Everyday Lives in Peripheral Spaces: A Case of Bengal Borderlands

This article (part of a special section on South Asian border studies) is an ethnographic study of the daily lives and narratives of borderlands communities in the border districts of Cooch Behar and South Dinajpur along the West-Bengal–Bangladesh border. In order to emphasise the significance of borderland communities’ narratives and experiences to our understanding of borders, this paper explores the idea of borders as social spaces that are inherently dynamic. In attempting to understand the idea of borders through everyday lives of people living in borderland communities, this paper highlights tensions and contradictions between hard borders manifested through securitization practices, and the inherently dynamic social spaces that manifest themselves in people’s daily lives. Conceptually and thematically, this paper is situated within and seeks to contribute to the discipline of borderland studies. Key Words: Borders, Social Spaces, Security, Bengal Borderlands, South Asia

Border and Memory in the village of Koshovice

This article focuses on the village of Koshovice, Albania, where its residents are part of the officially recognized Greek minority. The local perceptions of the community are discussed as linked to the Albanian-Greek border and its presence in the collective memory. After the borderline creation in 1913, local residents were divided between the two neighboring countries. The ethnographic data collected underline the experiences and the everyday practices of the villagers of Koshovice, especially during the period of the Albanian socialist state between 1945 and 1991, when the border became almost impenetrable. The article then discusses the changes after the fall of socialism and the opening of the border in the early 1990s, especially showing how the local borderland communities are still connected nowadays to each other despite the inter-state division.

"Matekoane ke bophelo" Cannibis is Life: Marginality and survival, a historical analysis of illicit cannabis production by the communities of Mokhtlong District of Lesotho

<p> </p><p> This study examines the evolving historical, geopolitical and economic context of illicit cannabis cultivation by the marginalised highlands communities of Mokhotlong district of Lesotho. Mokhtlong is one of the most impoverished districts of Lesotho with a population that has historically operated on the margins of the state and SouthAfrica as either providers of cheap sheep products to the rest of Lesotho or as suppliers of cheap labour to the mines in SouthAfrica. It considers the implications of the supply of cannabis to mainly the Gauteng metropolitan area in South Africa to the Mokhotlong district’s inhabitants’ state of marginalisation. Historically, cannabis production in the highlands resulted in a reproduction of the asymmetrical relations between and inside the metropolitan and mountain areas of both countries. Coalitions of actors merged from these new relations that the cultivation produced, and as such, this article should be analysed as an assemblage in which three distinct scales of territorialities were clashing or cooperating with each other. The article argues that the irregular migrants from Lesotho to South Africa took advantage of the fluctuations of their legal status as they moved between South Africa and Lesotho and the fluidity of the movement across the mountainous border to the migrants and smugglers to traffic cannabis across Lesotho into South Africa. In essence, the article makes the bold claim that cannabis production was one of the key ways in which the borderland communities of Mokhtlong dealt with their economic and social marginalisation.</p>

"Matekoane ke bophelo" Cannibis is Life: Marginality and survival, a historical analysis of illicit cannabis production by the communities of Mokhtlong District of Lesotho

<p> </p><p> This study examines the evolving historical, geopolitical and economic context of illicit cannabis cultivation by the marginalised highlands communities of Mokhotlong district of Lesotho. Mokhtlong is one of the most impoverished districts of Lesotho with a population that has historically operated on the margins of the state and SouthAfrica as either providers of cheap sheep products to the rest of Lesotho or as suppliers of cheap labour to the mines in SouthAfrica. It considers the implications of the supply of cannabis to mainly the Gauteng metropolitan area in South Africa to the Mokhotlong district’s inhabitants’ state of marginalisation. Historically, cannabis production in the highlands resulted in a reproduction of the asymmetrical relations between and inside the metropolitan and mountain areas of both countries. Coalitions of actors merged from these new relations that the cultivation produced, and as such, this article should be analysed as an assemblage in which three distinct scales of territorialities were clashing or cooperating with each other. The article argues that the irregular migrants from Lesotho to South Africa took advantage of the fluctuations of their legal status as they moved between South Africa and Lesotho and the fluidity of the movement across the mountainous border to the migrants and smugglers to traffic cannabis across Lesotho into South Africa. In essence, the article makes the bold claim that cannabis production was one of the key ways in which the borderland communities of Mokhtlong dealt with their economic and social marginalisation.</p>

A Cordon Sanitaire at the India-Bangladesh border

This commentary considers the effects of COVID-19 on the borderland communities of Meghalaya, a hill state in Northeast India. Efforts to fence this border have failed to deter informal exchanges with Bangladeshi neighbours, but the national COVID-19 lockdown looks set to shift locals into relations of dependency on and within the nation’s borders, rather than across them.

The Nepal–India Border and Borderland Communities Under COVID-19

There is an open border regime between Nepal and India since centuries. But all the border-crossings have been closed dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The number of Border Observation Posts increased from 120 to 500 to obstruct movement. So the daily activities of borderland communities were affected.

Living after Offa: Place-Names and Social Memory in the Welsh Marches

How are linear monuments perceived in the contemporary landscape and how do they operate as memoryscapes for today’s borderland communities? When considering Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke in today’s world, we must take into account the generations who have long lived in these monuments’ shadows and interacted with them. Even if perhaps only being dimly aware of their presence and stories, these are communities living ‘after Offa’. These monuments have been either neglected or ignored within heritage sites and museums with only a few notable exceptions (Evans and Williams 2019; Williams 2020), and have long been subject to confused and challenging conflations with both the modern Welsh/English border and, since the 1970s, with the Offa’s Dyke Path. Moreover, to date, no study has attempted to compile and evaluate the toponomastic (place-name) evidence pertaining to the monuments’ presences, and remembered former presences, in today’s landscape. Focusing on naming practices as memory work in the contemporary landscape, the article explores the names of houses, streets, parks, schools and businesses. It argues for the place-making role of toponomastic evidence, mediated in particular by the materiality of signs themselves. Material and textual citations to the monuments render them integral to local communities’ social memories and borderland identities, even where the dykes have been erased, damaged or obscured by development. Moreover, they have considerable potential future significance for engaging borderland communities in both dykes as part of the longer-term story of their historic environment.

A Comparative Analysis of the Attitudes toward the U.S.-Mexico Border Policy: Evaluating Perspectives on Border Security and Building a Wall in the Rio Grande Valley, National Hispanic and General U.S. Populations

Recently, there has been a surge of national attention toward the U.S.-Mexican border in South Texas, known as the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Despite the attention and potential impact, which the wall would directly have on the RGV community, there has been no systemic attention paid to the opinions of the RGV residents regarding the proposed wall and other related immigration policies. This article, therefore, aims to fill this gap by comparing immigration policy attitudes in the borderland communities to both the national Hispanic and the general national populations. By utilizing original data from an RGV public opinion survey we conducted in 2018, our analysis shows that RGV residents hold more lenient immigration attitudes than do both the national Hispanic and the general populations. We utilize logistic regression analysis to further our understanding of the correlates of these attitudes across different samples. Our findings provide important policy and political implications.

Economic woes may change narcotics incentives in Iran

Significance COVID-19-related closures are both changing trade patterns and putting new pressure on economic actors in Iran, including the state itself. The drug economy is an important source of revenue in particular for south-eastern and other borderland communities in Iran. Impacts Further economic collapse would increase the risk of drug money entering Iran’s electoral politics and mainstream economy. The poor and newly unemployed could seek alternative livelihoods in the narcotics trade, increasing societal and cross-border tensions. If Iran's interdiction efforts weaken, European countries will see a strong surge in inflows of heroin and methamphetamines. Washington would use any alleged state connections to the illegal drug economy further to isolate Tehran from the international community.

Trwanie granic rozbiorowych w praktykach, kolekcjach i krajobrazie

The Ongoing Existence of Partition Borders in Practices, Collections and Landscape: In Search of Common Points of Sociology, Museology and Landscape Architecture The subject of this paper is the phenomenon of the so called phantom borders – former political borders, presently non‑existing, however influencing the social environment. Concentrating on practices, collections and landscape we attempt to integrate three disciplines: sociology, museology and landscape architecture to study today’s manifestations of these boundaries separating the territories of Poland for 123 years. Recognizing the perspective of borderscaping we assume (phantom) borders as complex and multilevel phenomena thus requiring holistic approach reflected in the application of aforementioned disciplines during intensive ethnographic studies of former Kingdom of Poland and Kingdom of Galicia borderland communities. We argue that successful integration of methods can be based on the assumption of materiality as a common element of interactions, collections and space, making possible – in the second step – a study of meanings invoked by these tangible components and then a recreation of material‑symbolic systems shaping everyday life and festive times of phantom‑borderlands communities.