to the wider world (see also Chapter 5). A multiper-
spectival border studies not only helps connect global processes with
individual experiences but also helps us to understand that borders can
be selective and individuating. In this sense, it is inadequate to charac-
terize the contemporary bordering environment in terms of ‘borders are
everywhere’. It is more accurate to claim, following Mark Salter, that ‘the
border is not everywhere for everyone’ (Salter, 2012: 750).

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 4
Fixity/Unfixity

Abstract: The chapter outlines ways in which borders exhibit a

tension between fixity/unfixity. In a ‘world in motion’ borders
are structures of fixity that lend order to everyday life. At the
same time the permanence of the border can be undermined
by the failure of the border to fulfil its function. Three case
studies are explored. First, the ‘Stroud pound’, an example of
borderwork leading to bottom-up securitization. Second, the
chapter explores the ‘accidental unfixity’ resulting from the
activity of drones around UK airports. Third, the EU’s Frontex
border and the UK’s offshore border, both of which show an
ambivalence between fixity and unfixity, and raise the question
of whether the element of unfixity might be a strategy of
governance, an idea further explored in the concluding section
with reference to two recent events in the UK.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0007.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0007 
 Cosmopolitan Borders

This chapter explores another important dimension of the cosmopoli-

tanization of borders – the ways in which bordering practices lead not
simply to the construction of borders but to political contestation over
the fixity/unfixity of borders. By fixity/unfixity I am referring to the
extent to which bordering practices become institutionalized (or not).
Put another way, whatever their design and appearance a collection of
practices and a set of objects only become a border if bordering func-
tions are reinforced from day to day in the activities of a range of key
actors (such as border guards, passengers, traffickers). It follows then
that passport checks, data collection, x-ray machines and iris recogni-
tion technology by themselves do not make a border. Importantly, the
relationship between fixity and unfixity is an unstable one. Exploring the
fixity/unfixity of borders allows us to view borders as provisional and
incomplete (by accident or by design) and as political resources which
can be utilized not only by agencies of the state but also by a whole range
of other actors. The fixity of the border can never be taken for granted
nor is it achieved once and for all; borders must be made and remade
on a regular basis if they are to function as designed. As we shall see
there are occasions when it is useful to maintain a border whose fixity is
ambiguous.
Fixity and unfixity are in constant tension. There are two senses in
which this is true. First, it is not necessarily a simple matter to fix the
border and ensure that it is institutionally bedded. It may appear that
major borders are well and truly fixed – massive infrastructure and/or
investment in equipment and personnel but still unfixity is possible. Or
rather the spectre of unfixity can never be banished completely. Where
the exact location of a physical border is disputed it is more likely that
a border palpably fails to do its job, for example being unable to border
out those who are deemed undesirable. The apparent ease with which
Hussain Osman, one of the would-be 21/7 London bombers, eluded the
authorities and effected his escape to Italy via the Eurostar train to Paris
in July 2005 is a case in point. Using his brother’s passport he passed
through a securitized border which was designed to prevent terrorists
and other undesirables entering the country but was not geared up to
anything like the same extent to prevent them leaving it; the authori-
ties perhaps labouring under the (dubious) assumption that terrorists
are more likely to be dangerous ‘outsiders’ rather than originating from
within British society (for a critique of the idea of the term ‘homegrown
terrorist’ see Rumford, 2013, especially chapter 5).

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

The second sense in which we can say that fixity is provisional is in

cases where those responsible for bordering will choose not to fix the
border or allow for the possibility of extended unfixity. On occasions
political ends can be served through selectively unfixing borders, or by
creating the illusion of fixity. A good example is the way in which the
UK borders at Heathrow and other major airports announce themselves
to the travelling public through enhanced signage informing people
that they have arrived at the UK border and through the presence of
appropriately uniformed officers. These embellishments to the passport
control area were introduced at the same time as the UK government
was developing ‘offshore borders all over the world’, utilizing technology
to prevent undesirables from starting their journey to the UK. In this
case the border cannot be assumed to be exactly where it is projected
for public viewing (see Rumford, 2008a, especially chapter 5). We will
further explore the fixity/unfixity dynamic in the case of Frontex and see
how the maintenance of ambiguity, by selective fixing and unfixing of
the components of the border, can actually aid the work of governance.
In the section below we will explore the ways in which cosmopolitan
borders can contribute to a politics of fixity (and unfixity), borders form-
ing political resources in a world characterized by permanent change,
global crisis and the perception of external threats. This exploration will
be accompanied by an illustrative example drawn from the UK: the town
of Stroud (and others) and its attempts to introduce a ‘local currency’,
a form of ‘citizen bordering’ which creates opportunities for distant
connectivities as well as the construction of local borders. Following
this we will investigate the ways in which certain kinds of state security
borders may vacillate between fixity and unfixity, not because of any
lack of clarity concerning the function of the borders, but as a result of a
deliberate governance strategy. To illustrate this point, we will look at the
EU’s Frontex border and also the UK’s ‘offshore’ borders, both of which
appear to be more effective as a result of an ambivalent relation to fixity.
In the final section we will examine one example of the ‘diffused’ border
which Balibar introduces to us; rural airports and the way they regulate
the flow of international passengers. The issue here is not so much the
way in which the border is ‘spread thin’ across the country – with Border
Agency staff meeting arrivals at multiple locations across the UK every
day – and the potential problems that this might bring from a security
perspective. The issue is in fact incidental to this bordering activity, but
no less important for that. It is the ways in which these rural border

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

locations can be compromised by the activities of commercial and civil-

ian UAVs (drones).

Fixity and borderwork

As part of the Transition Town movement several towns in the UK (and

elsewhere) have taken the initiative to introduce their own local curren-
cies. The voluntary scheme requires inhabitants of places such as Brixton,
Totnes and Stroud to change legal tender into local ‘pounds’ which can
only be spent in local shops and on local services. The scheme is designed
to prevent money leaching out of the local economy by encouraging the
loyalty of consumers, and aims at a form of protectionism which requires
the construction of an ‘invisible’ border between the town and the wider
economy across which the flow of money is regulated. We are talking
about a relatively small-scale operation. According to one local webpage
when the scheme began in Stroud it involved 32 commercial outlets and
the total of ‘Stroud pounds’ in circulation was £3,612.1 Nevertheless, it
is a clear example of cosmopolitan bordering, being a citizen-led, local
initiative, linking with other such schemes in the UK and beyond via
the Transition movement. The attempt to introduce a border around the
economy of Stroud provides a local political reference point for citizens
in an economic world characterized by global crisis and a (perceived)
general loss of governmental control over national finances. This is
explained on the Stroud pound website:
The money we use for most of our transactions (Pounds Sterling) is tied
into a system of global transactions and processes that do not serve people
in Stroud particularly well. A sizeable proportion of each pound spent goes
to service debts in the global economy draining resources away from the
area and reducing the viability of local services. The current turbulence
in the financial markets also suggests that global currencies may not be a
secure basis upon which to organize our economic life.2

The latter point would appear to weaken the case for the scheme neglect-
ing as it does the clear linkage of the ‘Stroud pound’ to the Pound Sterling.
In fact, this linkage is an asset, rather than a liability, helping as it does
to institutionalize the local currency, while at the same time allowing for
the possibility of an alternative perspective on what would otherwise be
a ‘fixed’ (closed) structurally determined economic ‘reality’. The state-
ment also illustrates the rhetorical methods by which actors involved

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

in enacting new economic borders attempt to render them accountable.

At a time of global financial crisis it is deemed unfair that resources are
draining away from the local area to service abstract ‘global’ debt. This
critique is then articulated with particular local concerns, which overlap
but do not fully mesh with the ‘debts in the global economy’ argument:
Local businesses spend their money locally. By contrast, money spent in,
for example, Tesco leaves Stroud for Tesco HQ. We want to keep money
circulating within Stroud District – to the benefit of local people.

Interestingly, a more recent attempt to found a local currency, the ‘Bristol

pound’, has the backing of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which
guarantees investments in the scheme (and ties it more obviously to
various forms of transnational financial regulation). Investors who
obtain their ‘Bristol pounds’ via the Bristol Credit Union ‘have the same
protection as [with] any other deposit account. The standard govern-
ment scheme guarantees up to £85,000 per person’. Clearly the link
between the ‘local’ currency and Pound Sterling is crucially important
to the success of the scheme. In local rhetoric the linkage with Sterling
is downplayed and the Bristol scheme shares the same fantasy of detach-
ment from global financial trends as was evident in Stroud: ‘The Euro is
in trouble, the world’s financial system is in turmoil. Is this the perfect
time for cities to go it alone, and print their own money?’ The Bristol
scheme is the most ambitious in the UK with 500 local firms participat-
ing and over £100,000 already deposited in Bristol banks.3 In an advance
over earlier schemes the currency can be used online and when shopping
over the phone.
Both the ‘Stroud pound’ and the Bristol scheme are classic examples
of ‘narrative fixing’, suggesting the possibility of protection against the
indeterminacy of economic life (‘It [The Bristol pound] is a direct assault
on global trade’4) but unable to disguise the fact that the borders that
have been constructed cannot adequately institutionalize their border
claims. Ultimately, it is not possible to dispel the suspicion that the
border is a fiction. Nevertheless, citizens of Stroud and Bristol do have
the possibility of shaping their own institutional reality through the
utilization of their new border as a means through which to connect
with other Transition Towns in the UK, Europe, North America and
beyond. Similarly the networks which have been established around the
circulation of the Stroud or Bristol pounds, such as supply chains or the
promotion of local produce at farmers’ markets, may have benefits for

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

the local economy which will outlast the existence of the new local cur-
rency (Cato and Suarez, 2012).
These currency cases are also illustrative of localized, bottom-up
forms of securitization, albeit with a different inflection to practices
of the state. Indeed, in these cases, it is the state – its currency, policy
and actions – that has become the security risk for these communities.
Here the rhetoric of global financial meltdown is tightly articulated
with local worries over capital flight, jobs and the continued salience
of local practices to make a case for the border. The traditional region–
state relationship is then inverted by the use of this border as political
resource – the nation-state (to the extent that it is in the grip of an alien
and threatening economic globalization) is the threat to be warded away,
not the provider of protection from diverse and diffuse risk. Through
the management of their border Bristol and Stroud are able to intervene
in the politics of fixity, and explore the new forms of agency that this
affords: the border becomes both a method of division (Stroud, Bristol/
rest of UK economy) and a method of connection to globally dispersed
communities facing similar threats and with similar goals.

Geopolitical unfixity
The politics of (un)fixity can also be observed at national, and indeed
supranational, borders (and where the close interaction of local and glo-
bal can also be observed). In 2005 the European Union (EU) established
Frontex, a new border agency based in Warsaw, which is designed to
‘coordinate the operational cooperation between Member States in the
field of border security’. It has responsibility for harmonizing the border
control regimes of nation-states to create common European borders
out of a plurality of national borders. Frontex enables the EU to shift its
bordering activity from place to place in a very effective way. For exam-
ple, the boat patrols carried out by Frontex in the Mediterranean and
off the West coast of Africa operationalize a new sort of flexible border,
deployed whenever and wherever it is needed but projected at a distance
from the ‘official’ borders of EU member states. But Frontex does more
than position the EU’s mobile borders. Frontex pragmatically (and
selectively) chooses to overlook the human rights failings of its African
‘partners’, for example the detention camps located in (pre-Arab Spring)
Libya that were suspected of falling short of international standards

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

in respect of human rights (Bialasiewicz, 2012). Frontex’s approach to

border control ‘on the ground’ (or sea) incorporates the practices of
‘partner’ countries, and as a consequence, the EU ‘is importing “non-
European, non-democracy” ’ (quoted in Biebuyck and Rumford, 2012:
14), a key development for an institution which likes to be seen as a force
for good in the world. Nevertheless, the failure to fully fix the border has
its potential advantages (for the EU). The ‘mobile border’, which Frontex
deploys, can appear as a structural reality of the EU-as-polity, forming
an impermeable barrier to those wishing to enter the EU illegally. At the
same time, Frontex can modulate the institutional reality of the border,
opening it up to influences which make different bordering outcomes
possible. The full consequences of EU decisions to allow non-EU ‘part-
ner’ countries to influence border policy are impossible to predict. The
‘reality’ of the border on the ground may therefore bear no relation to
original policy intentions. The border is thus fixed and unfixed at the
same time, its efficacy arguably enhanced by both its unpredictability
and its lack of accountability.
Similar processes can be observed in the UK ‘offshore borders’
policy. In a document entitled ‘Securing the UK Border: Our Vision and
Strategy for the Future’ (Home Office, 2007) the Labour government
of the day institutionalized an unconventional view of where the UK
borders are located. It was revealed that no longer is it the goal of border
policy to fortify and secure the traditional national perimeter. The new
approach adopted by the UK was to move the border ‘offshore’ rather
than fortify it in the standard way. According to the ‘Securing the UK
border’ document:
border control can no longer be just a fixed line on a map ... we must create
a new offshore line of defence, checking individuals as far from the UK as
possible.

In developing offshore borders the UK relies heavily on the ‘e-borders’

technology, especially the use of biometric visas and the ‘remote control’
of passenger carriers who are obliged to carry out their own security
checks on passengers and their travel documents. The institutional real-
ity created by e-borders achieves fixity while at the same time not being
visible as an institutionalized border, comparable to passport control or
the securitized airport check. The offshore border, in being located ‘eve-
rywhere and nowhere’, is both fixed and unfixed simultaneously, forming
an institutional reality which belies its rather insubstantial appearance.

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

E-borders are described, by the current Immigration Minister Damian

Green, as ‘genuinely secure, fluid and complete’. The difficult balance
between fluidity and security accounts for the public belief that UK
borders are dangerously open, a perception fuelled by revelations that
a failure of communication between government and the Borders
Agency resulted in thousands of people entering the UK without proper
security checks. The ambivalent relationship between fixity and unfixity
may work to enhance the governance of security but it does nothing to
increase public confidence.
These two cases exhibit traits of cosmopolitanization, a process
not limited to the vernacular or ‘bottom-up’ influences on the loca-
tion and purpose of borders. Cosmopolitanization also inheres in
the enhanced connectivity offered by bordering activity and the
extent to which borders are no longer under the exclusive control of
nation-states. Frontex illustrates how key European borders are not
controlled by just member states: Frontex deploys national resources
contributed by member states towards European bordering priorities
in the Mediterranean and off the African Atlantic coast. These EU bor-
ders connect Europe to its ‘near beyond’ by the extension of bordering
activity into Africa through the use of partner agencies, and by pro-
moting anti-migration advertising in West African countries designed
to discourage would-be immigrants from attempting hazardous boat
journeys to EU destinations.
Frontex also illustrates how extended bordering processes take on
the sorts of internal contradictions discussed above. By overlooking the
human rights failures of some partner countries, Frontex introduces a
contradiction with the EU’s (self-produced) image as a force for good.
This in turn provides the possibility of critique and the potential to call
into question more fundamental principles of the European project.
Similarly, ‘offshore borders’ connect the UK to many points around the
world where the acquisition of travel documents are monitored. These
‘offshore borders’, while formally borders of the state, are increasingly
operated (and vernacularized) through the work of a number of private
agencies – airlines, security firms, travel agencies.
It would be a mistake to believe that the ‘narrative fixing’ of the
border is restricted to cases of borderwork, the bottom-up, citizen-led
bordering activity which was in evidence in Stroud and Bristol. In fact,
the deployment of borders against the indeterminacy of everyday life is
alive in nation-state and supranational strategies of bordering. In order

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

to emphasize the pervasiveness of cosmopolitan bordering and bring

the three examples of bordering processes discussed briefly here within
a common framework of interpretation, we can draw upon a particular
reading of Appadurai’s understanding of the cultural economy in a
‘world in motion’. For Appadurai the global cultural economy is char-
acterized by ‘fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture and
politics’. The role in which borders are cast in this ‘world in motion’ is, at
first glance, a rather conventional one. State boundaries are increasingly
permeable and Appadurai is very concerned with flows of ‘cultural mate-
rial ... moving across national boundaries’. However, Appadurai’s account
also outlines ‘a deeper change, driven by the disjunctures among all the
landscapes I have discussed and constituted by their fluid and uncertain
interplay’. This ‘deeper change’ has its origins in the relationship between
‘production and consumption in today’s global economy’ and revolves
around what Appadurai terms, borrowing from Marx, ‘production
fetishism’.
Production fetishism, on Appadurai’s reading, points to the tendency
to understand the transnational and global (circuits of production, glo-
bal management structures etc.) in such a way as to create the illusion
of local or national control. In other words, the global or transnational
basis of production is ‘masked’ by ‘the idiom and the spectacle of the
local’. Expressed in slightly different terms, locality ‘becomes a fetish that
disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive the production
process’: production may appear to be local but is in fact the result of
global forces. Appadurai identifies a very important dynamic of cultural
globalization. I believe that his ideas can be extrapolated and applied
to borders where the distant projection and ‘offshoring’ of borders is
couched in the idiom of (national) territorial sovereignty. For example,
we have seen how the UK locates its borders ‘offshore’, and, at the same
time increases the visibility of (notional) national borders, through, for
example, impressive signage at airports and the reassuring uniforms of
immigration staff. In the case of Frontex the EU promotes the idea of
common, defendable and secure EU borders in the mirror of the nation-
state, at the same time as Frontex patrols are active away from formal
EU borders, along the West coast of Africa, for example. The argument
here is not that borders appear local but in fact are global (a variation of
Balibar’s idea of ‘overdetermination’), but that borders can be projected
in one place but in reality the key bordering processes take place some-
where else entirely. Re-phrasing Appadurai we can say that recognizable

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

types of borders, or borders projected in familiar places, ‘become a fetish

that disguises the globally dispersed forces’ that constitute contemporary
bordering strategies.
The illusion of the productive local is also apparent in the example
taken from Stroud and Bristol. The argument put forward by the Stroud
Co-op can only be made reasonable in the context of the global, both in
terms of the logic of the account and the fact that the Stroud pound is
pegged to Sterling, which floats in relation to, and is determined by, glo-
bal markets. An illusion of control over local material practices is thus
achieved by an amount of ‘narrative fixing’. This does not mean that the
strategy is bound to fail: the new ecosystem produced by the economic
border produces logics of practice that may indeed shore up a sense of
locality. However, this is only possible with a mystification of the myriad
processes, local and global, that congeal in the Stroud pound qua marker
of the border. This paper marker gives the new economic border a sense
of fixity by virtue of its objective materiality, but as demonstrated above
it cannot fully overcome the contradictions internal to it. Appadurai’s
interpretative framework throws a very different light on the idea of
these borders, now recast through the lens of production fetishism as
strategies for the control of mobility that are ‘globally dispersed’ and
where visibility is modulated in relation to purpose.

Drones: accidental unfixity

In June 2013 The Daily Mail ran a story claiming that Domino’s Pizza was
in the process of testing drones5 which were capable of delivering pizzas
to its customers, flying them over crowded streets to reach their destina-
tion within minutes: ‘it went quicker than a pizza boy’ (Gye, 2013). The
‘Domicopter’ as it became known6 can carry two pizzas and can fly 100
meters above the ground. The test flight in Guildford, Surrey, was filmed
and posted on YouTube with the aim of initiating a novel advertising
campaign. According to the newspaper report, ‘[e]ngineers are now hop-
ing to increase the weight which can be carried by the drone, so that it
can transport drinks along with pizzas.’ More a PR exercise than a news
item this story was important in establishing in the public imagination
the idea that drones could have a commercial use. Hitherto news of
drones was largely confined to military applications and the deployment
of UAVs in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the idea of drones frequently

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

associated with intrusive surveillance and a creeping culture of suspi-

cion which characterizes the contemporary world. Drones, it could
be argued, are appropriate symbols of what Robertson refers to as the
‘Millennial phase’ of globalization (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009: 27)
in which contradictory tendencies – a heightened fear for our personal
safety (terrorist attacks, natural disasters) coupled with a celebration of
surveillance (e.g. Facebook, reality television) – characterize the present
day (Robertson, 2007).
In the landscape of bordering that exists currently the arrival of drones
owned and operated by civilians and commercial agents serves only to
make our borderscapes even more ‘messy’.7 Commercial drones can carry
out many tasks, including taking air samples in polluted areas, spraying
farmers’ fields, checking power lines, assisting with search and rescue
efforts and detecting shoals of fish. In the UK 130 commercial licences
have been awarded by the Civil Aviation Authority. Smaller drones,
under 20 kg, do not require a licence (if not engaged in commercial
activity and if operated away from people and built-up areas) and the
low cost (under £3008) of drones which can be controlled from a smart
phone or tablet makes them affordable to hobbyists and enthusiasts.
Talking about the popularity of DIY drones one commentator points out
that ‘drones are the first technology in history which has the toy industry
and hobbyists beating the military-industrial complex at its own game’
(Anderson, 2012). Looking past the hyperbole, what this suggests is that
the sophisticated technology associated with military weaponry and tar-
geting is now readily available to all, and can be utilized by people who
wish to keep an eye on children playing in the back yard, spy on their
(unfaithful) spouse or simply entertain themselves with a new gadget.
Anderson’s comment also suggests that the market for drones will be
largely driven by hobbyists who will find new uses for the technology
and provide the necessary stimulation for commercial and recreational
innovation.
The relationship between commercial and civilian drones and borders
has several dimensions. It is certainly the case that police forces which
have licences to operate drones can deploy them in order to monitor
motorway traffic and locate those suspected of moving drugs by car
between UK cities, take aerial photographs (of protesters, for example)
and patrol borders to detect illegal migrant activity. Commercial activity
can duplicate these efforts as well as carry out a much broader range of
tasks. As commercial drones are flown from small airports and airfields

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

there is an obvious border connection, which in turn implies also a secu-

rity dimension.
It would be useful at this point to offer a sketch of a rural airport as
border.9 A typical small rural airport concentrates on recreational flying
activities – privately owned small aircraft, flying instruction, pleasure trips
and so on – but a significant proportion of the overall activity at the rural
airport is commercial in nature (typically 20), of which 20 is likely
to involve international traffic. Borders Agency staff will visit the airport
in order to carry out passport controls on foreign nationals (the airport
alerting them in advance of the passengers’ arrival). The Borders Agency
will have no permanent base at the airport but will attend quite regularly
as all non-EU flights must be met and flights with non-EU passport
holders on board must be met (EU passengers are generally cleared by
the Borders Agency via advanced declaration of arrival). In addition, the
Borders Agency will take an interest in flights arriving regularly from the
same European destination as well as flights diverted from other airports.
From time to time they carry out random checks on flights.
In the course of their day-to-day activity the Borders Agency staff have
no contact with drones. The most significant aspect of the relationship
between drones, borders and security is the messy-ness of the borders
that results from it. Drones could conceivably be hijacked and used by
terrorists to attack strategic targets, for example.10 As such, the security
of drones at airports, as with the security of light aircraft and other com-
mercial vehicles, is a particular concern and is thus the subject of CAA
(Civil Aviation Authority) guidelines. Borders, in this case those sited
at rural airports, are not only ‘messy’ in the sense that they are diffuse –
spread out across the UK – but also ‘messy’ because the drone activity
is being driven by actors whose interests do not necessarily coalesce
around a core of commercial considerations, for example. They are also
‘messy’ because much of the activity which might impact border security
is not intended. The potential nuisance and the possibility of interference
associated with hobbyist activity is a concern for those managing the air-
fields. In cases where hobbyists fly their drones from areas designated by
clubs for this purpose this is not really a problem. But there is no reason
why an enthusiast cannot fly a drone from another location, providing
this is done away from built-up areas and away from people (assuming
that hobbyists will know and adhere to CAA guidelines). Anecdotal evi-
dence suggests that increasingly organized club-based activity is giving
ground to individuals flying drones untrained and unsupervised.

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

In fact, the picture is even more ‘messy’. The activities of hobbyists are
changing; drones are so much more powerful and sophisticated than
model planes. Battery life has improved remarkably, giving a flying time
of as much as two hours where previously a few minutes were the norm.
However, the main change is cultural. Whereas model flyers would usu-
ally join a club, learn the etiquette of flying, adhere to the rules, under-
stand the safety requirements and fly responsibly the owner of a drone
will most likely have purchased the UAV via the internet, will probably
fly solo without club membership and consequently fail to absorb the
rules of flying and safety guidelines. Thus, the owner of a UAV is ‘flying
alone’ in the sense that Robert Putnam talked of ‘bowling alone’ (Putnam,
2001). The problem with this is less to do with community building and
more to do with the enhanced capabilities of the drones (compared to
those of model aircraft, and of which the owner may not be fully aware)
and the fact that hobbyists’ activities are often unregulated.
There are a number of particular problems which have a bearing on
rural airports as borders. First, if a UAV is flown beyond line of sight
(which it is more than capable of) a problem can arise if the signal is lost
between the drone and the tablet or mobile phone that is controlling it.
In such an eventuality the drone is programmed to return to its original
GPS position. In order to make this journey the drone will plot its own
course not taking into account whether or not it is flying through an
airport Flight Activity Zone (FAZ). Second, the capabilities of the drones
mean that they can, for example, fly well above their ‘ceiling’ of 400 ft.
This makes it very possible that they could accidently interfere with light
aircraft, particularly if the drone is being flown near a FAZ.
The potential problems are not lost on some enthusiasts. One blogger
demonstrates a particularly acute sense of the dangers inherent when
enthusiasts’ drones and commercial aircraft occupy the same airspace:
a few days ago a fellow ... enthusiast approached me brimming with pride
and sense of accomplishment. He wanted to tell me how he had flown
his ... airplane up to 3,500 feet and in the clouds and successfully brought it
back to its launch location. I commended him on his technical achievement
and his flying skills but, I was aghast and shocked by his mission ... The area
where we live is one of the most busy and congested airspaces in the country.
Even worse, I knew the field this young man was flying out of was directly
under the approach path for a major international airport where airplanes
are required to be at 2500 directly over that field as they approach the air-
port and everything from small Cessna to huge 747’s fly through that spot

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

at approximately one per minute ... It was just pure luck ... that one of those
airliners traveling 250 knots (about a mile every 15 seconds) didn’t collide
or have a near miss with my friend’s aircraft! He stated he had spotters but
that it was also overcast so there was NO WAY his spotters could have seen
any full sized aircraft let alone his own.11

When the topic of commercial and civilian drones enters the public
sphere, debate usually centres on either the threat they pose to safety
(through the possibility of crashes) or the threat to privacy that they
represent. It is certainly possible to over-emphasize the link between
drones and surveillance, especially in the context of a discussion of
borders and security. The suggestion here is that the importance of
drones is to be found in the way in which they make borders much
more complex and ‘messy’ places. Sites of bordering activity can also
become sites of borderwork activity which may not be directed at the
border itself but, because it brings borderworking capabilities into play
at these border sites, can work to make the job of bordering much more
difficult.

Concluding comments

We have seen that some borders aspire to fixity (the Stroud pound) while
others offer the illusion of fixity while working towards planned unfixity
(e-borders). Drone activity has a different relation to fixity: it possesses
the potential to unravel the fixity that has provisionally been established
at rural airport borders, what we might call ‘accidental unfixity’. The
growth of interest in commercial applications for drones, beyond pizza
delivery, coupled with the enthusiasm for building and flying drones
displayed by hobbyists, is likely to transform the borderscape in the next
few years.
Through its exploration of fixity/unfixity the chapter aims to con-
tribute further to the literature which seeks to shift focus away from
the nation-state and which aims to study not borders-as-things but
bordering-as-process. A perspective which emphasizes the cosmopoli-
tanization of borders draws inspiration from a variety of sources, all of
which allow for a shift of emphasis from state bordering, securitization
and the regulation of (contested) mobilities to a greater concern with the
role of borders in the politics of everyday life and bordering as a politi-
cal resource, which provide opportunities to ordinary people as well as

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

agencies of the state. As we have already seen, borders can be political

resources in the sense that they can be drawn upon by a range of actors
who seek to either selectively regulate mobility, use the border as a stag-
ing post which connects to the wider world, or simply use the border as
a way of navigating the multiplicity of spaces which characterize a world
in motion. Thus, the cosmopolitanization of borders refers not only to
a neglected ‘bottom up’ dimension but also to a more general apprecia-
tion that borders can be utilized for a variety of purposes by a range of
people.
One way of utilizing the border is by attempting to fix it in a certain
way, ‘narrative fixing’ being an attempt to make a particular version of
the border appear natural, familiar and reassuring. To conclude I would
like to examine two novel attempts to fix the border, and the ways in
which these attempts can have consequences that could not have been
predicted, thereby demonstrating slippage between fixity and unfixity.
The first example is the now discontinued Project Iris (Iris Recognition
Immigration System) scheme, a security system that allowed registered
passengers arriving at Heathrow and Gatwick airports to pass through
immigration checks without stopping. The system was in place between
2005 and 2013. Registered passengers were able to pass through auto-
mated channels on arrival in the UK by having their iris scanned. Data of
travellers’ iris patterns were matched with passport details and stored on
a database. The scheme was available to UK passport holders. Frequent
visitors to the UK, overseas nationals with permanent leave to remain
and British citizens were eligible to use the scheme. From the passen-
gers’ point of view the key feature of the system was the way in which
they were able to move quickly through the security check, encouraged
to keep walking while the iris reader performed its task. Another part
of the experience was the speed at which the border could be crossed
(especially noticeable when long queues of passengers waiting for stand-
ard passport checks were in close proximity). Project Iris transformed
the border into a conduit and additionally bestowed privilege and status
on travellers, in contrast with most other bordering processes which
tend to take them away. In this case the fixing of the border was achieved
through un-border-like mechanisms of enhanced mobility. The border
selectively facilitated (and speeded up) entry into the country for some
by appearing to not be a border at all.
This ‘narrative fixity’, resting upon the benefits of biometric technol-
ogy, existed in tension with a tendency towards unfixity. The ritualistic

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

nature of airport security checks, where passengers transit through

different levels of security in order to pass through the airport, and
in the process are requested to divulge information, possibly take off
clothing, and allow possessions and even bodies to be subjected to
intimate investigation, helps to construct a sense of ontological security.
The checks are vaguely reassuring, even if somewhat unwelcomed and
inconvenient, and we can find the lack of familiar reference points
in the security system disconcerting when they are absent. Using the
Project Iris channel at the airport and being ‘recognized’ via a scan
of the eye can be experienced as disconcerting in the sense that it is
counter-intuitive to move swiftly through the passport control area of
the airport, in particular when other passengers are waiting in long
queues to have their passports checked. In this sense, passengers’ expe-
riences of mobility speed, and privilege also worked to unfix the border;
being so un-border-like the experience of Project Iris failed to reassure
citizens that the security threat was being met.
The second example is the ‘go home or face arrest’ poster which has
been carried on a number of vehicles circulating in parts of London
since summer 2013. As a result of criticism from many quarters (political
parties, the Advertising Standards Authority, human rights groups) it is
now likely that the pilot scheme will be discontinued. ‘Vans telling illegal
immigrants to “go home” or face arrest will not be rolled out across
the UK.’12 The campaign poster is couched in the language of a public
service – offering assistance via a telephone helpline while targeting with
threats those who are already insecure and vulnerable. The success of the
highly controversial campaign has been questioned, and it is difficult to
imagine that people who have travelled the length of Europe hiding in
a tiny compartment in a container loaded on the back of an articulated
lorry would repatriate themselves after seeing the poster. The campaign
quickly provoked a counter-campaign from Liberty, the UK human
rights group. Their campaign poster matched the colour and design
features of the Home Office poster and contained the words, ‘Stirring
up tension and division in the UK illegally?’ In larger letters it urged the
Home Office to ‘Think again’.
The Home Office poster campaign received criticism from all parts of
the UK political spectrum. The far-right UKIP reportedly denounced the
scheme as ‘disturbing’ and reminiscent of a fascist dictatorship.13 In terms
of fixity the poster is an attempt to create another border-line beyond the
formal border, maintaining an ongoing sense of bordering even when

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 Fixity/Unfixity 

the conventional border has been crossed. Whether this was designed to
encourage illegal migrants to leave the country or to reassure UK citizens
that ‘something was being done’ is a matter of conjecture. What is clear
is that this attempt to fix the border through an invocation of ongoing
vigilance and generalized security also works to remind us that border
is less fixed, and more porous, than we might like. As well as carrying a
warning to illegal migrants the poster represents an admission that UK
borders don’t work well enough to prevent illegal migrants from enter-
ing the country.

Notes
 ‘Stroud pounds are taking off among traders’, This Is Gloucestershire, November
2009, http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Stroud-Pounds-taking-traders/
story-11928671-detail/story.html
 ‘What do you mean by money “draining resources away from the area?”’, The
Stroud Pound: FAQ General, available at http://www.stroudpound.org.uk/page4.
html#Anchor4
 ‘Bristol pound hits £100,000 bank deposits mark’, BBC News, 10 April 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-22099830
 Harvey, D. ‘Bristol pound launched to keep trade in the city’, BBC News, 19
September 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-19627592
 An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), colloquially known as a drone, is an
unmanned aircraft that can fly autonomously using GPS (Global Positioning
System) technology to navigate a complex flight path without human control.
It is also possible for the drone to be flown under the remote control of a pilot on
the ground or in another vehicle. A drone is different from a model aircraft in
that models are flown within visual line of sight and controlled by an operator
who maintains control of the airplane during flight.
 Alternatively, the ‘pepperdroni’ (Gye, 2012).
 In this chapter we do not deal with military drones in the UK and their
relation to borders and bordering. Arguably, military drones are particularly
significant in this regard as they can have an obvious policing and
surveillance function and could catalyse the transformation of borders.
 For example, the Parrot AR. Drone 2.0 available on Amazon.co.uk, http://www.
amazon.co.uk/Parrot-AR-Drone-Outdoor-Orange-Yellow/dp/B007HZLLPY/ref=
sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380885070&sr=8-2&keywords=drones
 This is a composite sketch based on information gathered from a number of
small airports in rural Hampshire, UK.

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

 The Times reported that ‘American researchers have created a $1,000 device
that is capable of hijacking a pilotless drone, raising fears that unmanned
aircraft could be turned into terrorist weapons’. Rhys Blakely ‘Terrorism
warning as drones hijacked by $1,000 “spoofer” ’, The Times, 27 June 2012,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article3457439.ece
 ‘How long will unregulated FPV and RC last?’ by Ron Curry, 31 March 2012,
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/how-long-will-unregulated-fpv-and-rc-
last
 ‘No UK rollout for “go home” vans’, BBC News, 22 October 2013, http://www.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24624383
 Ibid.

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 5
Connectivites:
Monumentalizing Borders

Abstract: The chapter makes the case that the study of

post-national border monuments (mainly in the UK) can
generate new perspectives on borders. More specifically, these
borders must be viewed less as markers of division and more
as ‘engines of connectivity’. The chapter considers the case of
several recently proposed border monuments – particularly
the ‘Star of Caledonia’ situated on the English/Scottish border
and the ‘White Horse’ at Ebbsfleet in the south of England – in
order to show how certain borders, some of which are located
in non-traditional locations, are being (re)configured as
visibly welcoming and ‘outward looking’. The chapter also
examines the ways in which these borders monuments are
implicated in (re-)making the borders at the locations in
question.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0008.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0008 
 Cosmopolitan Borders

I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape,

almost any landscape, than in, or on, the most beautiful building I
know.
Henry Moore1

Consider the following examples of border monuments. The first is

the Peace Arch, a border monument located on the Canada–United
States border between Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia.
The monument, erected in 1921, stands over 20 meters high. The sur-
rounding Peace Arch Park contains a major border crossing, the third
busiest road-crossing between the US and Canada, linking Interstate
5 and Highway 99. The Peace Arch bears two inscriptions. On the US
side the inscription reads ‘Children of a common mother’, and on the
Canadian side ‘Brethren dwelling together in unity’. Each side of the
arch has an iron gate which bears the inscription ‘May these gates
never be closed’.
The second example is the 18-meter high peace monument located
on the border between Norway and Sweden erected in 1914 to com-
memorate 100 years of peace between the countries. On this site a ‘state’
known as Morokulien or ‘the Republic of Peace’ has been established
on a six-hectare demilitarized zone.2 Morokulien issues its own stamps
and has its own radio station. The peace monument consists of two pil-
lars, one on either side of the border, and features statues of two men
offering the other a friendly hand. On the monument is inscribed the
words: ‘Henceforth shall war between Scandinavian brothers be impos-
sible.’ Morokulien is the world’s first example of a cross-border peace
park. Interestingly, both of these examples, the Peace Monument and
Morokulien, came into existence without state support or public fund-
ing, both being the result of civilian efforts to consolidate peace between
the neighbouring countries.
These are by no means untypical examples. Around the world there
are many other Peace Parks, as they are often known (some possessing
peace monuments located on the borders which are to be found within
them). They are designed to celebrate the transboundary cooperation
between two or more countries.3 In the examples above the inscriptions
on the monuments celebrate a presumed ‘brotherhood’ existing between
the citizens of proximate states. If we look at contemporary examples of

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

border monuments (whether in Peace Parks or not) what is particularly

interesting is that more and more of them celebrate global connectivity,
not just proximate connectivity. In this sense the nature of the border
monument can be said to have changed: not so much designed to
encourage or regulate interaction between next-door neighbours but to
mark the border as a staging post for global interaction.
The theme of connectivity is rising up the border studies’ agenda,
partly because of the general importance of networks and mobilities,
ubiquitous in frameworks for understanding the changing nature of
borders under conditions of globalization. In fact, the relationship
between borders and connectivity suggests a cosmopolitan agenda. This
chapter develops this line of thought and views the relationship through
a cosmopolitan lens, but does so in a way that challenges the assumed
relationship between cosmopolitanism and borders. Existing accounts
of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and borders centre on the
ability of cosmopolitans to cross borders with ease, or even live across
borders (Holton, 2009: 40). According to such accounts the novel aspect
of the relationship is the facility with which borders can be crossed, in
line with the idea that the rise of cosmopolitanism represents a chal-
lenge to the nation-state, and that enhanced mobility is the signature
of cosmopolitanism in the contemporary period (Szerszynski and Urry,
2006). Such accounts of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and
borders suppose some kind of dynamic cosmopolitan agency which
makes borders easier to cross, but do not give due consideration to the
changing nature of borders. This chapter approaches the issue from a
different angle: it deals squarely with the changing nature of borders and
attempts to construct a framework of interpretation which is adequate
to the task of understanding contemporary bordering processes. It is
argued that cosmopolitanism offers much in this regard.
At the heart of the chapter is a conundrum: how can we understand
contemporary border monuments (in the UK, mainly, but not exclu-
sively) which appear to have both a marked post-national character
and at non-traditional border locations. The argument runs that in
order to understand these monuments we need to view borders not
simply as markers of division but also as mechanisms of connec-
tion and cultural encounter – as cosmopolitan borders, so to speak.
Moreover, the chapter is concerned to outline how borders connect

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

beyond that which is proximate, that is to say, the role of borders in

making possible connectivity to places further afield than the other
side of the border.
It is suggested that examining post-national border monuments helps
generate new perspectives on borders, in particular highlighting their
connective potential/function, and their inherent cosmopolitanism.
Post-national border monuments make palpable certain borders that, at
first glance, can seem insignificant when placed alongside more tradi-
tional borders. By examining the rationale behind some recently pro-
posed border monuments it will be shown how certain borders, some of
which are located in non-traditional places, are becoming reconfigured
as visibly welcoming, outward looking and very much designed to con-
nect well beyond the locality of the borderline.
Importantly, then, the alternative approach put forward here
conceptualizes borders as navigation points that can act as gateways
to networks, places and scales that may be distant from the border
itself. In other words, borders ‘link’ more than simply an inside to an
immediate outside. Returning to the central theme of this chapter, the
construction of post-national monuments can (re)define borders in
terms of non-proximate connection. The chapter proceeds as follows.
We will explore two different examples of border monuments – the
Star of Caledonia situated on the English–Scottish border, and the
White Horse at Ebbsfleet in the south of England – and highlight
the ways in which they represent connectivity. Finally, we discuss
how looking at connection and border monuments keys into both a
multiperspectival approach to theorizing borders (see Chapter 3) and
makes a contribution to understanding contemporary dimensions of
cosmopolitanism.

Monumentalizing the border

This section will explore ‘bordering through connectivity’ by investigat-
ing recent attempts to monumentalize borders, and in particular the
way in which border monuments and public art situated on or near
borders are increasingly designed to celebrate cultural encounters
and/or the ability of borders to connect as well as divide. Examples of
such border monuments include the Welcome (‘Cradle of History’)
Monument on Gibraltar, the Schengen monument to a ‘borderless

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

Europe’, the Dreilanderpunkt at Aachen, the Statue of Humanity on the

Turkey–Armenia border, the Star of Caledonia on the English–Scottish
border and the White Horse at Ebbsfleet, UK. The latter two examples
are given detailed consideration.
We can note the post-national nature of these monuments, contrast-
ing this with earlier nationalistic attempts to monumentalize the border-
as-division and/or mark the border as nationalist space. Monuments
have long been used by political elites to claim territory and to mark the
border as a division between proximate national realms (Johnson, 1995).
In more recent times the need to understand the relationship between
the monument and its location has come to the fore, because border
monuments are no longer placed on the edges of national territory in
any straightforward way. In this sense, sites matter because ‘spaces them-
selves constitute the meaning by becoming both a physical location and
a sight-line of interpretation’ (ibid., 2002: 294).
Why study border monuments? Not to understand the relationship
between political space and nationalist power – the ‘official’ or intended
meaning of the border monument – as might have been the case in
the past, but to understand how monuments can ‘communicate a range
of values and meanings – meanings that vary based on the audience
and the cultural and political context in which they are read’ (Mains,
2004: 182). One argument advanced here is that the changing nature of
borders (in the UK at least) has stimulated new forms of monumen-
talization of those borders. New ways of monumentalizing borders
generate multiple perspectives on borders which at the same time pro-
duce new forms of knowledge about the border. In other words, border
monuments invite a multiperspectival study of borders and provide an
important opportunity for studying the multiple interpretations of any
border. This multiperspectival knowledge of borders, revealed through
novel forms of post-national monuments, can, it is argued here, make
an important contribution to border theorizing (and to thinking on
cosmopolitanism). Of immediate interest is the ways in which border
monuments have increasingly drawn attention to the connective
potential of borders and their welcoming nature. In order to develop
these themes further we will explore a couple of recent initiatives in
the UK to monumentalize the border, the Star of Caledonia at Gretna,
Scotland, and the White Horse at Ebbsfleet in the south of England,
both of which remain at the planning stage, the monuments not yet
constructed.

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

The Star of Caledonia

In 2010 architect Cecil Balmond was announced by the Gretna Landmark

Trust as the winner of a competition to design a public monument ‘that
celebrates and explores the border crossing [from England] into Scotland
at Gretna’.4 His winning design, ‘The Star of Caledonia’, described as a
star or ‘star-burst sculpture’ (or alternatively a representation of a thistle),
is due to be constructed on the England–Scotland border on the A74
road at Gretna. When constructed it will ‘mark the point where the two
nations meet’ (McLaughlin, 2011), but both the Gretna Landmark Trust
and the architect expect that it will perform a more important function.
In the architect’s own vision for the monument the theme of connectivity
is very much to the fore. ‘The Star of Caledonia is a welcome; its kinetic
form and light paths a constant trace of Scotland’s power of invention.’5 It
is ‘designed to be welcoming to the people coming to Scotland’.6
Its ‘welcoming’ function is only one dimension of its potential for
connectivity: ‘A border offers identity but one that is enriched by
neighbours, so that it’s not so much a line of separation as a local set of
interconnected values.’7 Reinforcing the theme of connectivity, the artist
Andy Goldsworthy, commissioned by the Landmark Trust, is working
on a complementary project, a walkway from Gretna to Canonbie,
which will pass the monument and will incorporate a zig-zag design to
show the knitting together of the two countries at the border (Liptrott,
2011). But the connectivity of the monument is more than ‘local’. The
monument is expected to have iconic significance that will be recognized
beyond the border country: ‘the project is not just a regional project. The
development of the landmark is an international project’.8 The hoped-
for international connectivity is also reflected in the presentation of the
monument on the Trust’s webpage: ‘The presence of a world-class iconic
Scottish Landmark will signal a meaningful exploration of identity and
borders ... The Star of Caledonia supports an image of a dynamic, inno-
vative, outward-looking region.’9
One feature of the Star of Caledonia project which is particularly inter-
esting is the way in which the border (re-)appears and is inscribed on the
landscape through the discourse of connectivity. The English–Scottish
border is not an international border and is not marked by border con-
trols – it is a border internal to the UK (at least until Scottish independ-
ence is realized) – although it does demarcate different administrative
jurisdictions within UK governance. The border, such as it is, would

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

not normally be marked by anything other than a road sign. Architect

Charles Jencks, appointed by the Landmark Trust and collaborating
on the project, discusses this aspect of the monument in the following
terms:
Crossing the border to Scotland, across the River Sark, is now a passage
obscured under a bridge by cars travelling at speed. Instead of marking
this with motorway signs we are using a landform and sculpture that pulls
together the adjacent site, the distant hills and the Solway.10

In other words, the border will become more palpable and more visible
than previously when it was indicated only by a road sign. The promised
(re-)inscription of the border was not unwelcome in the local commu-
nity. One local business person stated:
I’ve been working here for 12 years and the border has never been as con-
spicuous as you’d like it to be. This proposal will reverse that completely.
It’s long overdue and can only have positive spin-offs, not only in the local
area but Borders and Dumfries and Galloway on a regional level.11

The border possesses a high degree of mobility projecting itself beyond

the ‘debatable lands’, as this region was once known. According to the
Gretna Landmark Trust the purpose of the monument is to ‘herald the
main national gateway to Scotland and mark the border with England’
and to ‘create a work of international quality, scale and vision, explor-
ing the essence of Scotland’s cultural identity’.12 More specifically, the
monument is designed to ‘explore the idea of boundaries and territory at
Scotland’s main Border Crossing’.13 The ability of the monument not only
to re-inscribe the border but to create a sense of place is a key element
of the design, which fulfils the Landmark Trust’s aim to raise awareness
of Gretna as a ‘significant national location as a Border Crossing and
the southern gateway to Scotland’.14 It is also significant that the newly
energized border achieves a heightened degree of connectivity though
flattening out of what might otherwise be a hierarchical assemblage
of ‘levels’. Through the Star of Caledonia Gretna is both reinscribed as
Scottish border town, with the ‘local’ benefits that this brings, and as an
emblem of Scottishness visible to English travellers. The rejuvenated bor-
der offers the possibility of international connectivity, but not as a result
‘scale-jumping’ in van Schendel’s terms: the monument is not designed
to re-kindle the nationalist antagonism of the historical English–Scottish
border, which would result in hierarchical scaling of the border. It does,
however, manage to successfully re-scale the border as a local–global

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

gateway because of, rather than despite, its place-specific networking

capabilities.

The White Horse at Ebbsfleet

A contemporary of the ‘Star of Caledonia’, and like that monument yet

to be built, Mark Wallinger’s White Horse at Ebbsfleet, is another recent
border monument which celebrates connectivity and communication.
The White Horse is designed as a 50-metre high representation of a
thoroughbred horse looking out over Ebbsfleet Valley and the Thames
Estuary. Like the Star of Caledonia the White Horse was the winning
design in a landmark competition, commissioned by Ebbsfleet Project
Limited, a company funded by Eurostar, Land Securities and London
and Continental Railways (LCR). Unlike the Star of Caledonia which
was immediately understood to have an obvious connection to its loca-
tion (a ‘welcoming’ border marker) which was reflected in its design,
Wallinger’s White Horse proved more difficult to understand and its
form and subject matter considered by some to be rather arbitrary,
particularly so as it had already been dubbed ‘The Angel of the South’ by
some commentators.15
Labelling Wallinger’s White Horse as ‘The Angel of the South’ does
not help us understand the design. In fact, the White Horse design only
makes sense when viewed as a border monument, although Ebbsfleet is
not normally thought to be located on a border. In line with the earlier
discussion of dispersed and diffused borders we can see that it is on a
border, however a new border which has been established at the Ebbsfleet
Eurostar railway station (opened in November 2007), located between
London St Pancras and Ashford International stations. As it is used
for the embarkation/disembarkation of passengers to and from France
and Belgium it is a site of UK border controls. Ebbsfleet is unusual in
that it is a border first and a place second (some would argue that it is a
non-place, in Auge’s terms). Ebbsfleet is also unusual in that the border
is less obviously a marker of local/national difference or of a parochial
notion of inside/outside. In line with van Schendel’s thinking on the
multi-scalar border Ebbsfleet does not possess nested scalar hierarchies:
it is cast as an international border which offers non-proximate connec-
tivity. Likewise, places along the ‘international’ Eurostar route that are
separated by national borders, therefore, are no longer in a necessarily

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

vertical relationship whereby we travel ‘upwards’ from the local, to the

regional or beyond. But rather these places share a more horizontal rela-
tionship (connection) with each other. They become closer to each other
than is perhaps implied by notions of crossing ‘national’ borders.
Interpretations of the White Horse have tended to focus on the rep-
resentation of the horse and its historical significance. According to one
commentator:
Wallinger’s horse is ... designed to look surreal and uncanny, to amaze
train travellers arriving from continental Europe ... Wallinger’s dreamlike
spectacle fuses the art of Magritte with that of the 18th-century British
painter George Stubbs ... at the same time the horse’s whiteness associates
it with the British folk tradition of giant figures incised into chalk hillsides.
In other words, this horse has a sense of history that belies its apparent
simplicity. (Jones, 2009)

In the above passage understanding the monument is approached via the

figure of the horse rather than where it is located and why, although an
intended audience – Eurostar travellers – is identified, thereby locating it
on a border. Similarly, the position of the monument is touched upon by
the official Ebbsfleet Landmark webpage, but again this is subordinated
to discussion of the image of the horse:
The ancient Watling Street, now the A2, runs adjacent to the site and as a
main route into England from mainland Europe would have seen count-
less thousands of horses transporting man and his possessions over the
centuries. The Thoroughbred was first developed during the 17th and 18th
centuries in England, when native mares were with imported Arabian stal-
lions. Every racehorse in the world is descended from these animals and
the White Horse wears a bridle to signify that it has been domesticated and
bred by man ... Mark Wallinger’s work examines the identity, nationality
and the politics of representation. Horses have featured extensively in his
work and he sees the racehorse as symbolic of British colonial and post-
colonial history.16

Contrary to these interpretations17 what makes the White Horse monu-

ment particularly interesting is its location on a new border, a border
which didn’t exist a decade ago and which demarcates the UK and France
and UK and Belgium even though it is situated at a distance from the
periphery of the UK’s territory. It is a border monument that inscribes
the border in a similar way to the Star of Caledonia but which does not
have the existing borderline to draw upon. Wallinger’s White Horse

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

makes visible the border in a way that Ebbsfleet railway station – the
‘official’ border location – has so far not been able to achieve. Ebbsfleet’s
identity is the product of the combination of demarcation and connec-
tivity that the border brings.
Another, less-horsey, interpretation of the White Horse emphasizes
the ‘place making’ potential of public monuments:
‘Public art’ ... is said to provide economic value by branding urban space
or by aiding ‘place making’, for example, Mark Wallinger’s proposal for a
giant white horse, commissioned by Ebbsfleet Project Limited ... Cultural
policy has become one of the mainstays of economic policy initiatives by
a neo-liberal state faced with industrial decline and urban neglect and an
ideology that has turned away from state intervention. (Hewitt, 2011: 25)

On this reading, the monument is seen as an aide to economic growth,

attracting interest and investment in a region not previously well known
to investors. Ebbsfleet is located in the Thames Gateway region desig-
nated as a national priority for urban regeneration. The regeneration
theme and the role of the White Horse in marking a ‘non-space’ is sum-
marized by one perceptive commentator in the following terms:
The Ebbsfleet Valley is a development zone occupying an unpromising
stretch of ex-industrial territory sandwiched between the Thames Estuary
and the outer London motorway system. In the future, this is planned to be
a community of 10,000 houses – a medium-sized town – but before anyone
moves there, in a move possibly unique in art history, it was decided to give
this hypothetical place a sculptural emblem sited near the confluence of
the Eurostar railway line and major roads, including the M25 motorway.
(Gayford, 2008)

In both cases, Gretna and Ebbsfleet, there exists an important relation-

ship between monument and location; borders are central to both iden-
tity formation and place-making. Both the Star of Caledonia and the
White Horse facilitate connectivity but do not do so at the expense of the
border, which is (re)inscribed on the landscape. In the case of Ebbsfleet
border mobility pre-figures place construction. Ebbsfeet becomes a place
because of the border. In the case of Gretna the border brings greater
visibility to a place which was previously a point en route to somewhere
else. The networking potential of borders also works to reinforce the
existence and location of these borders, drawing them more clearly on
the landscape in such a way as to either re-border areas which had over
a period of time witnessed an effacement of borders or construct a place

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

identity which otherwise would not exist. Borders do not disappear as a

result of global connectivity, as was predicted by the ‘borderless world’
thesis some years ago. It is ironic perhaps that the same processes of
transnational communication which have supposedly helped erode the
border can also work to re-inscribe it.

Angels of the North-South

In addition to the Star of Caledonia and the White Horse at Ebbsfleet

there are other examples (also as yet unbuilt) of border monuments in
the UK. One is the un-named monument which was proposed for the
Northern Ireland–Irish Republic border, another is the dragon statue
intended for the Wales–England border near Wrexham. Both examples
share interesting similarities with each other and with the proposed
border monuments detailed in the above sections.
In 2007 Bertie Ahern, then Irish Premier, proposed the construction
of a monument to peace, specifically to mark the end of the ‘Troubles’.
‘This monument ... will send out a clear message to the coming genera-
tions – that the peace we have built is to be cherished. It should never
be taken for granted.’18 Ahern pledged €5 million to the project. Taking
the project forward, in 2008 Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot
Ahern, launched an international competition to choose the design of the
monument which was to be sited at Carrickcarnan on the Louth–Armagh
border. It was hoped that the competition would attract designs similar
in scale to the Angel of the North or the Spire in Dublin.19 However, by
2009 the plan had been shelved, public finances in the Republic being
extremely stretched as a result of the economic crisis.
On the Wales–England border another border monument has been
proposed. A large red bronze dragon figure, symbolizing Welsh heritage
and culture, would be, at 210 feet the tallest public artwork in the UK.
Provisionally called ‘Waking the Dragon’, but from the outset nicknamed
‘The Dragon of the North’, the monument is designed to rest on a 130-feet
concrete and glass tower and have a wingspan of 170 feet. The suggested
location is on the A5 at Chirk, near Wrexham. The site of the dragon
sculpture is planned to include an art gallery, a cafe/bar, a restaurant and
space for language study. The project is being led by art dealer Simon
Wingett who envisages the £6 million cost of construction will be raised
from commercial sponsorship and encouraging private sponsors to pay

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

£2,000 for a personal dedication on one of the 416 steps inside the struc-
ture. According to the project website ‘Waking the dragon’ will ‘mark
the gateway to Wales’ and acts as a ‘symbol of Wales’ strength ... and
international identity’.20
Interestingly, none of the proposed monuments have reached the
construction phase and only one (‘Waking the Dragon’) is still on track
to be built, at least in the near future. The problem of securing public
money in times of economic crisis has delayed the construction of the
others (and possibly dealt them a fatal blow). Also interesting is the way
in which the ‘Angel of the North’, Anthony Gormley’s sculpture situated
on the A1 near Gateshead, is drawn upon as a reference point in all cases.
The ‘Angel of the North’ is not a border monument, of course, but in the
15 years since its completion it has become something of a template for
all large-scale public works of art in the UK (and beyond). In three of the
cases discussed above the proposed monuments have been given nick-
names derived from the ‘Angel of the North’: ‘Angel of the South’, ‘Angel
of the North-South’, ‘Dragon of the North’. Beyond naming, all of the
examples here have been compared to the ‘Angel of the North’ in terms
of their scale and ambition: it has become the benchmark against which
all public art projects are now measured, at least in terms of potential
impact. This demonstrates an important shift in the orientation of bor-
der monuments: put simply, promoting post-national themes. The aims
of public art situated on a border are increasingly aligned with the aims
which Gormley set out for the ‘Angel of the North’:
The angel has three functions – firstly a historic one to remind us that below
this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to
grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to
the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears – a
sculpture is an evolving thing.21

These aims are echoed to a greater or lesser extent by all the border mon-
ument examples considered here. First, the site of the monument (sense
of place) is important in all cases, emphasizing either the extra visibility
of the site (or place-making potential of the monument, e.g. Ebbsfleet
and Gretna) or the gateway to the world that is one consequence of the
monument. Second, all the monuments represent an orientation to the
future, particularly where the future is characterized by an embrace of
the global. Third, ‘a focus for hopes and fears’. In the promotion of these
putative monuments it is the former that is emphasized, of course. Hopes

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

for peace, hopes for global status (as opposed to parochialism), hopes for
prosperity and economic development and hopes for connectivity are all
represented in these examples.

Concluding thoughts

In 2012 Hadrian’s Wall, in the north of England, became a major art

instillation.22
The project ‘Connecting Light’ is described by its designers as an
‘inverse wall’,23 a 73-mile (117km) stretch of the old Roman border
between what is now England and Scotland was illuminated by an
evenly placed line of pulsating 2m-diameter balloons. The balloons were
all be connected via the internet to be able to transmit messages to each
other, changing and transmitting colour according to direct interaction
by people either at the site or online. One of the designers stated that ‘the
idea is to allow people to share their physical or emotional experiences
and thoughts about borders’, while according to the BBC, the instillation
is designed for people to ‘view the wall as a bridge not a barrier’.24
This artistic event summarizes so much of what has become quite a
standard relationship between monuments and the borders they sit on.
The border is reinterpreted as a bridge rather than a barrier and connec-
tivity is cast widely, not limited to the immediate locale. The border is
rendered as something to be shaped, to be played with, to be transformed
by the whims of the public and their ‘emotional experiences’ of borders.
In this sense, the border fulfils the promise identified by Amoore and
Hall (2010: 303), that is becoming an ‘artistic work that works precisely
to disrupt the calculation and authentication that is intrinsic to the bor-
der’s sovereign distinctions’. The England–Scotland border becomes an
‘inverse wall’, no longer a solid barrier but a playground for a range of
experiences. In sum, the border becomes another mechanism for engen-
dering Castells’ ‘relentless connectivity’ (Castells et al., 2007).
But this is not the only lesson to be learnt from an exploration of bor-
dering and connectivity. It is also evident that the relationship between
borders and monuments is changing. The monument makes the border
in many cases, not simply marks it. Although borders – by enhancing
connectivity – undermine their traditional functions as structures of
division, they also make the border more noticeable and more mean-
ingful by drawing attention to it. This is the case at Gretna where the

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 Cosmopolitan Borders

significance of the border has been diminished over many years. Now
the Star of Caledonia is poised to put the border back on the map, so to
speak. So too at Chirk where the Welsh–English border was not heavily
marked. In the case of Ebbsfleet the making of the border through the
placing of a monument (The White Horse) precedes the making of the
place. All the borders in question are arguably more significant and more
solid as a result of the monuments which have been proposed there.

Notes
 Quoted in Burstow (2003: 145).
 I am grateful to Hakki Tas for alerting me to the existence of Morokulien.
 Peace Parks are defined as ‘transboundary areas that are formally dedicated
to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural
and associated cultural resources, and to the promotion of peace and
cooperation’ (International Union for Conservation of Nature). Examples
include Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (the first Peace Park in the
Americas), The European Green Belt running along the former Iron Curtain,
and several in Southern Africa including the Maloti-Drakensberg, Great
Limpopo and Greater Mapungubwe.
 Official website blurb: http://www.gretnalandmark.com/
 ‘Urban Realm’, 5 July 2011, www.urbanrealm.com/
news/2996/_E28098Star_of_CaledoniaE28099_to_adorn_border_
with_England.html
 Balmond quoted on BBC News 5 July 11.
 Balmond, quoted in Dumfries and Galloway Arts, 2010.
 Jan Hogarth, Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association’s Public Art Manager,
quoted in ‘Star of Caledonia artists host Scottish identity debate’, BBC News,
11 October 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-
15256514
 website blurb www.gretnalandmark.com/
 http://www.gretnalandmark.com/. The reference to Solway is to the Solway
Firth, a large sea bay on the west coast of Scotland.
 Peter Gardner, General Manager of the Gretna Gateway Outlet Village,
quoted in Ednie, undated.
 http://www.gretnalandmark.com/uploads/downloads/Landscape_Brief2010.
pdf
 Ibid.
 Ibid.

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 Connectivites: Monumentalizing Borders 

 ‘Giant horse to become £2m artwork’, BBC News, 10 February 2009, http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7880889.stm. ‘The Angel of the South’
is a reference to Antony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’ near Gateshead
possibly the most famous of Britain’s contemporary monuments. According
The Guardian, ‘[w]hether viewed as a spiritually uplifting icon or a phoenix
rising from the ashes of the abandoned coal mine beneath it, the Angel of the
North has been a joyous addition to the northern landscape.’
 Planning application summary, official webpage, http://www.
ebbsfleetlandmark.com/websitefiles/Planning_Summary.pdf
 None of which have recognized that The White Horse of Kent is the official
emblem of that county.
 ‘Border peace monument in planned’, BBC News, 22 April 2007, http://news.
bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6581979.stm
 ‘Cuts funded €4m “Blair Chair”’, by Michael Brennan, Independent.ie, 17
November 2009, http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/cuts-funded-4m-
blair-chair-26582765.html
 http://thewelshdragon.co.uk/about-the-dragon/about-the-project/
 Anthony Gormley quoted at http://www.theangelofthenorth.co.uk/tourist-
information-menu/3-the-angel-of-the-north
 ‘Connecting Light’, http://connectinglight.info/
 ‘Hadrian’s wall borders connected through light’, BBC News, 1 September,
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19320015
 Both quotes taken from ‘Hadrian’s wall borders connected through light’,
BBC News, 1 September, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19320015

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 6
Concluding Comments

Abstract: This short chapter reflects upon the ways in which

border studies can inform cosmopolitanism. It outlines
four reasons why borders are ‘cosmopolitan workshops’. A
vernacular border studies democratizes cosmopolitanism by
showing us the cosmopolitanism exhibited by ordinary people.
‘Seeing like a border’ is a metaphor for cosmopolitan thinking.
Unfixity mirrors cosmopolitanism in the sense that it is also
provisional and fleeting. Border connectivities are ‘cultural
encounters of a cosmopolitan kind’. The chapter concludes
with the hope that there are good reasons for other scholars to
want to engage with Cosmopolitan Borders.

Rumford, Chris. Cosmopolitan Borders. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137351401.0009.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0009
 Concluding Comments 

Does labelling borders ‘cosmopolitan’ achieve anything? To justify this

move I believe that it is necessary to demonstrate first that borders have
changed/are changing in ways which cannot be easily apprehended
using the conventional border studies ‘toolbox’. By exploring hitherto
hidden or unacknowledged dimensions of borders – vernacularization,
multiperspectivalism, fixity/unfixity and connectivities – I hope that I
have achieved this. Second, to justify the usage of the term ‘cosmopoli-
tan borders’ it is also necessary to demonstrate that borders can inform
our thinking on contemporary cosmopolitanism. In this short section
I will review the ways in which borders, and the dynamics of change
which characterize them, can challenge and inform our understanding
of cosmopolitanism.
Over the course of the four substantive chapters of this book borders
have been revealed to be prime sites of cosmopolitan activity, contrary to
popular understandings of bordering processes. Borders and bordering
are ‘cosmopolitan workshops’ where ‘cultural encounters of a cosmopoli-
tan kind’ take place and where entrepreneurial cosmopolitans advance
new forms of sociality in the face of ‘global closure’. The argument here
is that when globalization weighs heavily upon individuals, or closes
off avenues of connectivity – in other words when globalization fails to
deliver on its promise of ‘one worldness’ – opportunities for cosmopoli-
tanism may condense at the border, which contrary to preconceptions
about how they operate, can represent political resources for achieving
transnational connectivity. But connectivity is not the border’s only claim
to cosmopolitanism. As we have seen the border is also a ‘cosmopolitan
workshop’ in other respects.
There are four main reasons for the claim that borders are ‘cosmo-
politan workshops’. The first is that vernacularization weakens the
association between borders and the state. Moreover, borders are not
always designed to enhance national security. In our exploration of
borderworking activity at Berwick, Melton and Stroud, for example, we
saw how the construction of borders is neither tied to a security agenda
nor are bordering priorities driven by the state (although the state may
be involved at various stages). Borderwork is the sine qua non of cosmo-
politan borders: bordering which is devised and driven by state security
concerns can never be cosmopolitan. The cosmopolitanism revealed
in borderwork is interesting for other reasons too, not least because it
is much less elitist that many other conceptions of cosmopolitanism.
Borderwork is not by and large the activity of media executives or

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0009
 Cosmopolitan Borders

academics, of CEOs or international lawyers. Borderwork is driven by

ordinary people, who may start out as cultural entrepreneurs through
their activity in establishing a local currency or a bounded area for pro-
tecting the production of certain consumables but through their efforts
may also become ‘cosmopolitan entrepreneurs’. In driving cosmopolitan
encounters they are also democratizing cosmopolitanism, loosening the
association between privileged elites and cosmopolitan actorhood.
The second reason behind the claim that borders are ‘cosmopolitan
workshops’ is that the multiperspectivalism explored in Chapter 3 led
us to the realization that some borders are not meant to be seen by eve-
ryone. This simultaneously contradicts one of the most basic tenets of
border studies and, perhaps more importantly, places border studies at
the heart of contemporary cosmopolitanism. If cosmopolitanism is con-
cerned with the possibility of connectivity under conditions of ‘global
closure’ then the ability to ‘see like a border’ is of signal importance to a
whole range of people. ‘Seeing like a border’ is an essential component of
a meaningful cosmopolitanism, that is to say one which does not simply
reproduce the desire to ‘see like a state’.
The third reason stems from the way in which borders are revealed to
be less permanent and solid than they may first appear. This is the idea of
‘unfixity’ explored in Chapter 4. The account of unfixity developed here
has showed not only that some borders are undermined by tendencies
to unfixity but that some borders are designed to incorporate unfixity,
in order to better fulfil their function. Accepting the unfixity of borders
is difficult without also embracing the other cosmopolitan dimensions
of borders – vernacularization and multiperspectivalism – but it does
dovetail nicely with the approach to cosmopolitanism being developed
here. The argument is that cosmopolitanism is best conceived not as
a reality and/or description of the times we live in, as with Beck, but
as a transient state of affairs which can never exist in a fully realized
form. This view has something in common with Appadurai’s vision of
the global as a ‘fractal cultural configuration’ (Appadurai, 1996: 46): a
dynamic and open process rather than stable system and is characterised
by disjuncture, flow and uncertainty rather than ‘older images of order,
stability, and systematicness’ (ibid.: 47).
The fourth reason for the border as a ‘cosmopolitan workshop’ is
much more straightforward. Cosmopolitanism is centrally about con-
nectivity and the border – through our study of a number of border
monuments – is revealed to be an ‘engine of connectivity’. It is worth

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0009
 Concluding Comments 

emphasizing that the border is not cosmopolitan because of the ease

with which it is crossed. Neither is the border cosmopolitan because of
the welcome which the border monuments under discussion hold out
to the traveller. The border is (or can become) cosmopolitan as a result
of the transnational connectivity for which the border in increasingly
designed. Because of the general unavailability of moments of ‘cosmo-
politan openness’, which it is argued here is in fact the norm (contrary
to other influential, ‘cosmopolitan realist’ accounts) borders are prime
sites for ‘cultural encounters of a cosmopolitan kind’ and, therefore, are
increasingly important in the study of social and political transforma-
tions more generally.

Final thoughts

The study of cosmopolitan borders is in its infancy. This means that it

is entirely possible that the idea of cosmopolitan borders may be taken
up by other scholars who wish to pursue very different aims. The field is
still open and fluid, and, it is true to say, without fixity. There is certainly
no guarantee that other border studies scholars testing the cosmopolitan
waters will engage with the ideas developed here. It is conceivable that
the idea of cosmopolitan borders could even be hitched to the ‘cosmo-
politan realist’ bandwagon. These possibilities are perhaps not ones that
an author should be worried about, certainly not before the book is even
published. In any case, rather than ending on a note of pessimism I wish
to conclude in a more upbeat register. There is at least one good reason
why I am not particularly concerned about the possibility of the ‘hijack’ of
the idea of cosmopolitan borders, perhaps two good reasons if one adds
the common sense of the social scientists who hopefully will read this
book. The reason is that the cosmopolitan borders thesis, as developed
here, is concerned both to understand the changing nature of borders and
to shape the trajectory of contemporary thinking on cosmopolitanism. I
would hope that any scholar who shares this two-fold concern would be
happy to engage with, rather than dismiss, Cosmopolitan Borders.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0009
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Walters, W. 2006. ‘Border/Control’, Europe Journal of Social Theory, 9(2),
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0010
 Index
Aachen, 77
Afghanistan, 64
Africa, 42, 48, 60, 62–63, 86
Ahern, Bertie, 83
Ahern, Dermot, 83
Albrow, M., 45, 92
Amoore, L., 12–13, 40, 85, 92
Anderson, M, 65, 92
Appadurai, A., 63–64, 90, 92
Archibugi, D., 4–6, 9, 92
Aristotle, 49, 93
Auge, M., 36, 80, 93
Balibar, E, 3, 11–12, 14, 19,
22–23, 41, 44–45, 47–50,
57, 63, 93
Balmond, Cecil, 78
Battle of Flodden, 51
Bauder, H., 2, 16, 93
BBC, 31, 71–72, 85–87
Beck, U., 2, 4–7, 9–10, 43, 49,
90, 93
Berlin Wall, 23, 27
Berwick-upon-Tweed, 18, 22,
28–29, 50–51, 97
Bialasiewicz. L., 25, 61, 94
Booth, Graham, 34
border
biometric, 12
Border as method, 44–45
border-crossing, 11, 13, 27
border-making, 11
border practices, 16

cosmopolitan workshops, 1,
88–90
diffused, 11, 13, 44, 53
engines of connectivity, 3,
22, 26, 73
‘external’, 23
flexible, 60
Google, 20
‘invisible’, 36, 58
‘juxtaposed’, 15
‘messy’, 17
multiperspectival, 10, 39,
42–43, 45–46, 50, 52,
76–77
nation-state, 11, 48
offshore, 15, 42, 57, 61–62
polysemic, 14, 16
unconventional, 25
borderlands, 27, 40
Border studies, 2–3, 11–12,
17–18, 23–24, 26, 28, 36,
39, 41–46, 50, 52, 54, 75,
88–91
border thinking, 19, 43, 50
Borders Agency, 18, 62, 66
borderwork, 2–3, 14, 16, 18, 22,
24, 25–28, 30, 32–36, 39,
41, 43–44, 50–51, 55, 58, 62,
68, 89
‘low level’, 18
borderzones, 40
bottom up, 24, 26, 36, 42, 69
Bristol, 59–60, 62, 64, 71
DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0011
 Index 

Bristol Credit Union, 59 cross-border communities, 23

Brussels, 16 cultural encounters, 3–4, 32, 46, 76,
88–91
Camembert cheese, 35 Cutteslowe Walls, 27, 94
Campaign for an English Parliament, Cyprus, 47–48
29, 37
Canada, 52, 74, 93, 97 Delanty, G., 4–5, 9–10, 94–95
Carrickcarnan, 83 Department of Energy and Climate
Castells, M., 85, 94 Change, 31
Champagne, 35 disjunctures, 63
Chirk, 83, 86 Domicopter, 64
citizenship, 7, 10, 27–28, 35, 93 Dreilanderpunkt, 77
Cittaslow, 31, 37, 52, 98 drones, 55, 58, 64–68, 71–72, 92
City of London, 16 Dublin, 83
Civil Aviation Authority, 65–66 Durrschmidt, J., 15, 30, 94–95
civil society, 24, 50
transnational, 28 East Midlands Food and Drink
Cold War, 47–48 Festival, 35
coloniality, 19, 43 Ebbsfleet Valley, 80–82
connectivity, 2, 8, 14, 17, 20, 32, 35–36, Elden, S., 49, 95
42, 62, 75–76, 78–80, 82–83, 85, England, 29–32, 51, 73, 76–86, 95
89–91 English–Scottish border, 30, 76–79
relentless, 85 Europe, 5–6, 31–32, 35, 47–51, 59, 62,
cosmopolitan 70–77, 81, 93–100
agency, 11, 24, 75 European Union, 2, 5–6, 9, 11, 25, 27,
borders, 2, 3, 11, 14, 17, 20, 57, 75, 91 33–35, 38, 42, 48–49, 55, 57, 60–66,
condition, 5 94, 100
conditions, 7 Eurostar, 12, 15–16, 28, 42, 56, 80–82
democracy, 5–6
paradox, 11 Fairtrade Town, 35, 38
realism, 2, 5, 7, 9, 13 Financial Services Authority, 59
reality, 5, 10 fixity/unfixity, 1, 17, 20, 55–57, 68, 89
social science, 5 Flight Activity Zone, 67
temptation, 6 Flint, Caroline, 35
turn, 5, 9 Flodden, 52
vision, 9 Frontex, 42, 48, 55, 57, 60–63
cosmopolitan border, 2, 18, 24, 28, 33, 36
cosmopolitanism, 1–11, 19, 21, 24, 36, Gare du Nord, 42
43, 75–77, 88–91 Gateshead, 84, 87
banal, 5 Gatwick, 69
critical, 19 George Adams & Sons, 34
four problems with contemporary Germany, 47
approaches, 8 East Germany, 47
cosmopolitanization, 2, 6–7, 19, 26, 62, 69 West Germany, 47
Cresswell, T., 36, 94 Gibraltar, 76

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0011
 Index

global closure, 8, 90, 91 methodological nationalism, 5–6

global food map, 35 Mexico, 20–21, 28, 46
globalization, 1–2, 6–11, 24, 31, 40, 44, Mezzadra, S., 39, 44, 97
49, 54, 60, 63, 65, 75, 89, 93 Mignolo, W., 19, 39, 43, 50, 98
Goldsworthy, Andy, 78 mobilities, 3, 8, 26, 54, 68, 75
Gormley, Anthony, 84, 87 mobility, 2–3, 10–11, 15, 19, 23,
Grahame, Christine, 29 25–26, 40–41, 64, 69, 70, 75,
Grande, E., 5, 49, 93 79, 82
Green Line, 48 preferential, 25
Gretna, 77–79, 82–86, 97 multiperspectivalism, 1, 14, 17, 43, 53,
Gretna Landmark Trust, 78–79 89–90
Grundy-Warr, 36, 43, 50, 98
Guildford, 64 Newman, D., 42–43, 46, 98
Northern Foods, 34
Hadrian’s Wall, 85 Northern Ireland, 27, 83, 95
Häkli, J., 20, 95 Northumberland, 30–31
Haraway, D., 52, 95 Nyers, P., 27–28, 98
Hardt and Negri, 49
Heathrow, 16, 37, 57, 69 O’Callaghan, Matthew, 33
Holton, B., 3, 4, 75, 96 Osman, Hussain, 56
Holy Isle, 52 Oxford, 27, 92, 98, 100
Home Office, 15, 42, 61, 70, 96
Paasi, A., 42–46, 98
Inglis, D., 7, 96 Papadopoulos, D., 28, 98
Iron Curtain, 46, 48, 86 Paris, 16, 42, 56
Isin, E., 27, 96, 98 Parker, O., 9, 17, 21, 40, 98
Israel–Palestine, 46 Parma ham, 35
Peace Arch, 74
Kafka, F., 53, 100 post-national, 73, 75–77, 84
Khosravi, S., 46, 96 practices
Kiely, R., 30, 97 bordering, 3, 17, 56
cosmopolitan, 26
Libya, 60, 94 material, 17, 65
Lindisfarne. See Holy Isle Project Iris, 69–70
‘Lines in the sand’ manifesto, 17, 47, 53 Protected Geographical Indication,
London, 35, 42, 56, 70, 80, 82, 92–99 33–34, 37
Louth–Armagh border, 83 Putnam, R., 67, 98

Marshallian, 27, 28 Rajaram, P.K., 36, 43–44, 50, 98

Massumi, B., 3, 97
Mecca effect, 45
Mediterranean, 42, 60, 62, 94
Melton Mowbray, 18, 22, 26, 32–35, 38
Rural Capital of Food, 32, 35
Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association,
33–34
River Trent, 34
Robertson, R., 7, 65, 95–96, 98
Rovisco, M., 3–4, 46, 94, 96, 99
Salter, M., 36, 40, 47, 54, 99–100
Saxby’s, 34
Schengen, 76

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0011
 Index 

Scotland, 28–32, 37, 51, 77–79, 85–86, 97 UK, 13–16, 18, 22–23, 26, 29, 31, 33–38,
Scottish nationalist, 29 42, 51, 55, 57– 63, 65–66, 69–75,
securitization, 3, 11, 22, 25, 55, 60, 68 77–78, 80–84, 94, 96
Seeing like a border, 41, 88, 90 United Kingdom, 25
Skrbis, Z., 4, 9, 96 UKIP, 70
sociality, 5, 8, 89 UNESCO, 51
St Pancras, 15, 37, 80 Urry, 13, 36, 41, 54, 75, 99–100
Star of Caledonia, 73, 76–83, 86, US, 20, 28, 46, 52, 74
95, 97 US–Mexico border, 20, 28
Statue of Humanity, 77
Stroud, 18, 55, 57–60, 62, 64, 68, 71, van Houtum, H., 14–15, 24, 53, 100
89, 94 Vaughan-Williams, N., 21, 40, 98, 100
vernacularization, 1, 3, 14, 17–18, 20, 26,
teichopolitics, 11, 13 89–90
territory, 11, 15, 20, 23, 43, 45, 47, 49, 77,
79, 81, 82 Wales–England border, 83
Thames Estuary, 80, 82 Walled Towns Friendship Circle, the, 31
The Angel of the South. See White Wastl-Walter, D., 14–15
Horse at Ebbsfleet White Horse at Ebbsfleet, 76–77, 80, 83
The Daily Mail, 64 Wingett, Simon, 83
The Grocer, 34 Woodward, I., S., 4, 9, 96
Transition Movement, the, 31 World Heritage, 51–52
tortilla curtain, 46 world openness, 2
transnational conditions, 28
Turkey–Armenia border, 77 Zielonka, J., 49

DOI: 10.1057/9781137351401.0011