Boundary anxieties : between borders and belongings

Over the last few decades, the globalisation of cultural and economic exchanges has undoubtedly intensified: the growth of communications systems, the globalising logic of capital, and apparatuses of command and control have linked the world into a complex whole, a dense matrix of mobility and circulation. This period of globalisation—a process involving a nexus of political, economic and cultural changes linked to the growth and spread of communication and transportation technologies, has redefined the relations between the nation-state and the forces of capital, transformed communities, and profoundly reshaped the connections between place and culture. With the current acceleration of globalisation, political and physical boundaries no longer serve to delimit the nation-state’s ‘natural’ borders: the nation simultaneously exists and disintegrates amidst transnational allegiances and contestations, information vectors and flows of capital, cultures and labour power, and the generally increasing movement, both ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, of people around the world. Inter-state and supra-national structures, along with a pervasive neo-liberalism, all short-circuit the legitimacy and autonomy of the nation-state