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Abstract
In our globalised, interconnected world the impact of borders on space and people is increasingly debated. This article aims to unpack the complex concept of “thick” and “thin” borders. It builds on the assumption that borders are boundary sets comprised of overlapping geopolitical, sociocultural, economic and biophysical layers and are the outcome of a bordering process. A two-step approach towards the decoding of borders is introduced. Using a planning perspective, the article seeks to explain the various functions of borders, to examine power practices within the bordering process and to ascertain the relational geographies demarcated by different types of boundaries. It illustrates why those cross-border activities which address only the geopolitical dimension of the border tend to fail.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank three critical friends – John Friedmann (University of British Columbia), Benjamin Davy (Technische Universität Dortmund) and Victor Konrad (Carleton University, Ottawa) – and four anonymous reviewers for their thorough and helpful comments.
Notes
1. It needs to be acknowledged that enclaves are by no means only a historical phenomenon. On the contrary, some of them are still extant today (Campione, Italy or Kaliningrad, Russia) and others have been created more recently (e.g. De Voerstreek in Belgium). Today's most curious European enclaves/exclaves situation might be discovered along the Dutch-Belgian border in Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau (a city of around 10,000 inhabitants) which could even be regarded as “Europe's most complicated border configuration” (Gardner & Kries, Citation2005, p. 16). This city comprises on the one hand the Belgian Baarle-Hertog, which consists of 22 enclaves completely surrounded by the Dutch territory of Baarle-Nassau. On the other hand Baarle-Nassau has one Dutch enclave in Belgium and seven exclaves embodied in the Belgian enclaves. All together this city has 30 enclaves!
2. It is not entirely clear whether Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the composer of this melody (Stelzl-Marx, Citation2005, p. 217).
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Beatrix Haselsberger
Beatrix Haselsberger is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Spatial Planning of the Vienna University of Technology (Austria). In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious Hertha Firnberg Research Grant from the Austrian Science Fund for the project COMPASS (Collective Memory & Planning: Across Social Separation), Project Number: T591-G16. As part of this project, Beatrix Haselsberger (together with her co-editor Laura Saija, University of Catania, Italy) is currently editing a book about The Evolution of Planning Thought, which will be published in 2015. http://info.tuwien.ac.at/planning-thought