ABSTRACT
Borders are powerful symbols of state power and they regulate the movement of people, commodities, capital and information between state territories. As such, they simultaneously function as barriers to and conduits of movement (Wilson and Donnan, 1998, p.22). But borders have far more expansive roles in the contemporary world and in our daily lives. Boundaries, however, express more than simple borders and at which ‘we end and they begin’; that is, ‘boundaries include symbolic and social dimensions associated with the border divisions that appear on maps or, for that matter, other dividing lines that cannot be found on any map at all’ (Migdal, 2004, p.5). Extant studies on borders and boundaries suggest that state borders construct and accentuate differences not only between states and ‘geographical spaces’, but also between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. These analyses disregard the complexities that are reflected within a territory, where people experience invisible boundaries imposed by states. Even without crossing borders, people can be powerless, oppressed and disenfranchised, and communities can be categorized as border communities. Departing from the conventional paradigm that implicitly emphasizes territorial sovereignty and spatial politics as central to the conceptualization of border communities, I focus on how communities conceptualize their own identities as living in the margins or on the borders of societies and boundaries. The border communities, therefore, are those who describe themselves as marginalized, whose community development and advocacy efforts raise crucial questions about state borders and boundaries, and for whom the idea of borders and boundaries holds critical political, socio-economic and legal implications.
