Borders as Infrastructure

Borders as Infrastructure PDF

Author: Huub Dijstelbloem

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-17

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0262366371

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An investigation of borders as moving entities that influence our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. In Borders as Infrastructure, Huub Dijstelbloem brings science and technology studies, as well as the philosophy of technology, to the study of borders and international human mobility. Taking Europe's borders as a point of departure, he shows how borders can transform and multiply and and how they can mark conflicts over international orders. Borders themselves are moving entities, he claims, and with them travel our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. The philosophies of Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk provide a framework for Dijstelbloem's discussion of the material and morphological nature of borders and border politics. Dijstelbloem offers detailed empirical investigations that focus on the so-called migrant crisis of 2014-2016 on the Greek Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos; the Europe surveillance system Eurosur; border patrols at sea; the rise of hotspots and "humanitarian borders"; the technopolitics of border control at Schiphol International Airport; and the countersurveillance by NGOs, activists, and artists who investigate infrastructural border violence. Throughout, Dijstelbloem explores technologies used in border control, including cameras, databases, fingerprinting, visual representations, fences, walls, and monitoring instruments. Borders can turn places, routes, and territories into "zones of death." Dijstelbloem concludes that Europe's current relationship with borders renders borders--and Europe itself--an "extreme infrastructure" obsessed with boundaries and limits.

Borders in Cyberspace

Borders in Cyberspace PDF

Author: Brian Kahin

Publisher: Mit Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780262611268

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Today millions of technologically empowered individuals are able to participate freely in international transactions and enterprises, social and economic. These activities are governed by national and local laws designed for simpler times and now challenged by a new technological and market environment as well as by the practicalities and politics of enforcement across national boundaries. Borders in Cyberspace investigates issues arising from national differences in law, public policy, and social and cultural values as these differences are reformulated in the emerging global information infrastructure. The contributions include detailed analyses of some of the most visible issues, including intellectual property, security, privacy, and censorship.

Borderland Infrastructures

Borderland Infrastructures PDF

Author: Alessandro Rippa

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9048543568

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Across the Chinese borderlands, investments in large-scale transnational infrastructure such as roads and special economic zones have increased exponentially over the past two decades. Based on long-term ethnographic research, Borderland infrastructures. Trade, Development, and Control in Western China addresses a major contradiction at the heart of this fast-paced development: small-scale traders have lost their historic strategic advantages under the growth of massive Chinese state investment and are now struggling to keep their businesses afloat. Concurrently, local ethnic minorities have become the target of radical resettlement projects, securitization, and tourism initiatives, and have in many cases grown increasingly dependent on state subsidies. At the juncture of anthropological explorations of the state, border studies, and research on transnational trade and infrastructure development, Borderland infrastructures provides new analytical tools to understand how state power is experienced, mediated, and enacted in Xinjiang and Yunnan. In the process, Rippa offers a rich and nuanced ethnography of life across China's peripheries.

Open Borders

Open Borders PDF

Author: Bryan Caplan

Publisher: First Second

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1250766230

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An Economist “Our Books of the Year” Selection Economist Bryan Caplan makes a bold case for unrestricted immigration in this fact-filled graphic nonfiction. American policy-makers have long been locked in a heated battle over whether, how many, and what kind of immigrants to allow to live and work in the country. Those in favor of welcoming more immigrants often cite humanitarian reasons, while those in favor of more restrictive laws argue the need to protect native citizens. But economist Bryan Caplan adds a new, compelling perspective to the immigration debate: He argues that opening all borders could eliminate absolute poverty worldwide and usher in a booming worldwide economy—greatly benefiting humanity. With a clear and conversational tone, exhaustive research, and vibrant illustrations by Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders makes the case for unrestricted immigration easy to follow and hard to deny.

Frontier Encounters

Frontier Encounters PDF

Author: Franck Billé

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1906924872

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

Permeable Borders

Permeable Borders PDF

Author: Paul Otto

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2020-04-09

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1789204437

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

If the frontier, in all its boundless possibility, was a central organizing metaphor for much of U.S. history, today it is arguably the border that best encapsulates the American experience, as xenophobia, economic inequality, and resurgent nationalism continue to fuel conditions of division and limitation. This boldly interdisciplinary volume explores the ways that historical and contemporary actors in the U.S. have crossed such borders—whether national, cultural, ethnic, racial, or conceptual. Together, these essays suggest new ways to understand borders while encouraging connection and exchange, even as social and political forces continue to try to draw lines around and between people.

Protecting the Homeland

Protecting the Homeland PDF

Author: United States. Congress. House. Select Committee on Homeland Security. Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Border Land, Border Water

Border Land, Border Water PDF

Author: C. J. Alvarez

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 147731900X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the twenty-first century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building. He explains how initial groundbreaking in the nineteenth century transitioned to unbridled faith in the capacity to control the movement of people, goods, and water through the use of physical structures. By the 1960s, however, the built environment of the border began to display increasingly obvious systemic flaws. More often than not, Alvarez shows, federal agencies in both countries responded with more construction—“compensatory building” designed to mitigate unsustainable policies relating to immigration, black markets, and the natural world. Border Land, Border Water reframes our understanding of how the border has come to look and function as it does and is essential to current debates about the future of the US-Mexico divide.