Journal of Borderlands Studies

ISSN: 0886-5655 (Print) 2159-1229 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjbs20

Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion

Victor Konrad

To cite this article: Victor Konrad (2015) Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion, Journal of
Borderlands Studies, 30:1, 1-17, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2015.1008387

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2015.1008387

Published online: 16 Mar 2015.

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 Journal of Borderlands Studies | 30.1 - 2015

Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion

Victor Konrad

Abstract
The premises of this exploration in border theory are that borders are always in motion, that our theories about
borders need to reect this axiom beyond acknowledging borders as process and changing quality, and that these
theories need to align with the motion turn in the social sciences. After characterizing and visualizing borders
in motion, the paper evaluates the potential building blocks for a theory of borders in motion. These include
concepts of border construction and reconstruction, exercise of power, equilibrium seeking, vacillating borders,
spaces of ows, and uncertainty in transition space, among others. Analogues from basic and environmental
science are postulated to explain how motion operates to generate bordering and create borders and borderlands,
as well as account for movements surrounding borders and their alteration and reconciliation. Three component
realms of a conceptual framework are offered: generation and realization of borders through dichotomization
and dialectic, border dynamic motions and signatures, and alteration and reconciliation of the border in
response to breaking points. The evolving framework is articulated with reference to a case study from the Pacic
Northwest border region between Canada and the United States.

Introduction
The border may be one of the most important concepts in contemporary geography. The border is found
increasingly at the center of the politics of identity, security, environment, mobility and economy (Balibar
2002, 2004), yet it is not as xed as it appears, either in practice or in meaning (Bauder 2011). Borders are
quite simply and elegantly in motion. Borders have always been in motion, and the making and unmaking
of borders is just a matter of time (Davies 2011). Coincidentally, the border concept and construct as well
as the process of bordering have changed over the ages, and they are evolving currently to reveal new
dimensions as globalization expands and becomes more complex (Appadurai 1996; Agnew 2008; Bhabba
1994; Ohmae 1995). Also, constant motion occurs above, below, through and beyond the lines that
separate polities, states, cultures and societies, as these separated or divided entities converge in trade, vie
for control of interstitial space, alter security parameters and perimeters between them, and negotiate
interaction. Borders are born in dichotomies and fashioned in dialectics, and as constructs evolved from
opposing forces, these dichotomies and dialectics produce energy which is translated into motion between
separated entities. Accordingly, borders, viewed either as object or process, are born in motion, conduct
motion and create motion. Yet, our images and constructs of borders, and ultimately our theories about
how borders work, are still engaged and evolved by the visible, often linear, and generally institutionalized
lines, fences and walls that are the dominant manifestations of borders, the agencies and processes that
permeate borders, and the statist positions that create them.

As border specialists we do not acknowledge fully the motion underlying these constructs. Also, as social
scientists we have been content to seek explanations for borders in motion within our own paradigms, and
we have not ventured sufciently into the scientic theories that inform motion, and offer useful analogues
to conceptualize borders and border processes. Consequently, our theories about borders, bordering, and
borderlands do not express effectively the role of motion in generating, aligning, sustaining, and altering
these constructs. There are, however, substantial indications that a new paradigm is emerging, and that this
paradigm not only envisions borders in motion but also offers the building blocks for a theory of borders in
motion. This paper aims to gather some of these potential building blocks and evaluate the assemblage. One
purpose is to characterize and visualize borders in motion. Another is to suggest how motion operates to
generate bordering and create borders and borderlands. The ultimate purpose is to offer an initial theory of

Adjunct Research Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, 1125
Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1S5B6 | victor.konrad@carleton.ca

2015 Association for Borderlands Studies

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2015.1008387
Journal of Borderlands Studies | 30.1 - 2015

borders in motion. Overall, the essay is intended to begin a conversation about borders and motion in a very
broad context, engaging not only the social science concepts that we know, but also exploring other scientic
analogues that we may not know (de Landa 2005, 2011).

The approach is to begin with a glimpse of the spatial signatures and apparent components of borders in
motion. This excursion through various selected contexts is designed to identify motion in bordering,
borderlands, and borders, and to familiarize the reader with the imprints. The viewing is followed by an
assessment of the theoretical underpinnings of borders in motion. The assessment ranges from fairly
obvious impacts of motion on borders to more subtle recognitions. Then the discussion shifts to
consideration of the theoretical building blocks. First, is the generation of motion in the dichotomies and
dialectics of border function, practice, meaning, representation, and discourse. Next, are the border effects
of waves, tides and other expressions of motion. A third component is exemplied in the adjustments
or reconciliations in borderlands and at the border. These may be occasioned by breaking points in
bordering and re-bordering. A case study of borders in motion is considered from the Pacic Northwest
border between the United States and Canada. The paper concludes with a conceptual framework for
borders in motion and recommendations for research.

Viewing Borders in Motion

To begin this exploration, a few examples of borders in motion are offered to color the concept and suggest
characteristics and dimensions of the visible signatures and spatial qualities of these constructs. One of the
most poignant examples of contemporary borders in motion is found in Israels walls snaking out from the
Green Line beyond the secured Israeli state in contortions to encircle Jewish settlements in the West Bank
(Newman 1995). The separation wall or fence routinely extends beyond the Green Line into the West
Bank territory, and most of these incursions are within sight of the Green Line boundary, and usually less
than a kilometer from it. Adjacent to the Jerusalem urban area, however, the separation wall extends more
than ten kilometers in some instances to envelop expanding and proliferating Jewish settlements. Another
substantial aring of the wall occurs to the north of Jerusalem and east of Tel Aviv where the wall extends
more than 20 kilometers into West Bank territory (Khamaisi 2008, gure 3, 97). The overall impression of
this boundary reconguration is a determined and organic movement and constant adjustment of the
border consistent with Israeli settlement initiatives and the exercise of power in the region.

Nearby, Africas colonial palimpsest of borders gridding the continent can hardly contain the tribal and
ethnic pulse beneath this arbitrary set of divisions (Zachary 2010). Much of Africas postcolonial experience
is steeped in power struggles among ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups contained within colonial legacy
states. In many of these states the internal boundaries between cultures have proved more signicant borders
than the imposed boundaries between the colonial legacy states. In some instances, in Rwanda and Nigeria
for example, the battles for control within the states have led to civil war and genocide. Meanwhile, lines of
cultural and religious distinction like the Islamic Front, stretching across sub-Saharan Africa, suggest a more
realistic boundary between African peoples. The Islamic Front, like the Israeli separation wall, is contested,
constantly in ux and ultimately dynamic (de Blij 2007, 185). Recognition of the powerful presence of the
Islamic Front helped to create Africas newest state, South Sudan. Originally hailed as an example of a new
order in African boundary delineation, the line between north and South Sudan remains contested, and
tribes in the South are currently embroiled in struggles to dene territories within the new state.

The vigorous exchange zone between Chile and Peru lies in the almost featureless Atacama Desert
bounded by the massive Andes and the Pacic Ocean. Once contested in the post-colonial era, the desert
borderlands have seen many boundary disputes for over a century, but now these borderlands
accommodate the substantial movements of goods and services between Peru and Chile, and the transfer
of commodities across the Andes from Bolivia. The land border in the Atacama sands is apparent only at
the crossing points of the highway and the railway where all ows are channeled. Border disputes
continue, however, with the latest being a maritime claim by Peru (Anon 2010).

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For centuries, Switzerland has been a crossroads for European encounter and exchange, a mountain refuge
for global assets, and, more recently, it has become an island residual in European integration. Switzerland
thrives on borders in motion and ambiguity. The daily life of all regions is steeped in the movements across
Swiss borders with all of its neighbors. Although the country does not wish to join the EU, Switzerland has
become a member of the Schengen Agreement and has now opened its borders substantially to cross-
European trafc (Foulkes 2008).

India and Pakistan emerged from a colonial past into a partitioned present in the late 1940s. The lines
between these South Asian powers continue to evolve, and are contested constantly in provinces like
Kashmir where ethnic, religious, and cultural differences underlie regular turmoil and violence that lashes
across borders (Evans 2001). Elsewhere in the immediate region of the Himalayas, Afghanistan, and
China, the stans of the former Soviet Union, and the small mountain states, all contest as well as easily
cross the most elevated boundaries at the roof of the World.

The smoldering Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Peninsula are metaphors for the sustained boundary disputes
between Japan and its neighbors Russia, China, Taiwan, and Korea. The border between Russia and Japan
in the Kuril Islands remains in dispute after more than a century of conicts, treaties, border adjustments,
and international involvement in efforts to broker a resolution (Lee 2002). The border lines and the
occupants of the region have moved often to accommodate the seismic shifts of territorial control of land and
sea in the region. Similarly, other East Asian countries have engaged in territorial and border disputes with
Japan and among themselves primarily over maritime boundaries and symbolic island outliers of territory.

Since the events of 9/11, the United States has attempted to secure some of the most porous borders in the
world by constructing actual walls to stem the worlds greatest ows of illegal migration and illegal drugs
from Mexico, and enhancing security with a virtual wall to monitor ows of people and goods in the
worlds largest bilateral trade relationship between Canada and the United States. This unprecedented
attention by the United States to its boundaries and homeland security has led to massive shifts in
governance priorities, public opinion, public expenditures, and the nature of doing business in North
America. In a decade, North American borders have been re-invented (Konrad and Nicol 2008).

Borders in Motion: Theoretical Underpinnings

Theorizing borders has not acknowledged motion explicitly or effectively to account for the variety of
ows, relocations, adjustments, and other dynamic processes explicit in the foregoing illustrations of
contemporary borders in motion. The recent review literature on directions and progress in border studies
acknowledges greater attention among researchers to motion surrounding boundaries in globalization,
particularly with regard to the movements of transnational migrants (Brown 2010; Diener and Hagen
2009; Green 2013; Rumford 2006). Yet, the theoretical advancements are heralded as recognition that
borders are evolving in the complex processes of trans-national integration and interconnectivity of
globalization, and that borders and bordering in globalization may be uncoupled from the national scale
and linked to identity and belonging within and beyond the state. As in other recent assessments of
progress in border studies (Newman and Paasi 1998; Alvarez 1999; Kolossov 2005; Newman 2006), the
acknowledgement of motion is aligned with and often restricted to border-crossing dynamics and the new
spaces of interaction and connectivity they form. The territorial trap, the assumption that the territorial
state developed as an immutable spatial framework of political order, not a unique political geographical
formation (Agnew 1994), has been acknowledged if not adequately addressed (Shah 2012). Yet, the trap
of seeing the border line rather than viewing the dynamic interaction of which the border line is but one
component, has rendered the simple border line durable and the complex motion surrounding it hazy if
not superuous. It is now important and timely to align the paradigmatic shift toward considerations of
spaces of mobility and uncertainty (Retaille 2005; Sheller and Urry 2006) with the emerging notions of
mobile borders (Amilhat-Szary 2011; Giraut 2011).

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Actually, much of the recent theorizing about borders has alluded to if not recognized and acknowledged the
importance of motions, movements, and ows surrounding borders. Borders are conceptualized as process
by scholars from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, and this suggests that theorizing the interaction of
borders and motion is emerging as a wide eld of intellectual inquiry in the social sciences. Anthropologists,
Economists, Geographers, Historians, Political Scientists and Sociologists, all are weighing in on the
question of xed borders or moving borderlands? (Hassner 2002). This literature is vast and no
comprehensive review is attempted in this exploratory essay. Several directions are evident. Prominent
among these are a critical interrogation of border crossing (Alvarez 1995, 1999) and relocation across
boundaries (Green 2010, 2013). Borders in their own right are conceptualized as shifting (Scott 2006),
actively re-ordering space (van Houtum and van Naerssen 2002; van Houtum, Kramsch, and Zierhofer
2005; Berg and van Houtum 2003), and relocating political, economic and social relations (Green 2010).
Furthermore, the process of border enhancement and the construction of walls and fences creates,
paradoxically, more border contestation (Ben Slimane 2010; Kaplan 2003) and diminishes sovereignty
(Brown 2010; Vaughan-Williams 2009). The perspective that borders are social constructs (Newman and
Paasi 1998) initiated considerations of borders and borderlands as parts of generated systems of interaction.
Power is seen as a force in this social construction and reconstruction (Newman 2003). Flows are identied
among the governance, trade, community and cultural interactions at different scales in the borderlands
(Brunet-Jailly 2005), as well as the identities constructed and reconstructed (Konrad and Nicol 2011). In
essence, borders are now viewed as overdetermined concepts and constructs that are relativized and seeking
equilibrium (Balibar 2002). All of these views suggest that motion is integral to understanding how borders
are formed and changed, and how they work. Yet, the idea of the border remains as an object, a thing in the
world, or it is conveyed as a process or an essence not fully formed nor understood.

Our efforts to comprehend borders in globalization require explanation of the paradox of enhanced
borders in an increasingly transnational world. The routes to this explanation have led theorists beyond
the bordering of capabilities to comprehend mobility of labor and capital ows on a global scale (Sassen
1988), and to view borders in the context of new orders of initiation, acceleration, relationship and other
facets of motion (Sassen 1996). Territory is now mobile and it has to travel with the result that as
traditional borders are opened up, new spaces emerge and nd territory that is characteristically more uid
(Sassen 2011). Globally, spaces of places have become spaces of ows (Castells 1996). A new and dynamic
scaling of macro, meso and micro borders is apparent in the European Union, for example (Medeiros
2011). Sohn (2011) and Sohn and Walther (2009, 2011) underline the signicance and the implications
of the de-bordering and re-bordering dialectic in a mobile space. Hamez (2011) notes the incongruities
and the connections between borders in space and borders in the mind, and alludes to the connective
synergies and mobilities produced. Giraut (2011) outlines the contemporary move from xedness as
globalization dislodges coordinates and templates of being, borders among them. Sassen (2011) asserts
that theorists now have one foot in global logics whereas the other remains in the nation state framework.
This extension of stance implies more motion and energy transfer. We nd ourselves and our boundaries
in a more uid spatial and temporal context, and perhaps this makes it imperative for us to grasp borders
more emphatically and attempt to reinforce their presence and visibility.

Inherent in the mobility turn in the social sciences is a multi-faceted mobility where edge spaces become
more powerful constructs and produce border places of greater signicance in the movement of people,
goods, and information (Hein, Evans, and Jones 2008; Retaille 2005; Sheller and Urry 2006). A greater
tension builds as a result between the demarcation of boundaries and the articulation of mobility. Yet,
mobility continues to increase and boundaries are more emphatically established and secured with the
result that they vacillate (Balibar 2002; Brunet-Jailly 2011).

Human agency has always contributed to this dynamic edge space. Yet, in globalization, we can observe
how people react in borderlands of heightened energy, transfer, connectivity, and attention (Bigo and
Guild 2005; Bigo and Tsoukala 2008). Faced with greater and more deant boundaries, people work the
line and produce more border actions (Taylor 2011) and the border becomes practice (Kramsch 2006a,

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2006b, 2011). Some of this practice is neighborhood building in order to comply, connect and coordinate
across boundaries (Laine, 2011; Scott 2011). This activity generates local logics and robust local processes
in the borderlands (Alper 2011). People accomplish new ways to share space and venerate and re-vitalize
old ways (Chevalier 2011). Borderland residents realize that their human mobility rights are threatened
with increased securitization, and they respond and resist (Payan 2011). In all of this mobility and
resistance borders become clouded and obscured with the intensity of motions, and ethnography is in fact
on the move across borders (Andersen 2011). Yet, rising out of this uncertainty in transition space are
border poetics generated in human mobility (Mayer 2011) and aesthetics of superuity (Mbembe 2001).
In the borderlands, humans are demonstrably liminal beings (Morehouse 2004; Widdis 2011). They
inhabit transition space where they witness borders in motion, and they confront, negotiate and
accommodate the movement.

The most apparent evidence of these interactions is expressed in the confrontations where border space is
contested. Contestation of borders extends from claiming space by implementing and enhancing
boundaries and making compromises (Madsen 2011), to violence for the purpose of conrming space at
borders (Mostov 2008, 2010). Polarities underlie these interactions, and they may range from simple
familiarity and unfamiliarity to decisive othering and proling of differences. Also, a taunt line resonates,
and borders that are tight actually engender more motion rather than less.

The combined implication of this theorizing is to suggest implicit rather than explicit notions of borders in
motion. Characteristically, the motion is articulated as border process. These implicit notions are evident
in the classications of borderlands postulated by Martinez (1994): a developmental sequence from
alienated borderlands, through coexistent borderlands, interdependent borderlands and nally integrated
borderlands. They are offered as well in the zonal projections of border heartland, intermediate borderland,
and outer borderland designated by Baud and van Schendahl (1997). Other formulations also convey the
motion inherent in the construction and change of borders and borderlands. Among the most recent is the
interaction and ow among local cross border culture, local cross-border clout, market forces and trade ows,
and policy activities of multiple levels of government suggested by Brunet-Jailly (2005). Konrad and Nicol
(2008, 2011) add the additional lens or pole of socially constructed and reconstructed identities to this model,
and emphasize power as the motive force in borderlands theory. They emphasize as well the re-invention of
borders and borderlands as a recurrent motive characteristic of borders. It remains to link these theoretical
building blocks that convey motion, and to express them explicitly as aggregates or components in a
theory of borders in motion.

Component 1. Dichotomies, Dialectics and the Generation and Realization of

Borders
Dichotomies create borders and they are created by borders. Difference, others, opposites and
extrinsicality all are constructed both as polarities between people, institutions and places, and as
analogues in interstitial space. Space is differentiated and institutionalized through the generation of
borders. Interrogation of this construction process, and its production, is a recurrent feature of borders,
bordering, and borderlands. Different energies are evident: the separation and division of space
through dichotomization, and the dialectic surrounding the spatial differentiation. As people construct
boundaries they are engaged in the practice of drawing lines and erecting barriers just as they
constantly evaluate and rationalize the meaning of the constructs. The border is not a single and
coherent concept, and this overdetermined and multidimensional character of borders has increased
rather than decreased in globalization, and as state delimitation has become more varied and complex
(Balibar 2002).

A critical geography of the border involves engaging the dialectic of practice and meaning, and
decoupling the concept of border from the state in order to allow the polysemic and overdetermined
conception of the border to ourish (Bauder 2011). The concept of the border follows a dialectical

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movement (Hegel [1807] 2005) because the concept is not stable, but is constantly rethought because
there are contradictory viewpoints and practices related to borders (Bauder 2011). In this sense, then,
borders are always in motion. The dialectical movement of the border concept, through the juxtaposition
of contradictory perspectives that negate each other, has led to the acknowledgement of multiple
meanings, the coexistence of multiple aspects, and even dialectical frameworks for the analysis of borders
(Bauder 2011). The paradox of the CanadaUS border provides examples of these dialectical frameworks
in the simultaneous strengthening of border security and enhancement of trade mobility (Andreas and
Biersteker 2003). Bauder (2011, 1131) argues that the Hegelian understanding of dialectics, which leads
eventually to a comprehensive and universal meaning of a concept, cannot and should not be achieved.
Rather, he urges the alignment of the border concept with the position that knowledge is fragmented and
political in nature (Foucault 1970, 1972). This conrms the inherent instability of the border concept.
The recognition of multiple border aspects constitutes a moment in the border dialectic that does not
permit the border concept to be xed, stable, or universal (Bauder 2011, 1131). Border scholars have
searched for common meanings and shared glossaries but, recognizing the value of exploring aspects that
are juxtaposed and contradictions that may be revealed about boundaries, they have stopped short of
dening a universal concept of the border (Newman 2006). This space for reection and discussion and
argument is very important. If we accept Lefebvres (2001) observation that the possible always contradicts
the real, we can engage the border dialectic to develop new meanings to challenge existing practices and
anticipate new possibilities (Bauder 2011, 1135).

A theory of borders in motion is aligned with this philosophy, and it is cognizant of the constant change
that makes and alters borders and borderlands. This change is one form of motion, and this motion, like
other intrinsic motions such as human migrations, trade ows and information transfers, requires space in
order to articulate its energy (Massey 2005). This interstitial space is articulated as borderlands where
motion is exercised and places display the effects of border motions. Borders in motion, then, derive from
the energy created between polarities and even the more subtle differences of culture, society, economy,
and polity. Also, borders in motion are manifested as dialectical space where border dialogue is formulated
most effectively and denitively by stakeholders in the dialectical space. Borders in motion are manifested
as well in realized space and in the places and landscapes of the borderlands.

Component 2. Border Effects: Waves, Currents, Tides and Other Motions

The tracks, shapes, velocities, and other manifestations of borders in motion are conceptualized as border
effects. These may be recurrent and cyclical wave or tide phenomena, ows that spread or are channeled,
movements that strike barriers, and other movements that either permeate a boundary or are arrested by it.
Border effects may take numerous forms and may result in a multiplicity of congurations. This plural nature
of border effects is consistent with the diachronic production of border motions and the dialectic space in
which the border motions are manifested, considered, and contested. All of these border effects are at the very
least a relict signature of motion and characteristically the ongoing processes and products of motion.

Border effects may be articulated through uid dynamic analogies where a uid meets a solid. Quite
simply, the border may be envisioned as the liminal zone between water and land, where waves strike rocks
and lap on beaches, rip-currents recoil, channels cut through dunes, rivers enter seas and create deltas, and
tides roll in and out to dene the zone of interaction. This metaphor is at once emphatic and elucidating of
the spatial and temporal contexts of borders and the constant yet varied motions in the border zone.

Theories of waves, tides, currents, and associated uid dynamics, the channels, corridors, deltas and other
natural constructs resulting from them, and the canals, sea walls, and erosion abatements constructed by
humans to channel and stop ows, are well developed (Acheson 1990; Cartwright 1999; Reddy and
Affholder 2002). These theories already inform transportation and migration research related to borders,
and they could provide a theoretical context for a broader approach to border phenomena. For example,
the relationship of the theories of current ow, breaking waves, viscous ow, laminars, and turbulent ows

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(Pope 2000) may offer a better understanding of how steady and unsteady ows of people, goods,
information, and ideas are impacted by borders. Furthermore, the physics of ows distinguishes subsonic,
transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic ows which may offer a useful scale for conceptualizing ows across
borders in a globalizing world order. The theory of magnetism also relates to ow dynamics and offers
possibilities for envisioning the impacts of growth poles and places in the urban hierarchy associated with
borders. Cabbeling, the effect of increased density over the calculated average density, on mixing two
masses of water with different temperatures and salinities, provides an analogue for characterizing the
mixing of populations in a borderlands zone. The concept of liminality, derived from biological and
ecological theory of the water column, has already entered the language of border studies (Morehouse
2004). The concept of tides with the differentiation of phases (springs and neaps), amplitude, lunar
attitude, cycle, dissipation, relationship to bathymetry, links to other forces and scales (lake, atmospheric,
earth, galactic tides) offers a rich context for theorizing sustained and predictable ows impacting borders
(Cartwright 1999). Green (2009, 2011) offers the concept of tidemarks to elucidate the extent of
borderli-ness. Theories related to channels already inform our conceptualizations of corridors and
gateways related to borders but we need to explore more thoroughly the impacts of surges, damming,
controlled ows and other ow phenomena, as well as the resulting depositional analogues such as deltas
for conceptualizing borderlands accretions adjacent to a border crossing point involving human
populations, trade goods and ideas (Hori and Saito 2003).

Component 3. Breaking Points: Altering or Reconciling the Line

Some borders in the postmodern world are altered by force, treaty or mutual understanding but most are
reconciled even when contested. Whether this is due to the integrative forces of globalization and the
enhanced expression of borderlands as transitional space remains to be explored. The boundary, border or
frontier line, once established in transitional space, requires reconciliation as motions surrounding the line
question, challenge and contest its establishment and reinforcement. Reconciliations at the border and in
the borderlands occur as processes of negotiation. Negotiations are occasioned when a breaking point is
reached at the border, and that breaking point does not immediately lead to border alteration.

Breaking point theory draws on the extensive theory of waves, catastrophe, chaos, and critical levels, now
well established in both the physical and social sciences, and it applies concepts derived from these theories
to the conceptualization of the re-bordering or border evolution process (Alligood, Sauer, and Yorke 1997;
Arnold 1992; Cox 1992; Gladwell 2000; Greene 1999). A breaking point is conceptualized as the sudden
shift in behavior of a system arising from a small change in circumstances. This shift may lead to sudden and
dramatic circumstances, for example, the unpredictable timing of a landslide, or the massive gridlock of
halted trafc near a border crossing point. Catastrophe theory, an outgrowth of bifurcation theory, explains
that small changes in certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or to disappear,
or to change from attracting to repelling, and vice versa, thus leading to large and sudden changes of the
behavior of the system. Chaos theory relates to dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to initial
conditions, and where small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for systems,
thus rendering prediction difcult if not impossible in the long term. The prediction of change in weather
systems is a good example. Chaotic systems, in addition to being sensitive to initial conditions, also display
topological mixing, that is the property that the system will evolve over time so that any given region or
open set of its phase space will eventually overlap with any other given region. This transitivity of systemic
space is accompanied by a density of periodic orbits where every point in the space is interactive with
others. Wave theory, and particularly the breaking wave, contributes further to the understanding of
breaking points by articulating that when a breaking waves amplitude reaches a critical level, a process will
suddenly start to occur to cause large amounts of wave energy to be transformed into turbulent kinetic
energy. It is the point of transformation, the point at which the system changes radically or breaks down,
that is of greatest interest in breaking point theory. What causes critical points to degenerate? What are the
germs of catastrophic geometries such as folds and cusps, and the swallowtail, buttery, hyperbolic,
elliptic, and parabolic signatures that become evident when systems break down (Alligood, Sauer, and

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Yorke 1997), Kellert (1993), Posten and Stewart (1998)? At this juncture in theorizing breaking points as
related to border theory, however, characterization of the outcome geometries is less compelling and urgent
than dening the initial conditions, regional topology characteristics and point relationships in the
borderland space.

Borders may look deceptively like linear systems, where catastrophe and chaos theory might not apply, yet
actually the linear boundary is but one part of the system which also includes the crossing point(s),
approaches, and other points and links in the border region or borderland (Konrad and Nicol 2004).
Border regions in the process of rapid and extensive change immediately invest the greatest energy of
change at the boundary line thus requiring rapid and unformulated response in other parts of the system.
Herein, the initial conditions are created for widely diverging outcomes, potentially rendering the system
chaotic and unresponsive. Change is concentrated at the borderline, and the consequences of change at the
border are unleashed most dramatically and unpredictably at the border and in the border region.

The array or accumulation of breaking points is postulated as changing over time and across space as one
dynamicre-bordering or re-inventing the borderimpacts a range of other dynamic processes such as
securitization and digitalization. This implies that breaking point congurations will have different
signatures at crossings located at different points along the boundary, at different levels in the hierarchy of
places, and in different cross-border regions. Yet, there may prove to be consistencies in these signatures
among border crossings of similar size or those found in the same cross-border region.

The theoretical challenge is then to characterize the breaking points in the process components of border
change and evolution. Prominent among these components are securitization, mobility enhancement,
technological advancement, and identity verication. Some of these are linked in continua such as security
and mobility, so that an increase in security may result in a concomitant reduction of mobility.
Dichotomies of goods and people crossing, and human or digital inspection, as well as scales of regional-
national, and transnational-neo-national afliation, also relate to the denition of breaking points. This
approach promises to provide a conceptual framework for anticipating points or ranges where
structure and agency may break down in the process of change at the border.

Case Study: Pacic Northwest Borderlands of Canada and the United States
The border between Canada and the United States has changed in the ways in which the boundary and
the borderlands have been imagined, contested, and reconstructed (Berland 2009). Re-bordering the
United States and Canada, or re-inventing the borders between the countries, is conceived as a massive,
complex process with fundamental changes in both the structure of border crossing activity and the
human agency guiding this behavior (Andreas and Biersteker 2003; Drache 2004). A theory of borders to
encompass these dimensions and changes is emerging, but it has yet to incorporate the implications of
routine movements and sudden and extensive change (Brunet-Jailly 2005; Konrad and Nicol 2008,
2011). Changes in border crossing policy may impact the relationship between Canada and the United
States with consequences for governance, prosperity, citizenship, growth, and progress, and sustainability
in both countries, and more specically the respective communities along the border and within cross-
border regions (Brunet-Jailly 2004; Farson 2006; Nicol 2005).

This dynamic border context provides an ideal testing ground for ideas and theoretical notions about
borders in motion. Research by this author, conducted recently in the Pacic Northwest, was aimed at
conceptualizing and evaluating breaking points in the operation of the WashingtonBritish Columbia
border, and the survey and interviews conducted among border stakeholders in the cross-border region
were focused on identifying and elucidating the breaking points (Konrad 2010). In the process of
analyzing the results of this research a more comprehensive theory of borders in motion emerged to
encompass the theoretical notion of breaking points as well as the other components of dichotomies,
dialectics, motion articulation and motion reconciliation. This brief discussion is merely an introduction

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to the revelations about border dynamics which may result from a broadly based perspective on borders in
motion in a cross-border region. Ideally, further research would examine facets of motion in greater detail
to link more effectively the theoretical and empirical components of the case study.

Most border specialists are familiar with the border and borderlands of the Pacic Northwest cross-border
region because it has been evaluated extensively in the borderlands literature (Alper 1996; Loucky and
Alper 2007; Brunet-Jailly 2008). The maritime boundary in this region essentially separates the former
British territory of Vancouver Island from the northwest extension of the US Oregon territory, and then
divides the islands in the Georgia Strait. The mainland boundary strictly follows the 49th parallel east.
Due to the historical and continued importance of water connections, the narrow corridor of northsouth
land connections, the separation from the rest of Canada and the US, a shared environment, an
interdependent economy, and a cross-border culture expressed in various common traits and
constructions, the Pacic Northwest cross-border region or Cascadia has emerged as a vibrant
interaction zone between the US and Canada. Whereas polarities and asymmetries of US/Canada and
Washington/British Columbia governance, allegiance, society, and culture are apparent and well dened
in the minds and actions of residents on either side of the border, the shared aspects of land and life are
evident as well. These conditions provide, promote and ensure a border space for interaction and
dialectic. Herein lies the context and production of border motion in the cross-border region.

In substantive terms, polarities are focused in the cross-border region by the urban centers of Vancouver
and Seattle, and also the capitals Victoria and Olympia. The dichotomy is incised by the 49th parallel and
the maritime boundary. The interaction space is dened in part by the geographical limits and transitions
that lead into adjacent borderland spaces, and moreover by the dialectical space congured through
discourses about the Pacic Northwest borderlands. One of these discourses currently promotes the
integrative geographical and indigenous-rooted unifying concept of the Salish Sea to dene and center the
cross-border region. Within the interaction space extending into both settled British Columbia and
Washington, movement across the boundary is evident constantly and manifested through migrations of
people, transfer of goods, cross-border tourism and shopping, family connections, institutional links, and
much more. All of this movement may be characterized as constant and scheduled ows, or recurrent
waves, tides, and other forms of repetitive motion that permeates the boundary, stops at the border or is
enabled to cross only through channels directed through corridors and gateways. The Cascade Gateway
has become a thoroughfare, yet the four crossing points of the Gateway are changing in ow characteristics
and relative importance as movements across the border increase and shift eastward with the growth of
Fraser Valley settlements. Road and air transportation infrastructure is attempting to build more capacity
in the borderlands in order to keep pace with this development.

The Pacic Northwest border region is not a closed system in equilibrium where motion is contained
within the system. Rather, like border systems elsewhere in an increasingly globalized context, this system
of borders in motion is affected by external forces that range from currency uctuations and commodity
prices to security concerns and greater border scrutiny. Accordingly, the border system needs to
accommodate greater or lesser volumes of movement, sudden changes in ow characteristics, enhanced
impediments to predictable ows, and changes in barrier conguration. The result is that breaking points
occur when the system cannot accommodate the movements and the changes.

Expanded trade under the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), for example, has brought with it realignment of trade ows, corridor development and
congestion at the border (Konrad and Nicol 2004; Gattinger and Hale 2010). In the 1990s, border
enhancements to accommodate these changes evolved gradually until post-9/11 demands for
securitization, and a subsequent specter of trade strangulation, expedited the works in progress as well as
initiated new programs to move goods. The United States and Canada, immediately after 9/11, almost
discovered the breaking point or point of dissolution in their immense cross-border trade (Clarkson in
Andreas and Biersteker 2003). This potential disaster was averted because some programs to move goods

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Journal of Borderlands Studies | 30.1 - 2015

more effectively across the border were already in place, or could be expedited, and others were established
rapidly, mindful of the need to balance security and mobility (Konrad and Nicol 2008). Subsequently,
each program implemented to expedite the movement of goods, whether by truck, by rail, by air, or by sea,
has in it an inherent recognition of the threshold level to be attained before there is general acceptance.
This critical level, the concentration that indicates the division between responsive and non-responsive
conditions (Kellert 1993, 32), needs to be identied, recognized and acknowledged by both policy
makers and policy facilitators to guide compliance, and more broadly by the border crossing public in
order to assure acceptance. For example, to handle the staggering amount of truck trafc at the border,
streaming has become initiated to differentiate pre-cleared carriers from those requiring complete
inspection, and scanning equipment has been installed to expedite the truck inspection process (Bradbury
and Turbeville 2008). Breaking points are evident in this streaming beyond the simple differentiation of
pre-cleared and non-inspected loads. These breaking points may be found in maximum acceptable wait
times measured by cost factors, or the environmental impact of truck idling. A tipping point effect might
occur, where a seemingly small or unrecognized impact such as diesel truck emissions suddenly raise toxic
elements in the air to levels that are unacceptable by legislated standards accepted by one or both countries
(Goldfarb 2007). The point is that this seemingly little thing may make a big difference and result in a
collateral breakdown in border movements and functions.

The research in the Pacic Northwest probes a general sense of the nature of breaking points and the
explicit nature and characteristics of the dening levels. It is not possible to convey in this brief case study
all of the specic breaking points identied by the approximately 100 stakeholders interviewed, but it is
feasible and instructive to outline the prominent groupings of breaking points, and to illustrate how these
thresholds further our understanding of the major downside factors of a rapidly evolving border and the
urry of motions at the border (Konrad 2010). It is important to view these breaking points as derived
from a combination of forces, and, as several stakeholders emphasized, to view them on a continuum,
related to each other as a group of circumstances that combine to result in problems at the border. Due to
the complexity of border interaction, and the focal nature of crossings, breaking points are attributable
rarely to one factor alone.

The most prominent group of breaking points is related to the problem of security primacy and the
substantial enhancement of the security enforcement regime. This group includes the problems inherent
in merging different agencies and shifting from a focus on revenue collection to security. Lost in transition
are well developed and time honored job specialties, valuation of experience and any semblance of
customer service. Considerable shifts and changes in agency culture coincide with massive retirements on
one hand and substantial increases in stafng on the other to further complicate systems development,
accommodation of new technologies, crafting a public image and linking with border communities.
Expanded intelligence and issuance of intelligence-caused afdavits has resulted in downloaded
enforcement obligations for municipalities just as the border communities suffer the economic
consequences of security primacy. Other groupings of breaking points are associated with the identity
determination and afrmation processes emerging, the virtual elimination of spontaneous travel across the
boundary, greater costs of doing business across the border due to regulation, lost time and uncertainty,
the proliferation rather than rationalization of border infrastructure, the complication of governance, the
unacceptability of waiting in an expedited North American context, no common US border policy, the
reactive nature of border policies that address symptoms not causes, and the fact that ports of entry are
different with different problems.

Despite the substantial number of breaking points identied in the study, the CanadaUS border in this
region, as well as others across the continent, is not broken. The remarkable resilience of border
stakeholders amid the growing and sustained challenges of dealing with an evolving border has been a
hallmark of the USCanada border and an acknowledgement of the strength of borderlands culture. Yet,
numerous crises at the border and the recurrence of problems underline the need to view and analyze the
border system in all of its facets as the dynamic entity that it is, and this requires a theory of borders in motion.

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Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion

Substantive motion surrounding borders in our globalizing world has drawn increased attention to
boundaries, frontiers, and borderlands, and this attention has placed borders at the center of our discourses
about borders in a borderless world. Yet, as I have argued in this paper, it is the motion surrounding
borders, as well as the border construct itself, that should be linked in our search for theory related to
borders and borderlands. Motion generates, aligns, sustains and alters borders in dichotomy and dialectic.
An expanded border transaction, negotiation, interaction, and discursive space is unfolding between and
among states creating a motion in its own right, and calling for an alignment of a developing motion
paradigm in the social sciences with a motion paradigm for border studies.

A theory of borders in motion, I have argued as well, may draw on the building blocks of motion-related
theorizing currently underway among border scholars. Notions of social construction and reconstruction,
the exercise of power, equilibrium seeking, spaces of ows, vacillating borders, the tension of local-
regional-national-international scales, and the uncertainties of transition space, as well as other building
blocks, offer components of a theory of borders in motion. Even after considering the arguments in this
paper, critics may point out that this assemblage of ideas related to and conveying motion are some
conceptual distance apart from the scientic analogues of borders in motion. This may be the case, but I
suggest that the analogues such as currents, tides, channels, and liminal space already inform some of the
conceptual frameworks of border studies, and that these conceptually aligned and integrated analogues
form a coherent scientic theory. Our challenge is to work toward testing the components of this scientic
theory in a social science context. In the process of doing so it will be possible to reafrm, modify and
discard analogues that do not explain the motions surrounding borders and borderlands.

At this incipient stage in theorizing borders in motion, three component realms of a conceptual framework
are postulated. The rst is border generation and realization, and this involves opening the aperture of
border space to reveal the forces and movements that differentiate and mediate this space. It is important
here to acknowledge not only the polarities and asymmetries that form and populate extrinsic space, but
also the constant dialectics that mediate this space. The second component of the conceptual framework is
comprised of border dynamic signatures apparent at the border and in the borderlands. It remains to
articulate how all of the motions postulated relate to each other, but it is apparent that certain simple cause
and effect relationships, and more complex cyclical and multivariate processes, are evident at the border and
in the borderlands. Detailing and mapping border motions related to the theoretical context may reveal an
order in these dynamics that extends beyond their scientic analogues. The third component of the
framework accounts for alteration and reconciliation of the border. In this discussion the focus has been on
breaking points but other concepts may be revealed as this phase of motion is explored more thoroughly.

Border theory is informed by advances in geographical thought as well as the theorizing of border specialists
in political science, history, anthropology, arts and literature, and sociology, in particular, and in the related
elds of law and public policy. Some theory from the basic as well as behavioral and ecological sciences has
been applied as well. These conceptual links offer insights and approaches to research as well as challenges to
heuristic traditions in border studies. The challenges need to be embraced and the concepts and theories
need to be explored and integrated to form a truly cross-disciplinary eld of border studies aimed at
evaluating one of the most elusive yet potentially explanatory geographical constructs of our time.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Don Alper, Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, David Davidson, Hugh Conroy, Bryant Hammond,
Evelyn Mayer and other colleagues at Western Washington University and the University of Victoria for
interrogating the notion of breaking points, and bringing me to a realization of the broader context of
borders in motion. Thanks as well to the participants of the BRIT XI conference in Geneva and Grenoble,
and particularly the lead organizers Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary and Frederic Giraut. The conference theme
of Borders in Motion, and the many presentations that acknowledged or explored this theme, inspired

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me to examine the theoretical implications more carefully and closely. Finally, I am thankful for the
constructive criticisms and useful suggestions offered by the anonymous reviewers.

Funding
The initial research for this project was supported by the Border Policy Research Institute, Western
Washington University, during the authors Visiting Research Fellowship in 2008.

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