BIG (Borders in Globalization): Borders and Bordering Processes in the Pacific Northwest

Borders in Globalization (BIG) is an interdisciplinary and international research program led by Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly from the University of Victoria. This program has been conducting research across Canada and around the world since 2013 on the ways in which borders evolve, both conceptually and empirically, in the context of globalization. In framing the BIG research program, Brunet-Jailly built on the notions that borders were not just determinants of international agreements or institutional constructs (Newman and Paasi 1998; Paasi 1998) but policies for enforcement and securitization (Salter 2010), functional mechanisms for inclusion and exclusion, and complex processes that were embedded in specific political, economic and cultural contexts (Brunet-Jailly 2011). Brunet-Jailly’s (2005) conceptual framework put the emphasis on understanding the processes of bordering and re-bordering; it addressed the tension between the structure and agency of borders and borderlands and identified four important analytical lenses for theorizing borders: (1) market forces and trade flows, (2) policy activities of multiple levels of governments on adjacent borders, (3) the particular political clout of borderland communities and (4) the specific culture of borderland communities. The research program of BIG incorporated Brunet-Jailly’s earlier work (2005, 2007, 2011) with subsequent developments in border studies, particularly around the notion that borders were always in motion – there was a continuous making and unmaking of geopolitical space through a variety of governance mechanisms that were no longer constrained to that space.

Technology is integral to the governance mechanisms and management of borders. New technologies, along with innovations in information, communications and data systems, are increasingly used to monitor, surveil, and securitize borders and movements across borders (Pickering and Weber 2006; Amoore 2006, 2007 & 2009; Salter 2006 & 2008; Johnson et al. 2011). For example, the manner in which people enter British Columbia (B.C.) can be managed by electronic kiosks on cruise ships, in the Vancouver airport or through Nexus lanes at the Peace Arch port of entry (YVR 2018). These technology-driven processes have embedded algorithms – based on exclusion and inclusions – which allow some individuals to cross efficiently and others to face barriers; this is determined long before they arrive at the border and depends on their place of birth, employment type, and family history. An extensive literature exists on the interplay of technology and the corporeal turn in bordering processes in which some bodies are bordered differently than others (see Salter 2006; Amoore 2006). These new bordering processes demonstrate a dynamic transition from territorial to a-territorial notions of borders; a transition that can simultaneously create new borders and augment old borders, while reinforcing and challenging the space-based notion of borders.

In addition to understanding the forces of technology on borders and the transition from territorial to aterritorial borders, forces of self-determination, particularly from Indigenous communities, influence borders and borderlands. Thus, in the current context of globalization, there are simultaneous and contradictory shifts around borders. On the one hand, technological changes are used to decouple borders and bordering processes from territory. On the other, self-determination movements, cultural identities, racially and ethnically charged narratives, and economic protectionism reinscribe the territorial dimension of borders and the control over specific places and people.

For almost twenty years, there has been a consensus that our understandings of borders need to go beyond what Lapid (2001, 8) called a “territorial epistemology”. Wilson and Donnan (2012, 13) note that border literature has progressed unevenly, its evolution has been “both gradual and punctuated by growth spurts and slowdowns”. Scholars were productive in deconstructing the spatial dimension of borders as territorial lines by exploring concepts such as borderlands, border regions, borderscapes, mobile borders, borders in motion, and borderities (Amilhat-Szary and Giraut 2015; Konrad 2015). Amilhat-Szary and Giraut (2015, 3) note that these approaches challenge the traditional understandings of the relationship between borders, territory and the state in which each concept is dependent upon the other two.

The field of Border Studies grew quickly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, led by research networks and the insights from interdisciplinary researchers who advanced understanding of borders from multiple and critical perspectives. In the 1990s, there were more nation states and therefore borders than at any other point in history; at the same time, Ohmae (1990) described the increasing interconnectedness, global trade, and movement of goods, labor and ideas as a “borderless world” – although this concept did not go uncontested (Wilson and Donnan 1999). In 2001, after 9/11, there was a shift to understand and manage borders in the paradoxical context of, on the one hand, economic liberalization marked by large flows of people, goods, labor and capital, and on the other, the securitization of borders against dangerous goods and people. The loss of state control over the flows of goods across borders beginning in the 1990s has been countered with augmented state controls over people – which has increased dramatically in recent years. Furthermore, instead of a trade-off between open and closed borders, or economy and security, debordering and rebordering processes are concomitant and happen simultaneously (Wastl-Walter 2011 and Wilson and Donnan 2012). Conceptually, however, border scholars are still discussing the shift from bordering or securing territory to bordering or securing flows driven by technologies (EUBORDERSCAPES 2017); Castells (1997) referred to this as a shift from “spaces of places” to “spaces of flows” twenty years ago. The result is that there is a relative dearth of literature that documents this shift empirically, especially in comparison to theoretically or conceptually oriented literature.

In a review of Doris Wastl-Walter’s 2011 Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary claims that we must move beyond the notion that borders are everywhere and no longer linear; border studies must develop on the changes in their territorialization” (Amilhat-Szary 2013, 80). Since acknowledging the conceptual change in border territorialization, however, border scholars have stalled at advancing empirical understanding of bordering practices, processes and policies. What does it mean, in the lives of everyday people, but also for policy makers specifically, for borders to be aterritorial? How is aterritoriality manifested in every day practices of the people who cross the border, or govern and secure the border? A goal of the Borders in Globalization (BIG) research program is to understand the aterritoriality of borders in practice and in implementation; in this regard, the research program intends to push border studies beyond the conceptual literature.

BIG commissioned the articles in this special issue with the intention of understanding how borders in globalization operated in the British Columbian region. BIG conducted similar packages of studies in six other regions across Canada; indeed, a Special Issue of JBS in 2019 (Vol 34. No 2) published the findings from the research on Alberta led by Geoffrey Hale and Greg Anderson. In BC, BIG met with regional stakeholders from governments, cross-border collaborative groups such as the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) and the International Mobility and Trade Corridor (IMTC) Program, the private sector and border experts working on either side of the border to identify studies that would be regionally policy relevant to them or their networks. Several of the studies, including Alex Norfolk’s work on pre-clearance and Jesse Baltutis’ and Michele Lee-Moore's work on the Columbia Treaty renegotiation process, flowed directly from such consultations with regional stakeholders. These stakeholders have long been involved in innovation and cooperation around the border to advance the region as an integrated and progressive space.

This special issue presents empirical studies that examine how culture, history, flows, governance, security, and sustainability, play out in bordering practices in the Pacific Northwest. The papers in this special issue, taken together, challenge the notion of the United States (U.S.)/Canada border as a fixed territorial marker that runs concomitant with the geographical line that divides the two nations. The papers intersect with two related hypotheses that have been central to the BIG program: (1) that the traditional assumption of borders as territorial demarcations is increasingly insufficient for understanding how borders work, and (2) that borders are becoming a-territorial in the sense that they are processes linked to the movements of goods, services, people, and resources, sometimes originating far from the border. These case studies demonstrate not that there is no border, but that the function of the border – in essence the management or regulation of flows – has in some cases been completely disconnected from the physical location of the boundary line, whereas in other cases it remains entrenched along the territorial line.

Samantha Magnus et al. present elements of Cascadian culture to explore the cultural flows across the border – flows of ideas, attitudes, and belief systems around the issue of recreational marijuana use. In particular, the flows of values and ideas across the border region have had the effect of creating a functional symmetry in legal and policing practice in BC and Washington, even though, on paper, the legislation is quite different. Therefore, there is an inherent tension between the discourses of national identity in the Cascadian borderland and the legal systems which reflect shared values and norms but do not cross the border. This case study illuminates how the border can be simultaneously porous to flows of cultures, ideas, and attitudes while demarking the territorial limit through different legal and jurisdictional systems and policies of the respective federal and provincial governments that are unable to straddle the border.

Ari Finnsson takes a historical examination of the role of border disputes and their corresponding discourses in the Pacific Northwest during the early years of Confederation to highlight how these disputes were vital to the production of a white-Anglo Canadian identity in British Columbia. Finnsson explores how British Columbians began to think of themselves first as separate from Great Britain, belonging to, but separate from Canada, and then in opposition or in reference to the United States. The author claims that the San Juan and the Alaskan border disputes were formative events in the development of Anglophone identity in BC. Through an examination of historical documents and media commentary during the two disputes, Finnsson’s case-study demonstrates how historically the border was used to construct identity. This identity of belonging to, but separate from, the rest of Canada, has resonance today. British Columbians identify closely with those south of the border, particularly along the coast, and this forms a shared cultural identity in the region which provides a platform for cooperation.

Alex Norfolk’s piece on passenger preclearance activities along the BC-Washington State border demonstrates how bordering functions allow for the border to become a shifting entity – “restructured and reformed at sources of movement.” Preclearance provides a clear example of how bordering processes in the twenty-first century are no longer tied to territory; instead the border is a function applied at the site of production or source of movement, and this function straddles the Canada–US borderland. Norfolk’s paper also illuminates the intense cross-border collaboration and cooperation that exists in this region. The push for preclearance in the region exemplifies the coordination amongst stakeholders from multiple levels of governments and the way in which the border can be pushed away from the territorial line. Nonetheless, the preclearance facility for passenger travel on the ferries from Southern Vancouver island remains stalled because of cost-sharing challenges on the commissioned facility design.

Alex Gunn explores the complexity of multi-level governance systems managing the flows of migration in British Columbia. Gunn’s paper demonstrates the challenges and limitations, particularly around power, of intergovernmental dynamics in relation to borders and the management of flows. The focus on provincial versus federal management of migration also provides an example of the shift away from strictly state-level actors in border management but also the growing number of actors involved in the migration process. An important element of Gunn’s piece is that the type of migrant (or how they are categorized), and not the territory, dictates the intricacies of the bordering process; furthermore, it is an ongoing process beginning before entering Canada and persisting even once living within the country.

Jesse Baltutis and Michele-Lee Moore explore the links between contemporary bordering processes, Indigenous traditional territories, and transboundary water governance, through the case of the Columbia River Treaty modernization process. Baltutis and Lee-Moore see the treaty renegotiation as an opportunity to engage with Indigenous nations on a nation-to-nation basis through governance structures that challenge the traditionally state-centric approach to international treaty negotiations. Despite Baltutis and Lee-Moore identifying this as an opportunity to engage with the nations as nations, when the US announced its desire to renegotiate the treaty, the impacted nations were not acknowledged. The Government of Canada announced that Canada’s First Nations would not be at the negotiating table, even though the treaty affects the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa, Secwepmec and Okanagan nations. Critics suggest this is an indication of the federal government’s actual commitment to reconciliation. This paper, raises questions of how ontologically different understandings of power, nations, and territory can be reconciled in the Canadian context.

Hodge and Hallgrimsdottir point towards another potential emerging issue relating to border control in general, as well as in the region – the existence of racist right-wing online communities that span the United States and Canada. While the paper does not explicitly provide a case-study of BC, it does have relevance to the region. First, the increasing prominence as well as relevance of on-line thought communities to regional, national, and global political activity means that any consideration of regional borders must also address cross-border and trans-border web activism. Second, the ideas and actions espoused by right-wing (especially far-right) on-line activism pose significant security challenges to borders while simultaneously calling into question their relevance as physical containers of political and cultural ideas. The placement of this paper in a special issue on Cascadia recognizes as well that regional lenses are inadequate for understanding the challenges that on-line activism produces to border policing, security, and flows. In framing the alt-right online activity as a social movement, the authors demonstrate how these communities transcend physical borders and challenge the empirical notion of state borders, while simultaneously buttressing cultural borders that are entirely divorced from spatial understandings of territory. Furthermore, this paper also raises new questions about forms of political participation and social movements. It contributes to the insights from Agamben (2008) (building on Arendt) that fictionalizes the necessary connection between citizenship (inclusion or exclusion) and territoriality. Like so much of the recent literature on borders, this strengthens the challenge to the traditional conceptions of the relationships between citizenship, borders, territory and the state.

These case studies provide examples that highlight the simultaneous but contradictory trends regarding borders in British Columbia: while boundaries and bordering processes at the external borders shift away from the territorial boundary lines; self-determination, local politics and cultural identities re-inscribe internal boundaries and borders, which can be both virtual and real. Moreover, economic protectionism, racial discourses and xenophobic narratives, augment territorial concepts of borders. As examined by Hodge and Hallgrimsdottir, Magnus et al., culture plays a significant role in constructing borders. Baltutis and Lee-Moore, and Gunn demonstrate the shift away from federal government actors in the management of borders and the role of power in that shift. Finnsson’s documents the role of historical territorial disputes in framing BC identity, while Norfolk examines future preclearance systems to question the territorial concept of borders.

As much of the recent work in border studies literature focuses on conceptual understandings of borders, the papers commissioned by the BIG program in BC sought to document empirical cases of how borders are functioning in this region of the world. Taken together, they support the program’s first hypothesis that traditional assumptions of territorial borders are insufficient for understanding how borders function in BC, while only in a few cases do they advance the second hypothesis that borders are becoming aterritorial.

One of the aims of the Borders in Globalization research program was to train the next generation of interdisciplinary border scholars, while moving the field forward empirically and theoretically and bridging policy and academic insights in innovative ways. The papers in this special issue reflect these twin goals: all the papers in this special issue are the result of research conducted primarily by students (undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral fellows) under the supervision of participating research faculty and, in some cases, regional stakeholders, as described above. All these papers were presented at the BIG conference in Ottawa, held in December 2017, and prior to that, draft versions of these papers were circulated and presented at BIG advisory board meetings. Students also presented these papers at the 2018 and 2019 Association for Borderland Studies Annual Conferences. The final products reflect the collaborative work of the entire BIG team who have generously provided feedback and mentorship to students across the research program. The BC BIG team thus acknowledges with gratitude the guidance and support of Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, who provided both the intellectual direction for the project, but also the infrastructure through which students were funded and had access to faculty mentors as well as mentors in the public and private sectors. We also acknowledge the insight, guidance, and input of the researchers who mentored and supervised the research work conducted on the BC region; in particular, Dr. Randy Widdis, Dr. Victor Konrad, and Dr. Oliver Schmidtke.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant Borders in Globalization (SSHRC 895-2012-1022).