More-than-human approaches to borders unsettle the anthropocentric reading of borders and bordering practices. They call for radically different imaginings of shared vulnerabilities and co-existence on the border. What remains marginal in these discussions is the way in which more-than-human borders continue to neglect social differences and unequal power relations among different (human) individuals. The question is not simply about the hierarchy between human and non-human lives, but how the construction of such binaries continues to privilege the life of certain humans while exposing their pervasive violence on others. Using the case of the development of Trans Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, we argue that limiting the voice of the human in our readings of the border to create space for non-humans could draw attention away from significant political analysis of mobility privileges and practices of ongoing colonisation in the construction of more-than-human spaces. By drawing on Henri Bergson's political philosophy of becoming and of open and closed societies, we suggest that more-than-human borders can be re-thought in terms of Bergson's reading of movement, qualitative multiplicity, and open societies – a language that resists any forms of closure and a linear understanding of progress and time. A close examination of TFCAs suggests that practices that seek to enable connectivity and mobility across time and space can turn borders into spatio-temporal chokepoints, which preserve the familiar logics of colonisation and exclusionary bordering.
‘Border hotels’ have come to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as spaces of detention and quarantine. Despite the longer history of using hotels for immigrant detention, efforts to contain outbreaks have led to the proliferation of hotels used for border governance. Ad hoc quarantine facilities have been set up around the world acting as choke points for mobility. The use of hotels as sites of detention has also gained significant attention, with pandemic related restrictions impacting on access to services for detained refugees and asylum seekers. Inhumane conditions and mobilisations against these conditions have recently received substantial media coverage. This symposium initiates a discussion about ‘border hotels’, closely engaging with these developments. Contributors document the shifting infrastructures of the border, and explore how these sites are experienced and resisted. They draw attention to divergent experiences of immobility, belonging, exclusion, and intersections of detention and quarantine. In exploring different - and controversial - aspects of ‘border hotels’, this symposium theorises modalities of governance implemented through hotels. Following in the footsteps of the ‘hotel geopolitics’ agenda (Fregonese and Ramadan 2015) it illustrates how hotels become integrated into border regimes. In doing so, it contributes to debates on the material and infrastructural dimensions of bordering practices and specifically to the literature on carceral geographies, polymorphic bordering and the politics of mobility.
Despite a growing interest in posthuman theory within political geography over the last two decades, the sub-disciplinary focus of critical border studies has seen a slower engagement with more-than-human entanglements. In this introductory paper to the special section, we ask whether the militarisation of borderlands, increasing surveillance of mobility, growing violence against refugees and asylum seekers, pandemic bordering, and mass displacement can be fully grasped through a singular focus upon the agency of the human subject. In addressing these questions, we challenge what we see as an anthropocentric preoccupation of existing scholarship in critical border studies and argue that the border is a constantly moving space that is created, maintained and/or dismantled by the entanglements of human and non-human lives and things. Our aim in bringing posthuman conversations into critical border studies is to explore different methods and questions that challenge binary constructions in our understandings of borders. In our response to these challenges, within this opening piece, we map three areas of debate: rethinking the heterogeneity of more-than-human borders; studying the agency of 'things' of the border; and finally, considering dehumanising practices of border politics. We suggest that the scholarship on more-than-human borders can be seen as a 'minor literature' that calls for a genuine realisation of forgotten and suppressed languages, voices, and knowledges.
'/%3e%3c/defs%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0h10080v5040H0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='.6' d='m0 0 6 3m0-3L0 3' clip-path='url(%23b)' transform='scale(840)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23e4002b' stroke-width='.4' d='m0 0 6 3m0-3L0 3' clip-path='url(%23c)' transform='scale(840)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='840' d='M2520 0v2520M0 1260h5040'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23e4002b' stroke-width='504' d='M2520 0v2520M0 1260h5040'/%3e%3cg fill='%23fff'%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23d' x='2520' y='3780'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='7560' y='4200'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='6300' y='2205'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='7560' y='840'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' x='8680' y='1869'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23e' x='8064' y='2730'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
'%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0v30h60V0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='6' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='4' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30' clip-path='url(%23b)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='10' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='6' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
'%3e%3cellipse cx='-76406.734' cy='-54552.762' rx='609.989' ry='646.731' transform='rotate(-32.773) skewX(.012)'/%3e%3cellipse cx='80113.359' cy='46920.699' rx='696.674' ry='738.637' transform='matrix(-.84082 -.54131 -.5415 .8407 0 0)'/%3e%3cellipse cx='80494.336' cy='47852.852' rx='743.691' ry='788.485' transform='matrix(-.84082 -.54131 -.5415 .8407 0 0)'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cpath d='M102199.713 69706.336h919v687h-919z'/%3e%3cpath fill='%238c4200' d='M97603.708 70148.337s6037.009 459.999 9739.011-334.999c0 0 311.001 210.999-136 732.999-447 521.001-1578 632.999-2199.001 745 0 0-149 335-137 509 12.999 174.001 392 156.001 578 118.002l186-37.002s-87 652.002-2372.001 739.002c-750.001 28.998-3222.999 81-3745.999-652.002 0 0 453 37.002 571 0 118-36.999 32-509-12.01-578.001-42.99-67.998-1603 0-2422-757.999-203-216.001-300-446-300-528 0-7.012 250 44 250 44zm3146.01 1267s1651.998 211 3553 0c0 0 50 360-37.001 497.001-87 136.999-2280.001 242.001-3385.999 50.001-178-57.002-184-275.003-130-547.002z'/%3e%3cpath fill='%23fdf9ff' d='M98443.718 69854.337s2240-2382.001 1554-7352.007c0 0 2333.998 601.001 4713 4034.005 0 0 694 697 1510.001 3183.001z'/%3e%3cpath fill='%23c62139' d='M108540.72 26889.305S89359.708 41168.314 89359.708 58005.326c0 16839.012 19181.012 31522.022 19181.012 31522.022s19058.02-13472.01 19058.02-31522.022c0-18049.013-19058.02-31116.021-19058.02-31116.021zm-7 3456.003S91469.708 43048.315 91469.708 58027.326c0 14981.012 17064.012 28044.022 17064.012 28044.022s16955.02-11985.01 16955.02-28044.022c0-16057.011-16955.02-27682.018-16955.02-27682.018z'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)
