Prospectus Abstract
Globalization, Border Restrictions, and the Territorialization of States
The post September 11 security context prompted states to reexamine their borders and reemphasize the need for monitoring and security at the expense of enhanced transborder interaction. European scholarship, prompted by the Schengen accord, and North American scholars, faced with increasingly restrictive border policies following the 9/11 attacks became increasingly concerned with the passage of people, goods, and information across borders.
Of considerable interest for my dissertation project are the conditions under which flows of individuals across borders pose threats for states. I argue that states may be prompted to engage in border closure to cope with such threats. In particular, border closure may emerge as a response to two types of threats: traditional threats from other state-actors in the international system or from transnational threats emerging from cross-border mobility. In analyzing border closure as a response to traditional threats, I ground my claims on established theories of international relations theory. In that respect, I adopt a novel approach to the study of international borders; heretofore, work on border security policies has been largely policy-oriented and/or case-specific. My research seeks to redress the lack of a generalizable framework for understanding state border policies. Secondly, I posit that under certain contexts, states seal their borders in order to cope with non-traditional threats arising from the mobility of individuals. The latter observation places my project at the juncture between globalization scholarship and security studies. Globalization theorists expect liberalization of interstate borders to take place in tandem in three policy-areas: trade, finance, movement of individuals. In contrast, security studies underline the problems resulting from mobility of individuals by pointing to transnational terrorism, illegal migration, and the existence of smuggling/trafficking networks. By studying the expectations of both globalization and security studies scholarship under a single framework, I address the question of reterritorialization with respect to cross-border human mobility.
Stated slightly differently, the proposed research project is guided by a central puzzle: despite the fact that state control over borders is being dismantled in the area of trade and finance, border salience is being recrafted in another issue area: the mobility of individuals across borders. Under what conditions do states act according to the economic expectations generated by globalization theory and when do they respond to security concerns? In other words, when and how do states assert their territoriality? This puzzle is intricately linked to the securitization of human mobility: as the attacks of September 11 have tragically demonstrated, contrary to the realist assumptions that states are the only actors of significance in international politics, non-state actors crossing international borders can have tremendous consequences.
Although ‘new security threats’, as distinct from threats posed by national armies, gained increasing prominence in the post 9/11 context, the securitization of cross-border flows goes further back. Historically, states have viewed boundaries from a defensive perspective. In that respect, interstate borders served as ramparts from which states could defend their territories against external military threats. The end of the Cold War engendered a belief that the traditional notion of a defensively secured boundary would become obsolete. This belief was closely tied to a vision of a world sans macro-territorial conflict. Increasingly however, deterritorialization, defined as a movement away from defensive borders, was accompanied by a securitization of borders.
In other words, border salience is reconfigured: a shift away from defense against military threats is juxtaposed with policies targeting security problems posed by non-state actors. The reconceptualization of border salience challenges traditional paradigms of state in several respects. First, the rise of non-state actors in world politics erodes the distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ security. Consequently and secondly, state responses based on traditional conceptions of security might not be optimal in dealing with threats emerging from such transnational actors. States are increasingly required to innovate in coping with clandestine transnational actors crossing borders. Thirdly, the convergence of external and internal security strategies culminate in “the domesticization of the global security environment”. Finally, to the extent that cross-border mobility empowers such non-state actors, state security becomes increasingly wedded to maintaining efficient control over cross-border flows.
In suggesting an inquiry into the variations in degree of physical control of territory and the porosity of borders, this research project undertakes a specific form of pedantic endeavor: the questions posed by this project locate it within the globalization/securitization debate. Nonetheless, the project aims to transcend the limitations posed by this debate by specifying the conditions under which the territoriality retains or reasserts its salience. More specifically, the project targets two related and heretofore unanswered questions: First, under what conditions do hard/soft borders emerge? Why do borders remain less permeable in terms of free movement of individuals?
By taking these questions seriously, this project hopes to fill the gap in the literature on international mobility regimes. As such my project locates itself in the emerging scholarship on transnational threats. It approaches the topic from a novel perspective, however, by addressing state strategies of coping with threats. In contrast, recent scholarship on transnational threats such as international terrorism, international migration, human trafficking and smuggling, has not only addressed these under a single framework but has been largely concerned with the sources of transnational threats rather than with state responses. On that note, my project promises significant policy implications. By inquiring into the conditions under which border closure emerges as an effective response and by formulating a typology of strategies of closure, I seek to contribute to the theoretical understanding of borders in the globalizing world.
