#22 BIG Podcast – “Nepal-India Border, Minorities and Cross-Border Networks”

featuring Kalpana Jha, Analyst and Researcher at the University of Victoria, BIG Graduate Student Fellow (PhD)

Country of 27 million inhabitants, in the Himalayan mountain range, Nepal shares a border with India for 1,690 km and with China for nearly 1,200 km. The majority of the inhabitants live in the south of the country (along the Indo-Nepalese border) and in the Kathmandu valley. Nepal became a republic in 2008 and the country adopted a new Constitution in 2015 which provides for a federal-type state, organized around 7 provinces which have their own assembly and executive power. This episode focuses on the State of Nepal, internal bordering processes, the marginalized people at its borders, notably the Madhesi People, and also relations with India and China.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube!

Kalpana Jha is a BIG Graduate Student Fellow and the author of “The Madhesi Upsurge and the Contested Idea of Nepal”. She is currently a board member on the Nepal Policy Institute (NPI) – an international policy think tank. Jha is an alumni as  well as former research fellow from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She also holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from TISS-Mumbai and a Master’s in Socio-legal studies from York University, Canada. Jha has worked extensively on identity issues, citizenship in Madhes and minorities and their status in Nepal and India. Jha has multiple publications including journal articles, book chapters, reports, newspaper articles and commentaries in the field of identity, citizenship, gender and borders. She has also worked in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India as a Regional and internal security intern. Jha was a former researcher at Martin Chautari and worked on a comparative study on Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Nepal and Sri Lanka, commissioned by School of Oriental and African Studies, London, to Martin Chautari, in Nepal. She has also worked formerly in research foundations such as Social Science Baha in Nepal and Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India.

#16 BIG Podcast – “Popular Protest, the Middle East and Borders”

featuring Michael J. Carpenter – Political Scientist at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, and Managing Editor of BIG Review

The Middle East is the name of a complex geographical region comprising different countries and cultures between Europe, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Asia. It is also a space where many conflicts have existed and continue to exist today, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These disputes linked to a complex historical, religious and political situation should not obscure the presence of populations who struggle at their level and with their means against the domination that oppresses them. One thinks of the situation in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip and the difficult conditions of the inhabitants. We will discuss this territorial, border, human complexity with political scientist Michael J. Carpenter. He has written a book titled “Palestinian Popular Struggle: Unarmed and Participatory” (Routledge 2019).

Michael J. Carpenter is a Post-Doctoral Fellow working on a project titled, “Beyond ‘Irregular Migration’: Civil Disobedience without Borders”. In addition to his fellowship, Michael also serves as a founding member and current Managing Editor of the Borders in Globalization Review. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Victoria (2017) and a Master of Arts in Social and Political Thought from the University of Regina (2009). His research interests include borders, Middle East politics, global politics, civil resistance, non-state governance, and the history of social and political thought. He recently completed two publications based on his doctoral research, a monograph titled Palestinian Popular Struggle: Unarmed and Participatory, and a chapter called “Peace Process without the People: Sidelining Popular Struggle in Palestine” for an edited volume called the History of World Peace Since 1750 (both Routledge, forthcoming).

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

Special Issue: Confronting Borders in the Arctic

Journal of Borderland Studies | Volume 33, Issue 2 | 2018

In this thematic issue, six papers and three short commentaries investigate the evolving nature of borders in the Arctic in an era of climate change and globalization. Together, they illustrate how processes unique to the Arctic, such as sea ice melt and Inuit self-governance, tell a larger story about the co-evolving relationship of people and the environment, and the physical and constructed borders that give them meaning. Arctic human–environment relations are embedded in distinct histories and materialities in which border-making is understood as a multi-scalar arena of subnational and transnational actors, rather than the exclusive domain of the state. At the same time, the Arctic is shaped by powerful agents of change whose impacts span national borders and reconfigure environmental barriers. The papers in this issue reveal the ways in which Arctic climatic, political, economic, and demographic change amount to a transformation in thinking about Arctic borders and bordered spaces. We hope that the Arctic case will stimulate further investigation in borderlands around the world undergoing similarly transformative changes to physical and human systems.

Read the full issue here: Journal of Borderlands Studies Special Issue: The Arctic: Vol 33 No 2: Spring 2018

Contents
Confronting Borders in the Arctic by Scott Stephenson

Global Arctic by Klaus Dodds

Finding the Global Arctic by Jessica Shadian

The “Global Arctic” as a New Geopolitical Context and Method  by Lassi Heininen and Matthias Finger

Navigating Political Borders Old and New: The Territoriality of Indigenous Inuit Governance by Jessica Shadian

(Un)frozen Spaces: Exploring the Role of Sea Ice in the Marine Socio-legal Spaces of the Bering and Beaufort Seas by Kristen Shake, Karen Frey, Deborah Martin, Philip Steinberg

Rescaling Borders of Investment: The Arctic Council and the Economic Development Policies by Heather Nicol

Drawing Boundaries in the Beaufort Sea: Different Visions/Different Needs by Rob Huebert

The Networked North: Borders and Borderlands in the Canadian Arctic Region

Heather Nicol and P. Whitney Lackenbauer | Borders in Globalization/Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism | 2017

The Networked North identifies and addresses key lenses for understanding cross-border cooperation in the North American Arctic under conditions of globalization, climate change and changing international relations. Each chapter focuses upon a particular theme influencing cross border relationships, such as historical legacies, cultural relationships, cross-border flows of people and goods, security arrangements, governance practices and sustainability challenges. Twelve short chapters systematically define the ways in which Arctic and sub-Arctic borderlands are uniquely situated within processes of climate change, devolution, globalization, resurgent indigeneity, and neo-realist geopolitical processes. All authors acknowledge how the North has been reterritorialized by each of these processes in ways that encourage the networked nature of sovereignty and territoriality.

An Emerging Border Region: ‘Securing’ the Far North

Adam Lajeunesse and P. Whitney Lackenbauer | BIG Research Reports | #31

The environmental conditions of the Canadian Arctic, coupled with poor accessibility and a small and scattered population, has traditionally limited the North’s perceived significance as a border region. The melting of the northern sea ice, however, is enabling new commercial and tourist activity in this region of Canada and that of its Arctic neighbours. Government and other expert assessments predict that this activity will generate increasing safety and security concerns, largely related to immigration, criminal activity, fishing, environmental protection, and maritime accidents. In addition, Canada faces a few long-standing border and jurisdictional disputes that, despite being well-managed, require ongoing maintenance and attention. The Canadian Arctic is a region in flux owing to environmental, economic, transportation, and social changes occurring in complex and unpredictable ways. Managing this emerging borderland will require a nimble and comprehensive response from across the governance and defence spectrum. This will also have to be a response in depth, with monitoring, enforcement, and response capability established across the Arctic since a “defence” of the Arctic borders at the border will be impossible.

Adam Lajeunesse and P. Whitney Lackenbauer

Geopolitics in the Anthropocene

Simon Dalby | BIG Research Reports | #45

Discussions of migrations and boundary walls and fences, military interventions, and the use of nationalist tropes have raised the rhetorical temperature in  international politics. Walter Russell Mead (2014) is concerned that antagonistic politics between at least some great powers suggests just such a return of  geopolitics after a period in which it was apparently absent. If the term is used to  refer to territorial disputes, and the use of military force or the threat thereof, then clearly the conflicts over Crimea, Ukraine, various islands disputed by China and Japan and by various states in the South China Sea, or Russian and Turkish actions  in early 2016, suggest its utility given the belligerence in recent events.

Simon Dalby

Governance of Arctic Search and Rescue

Adrianne Dunsmore | BIG Research Reports | #46

In recent years, global interest in the Arctic has grown exponentially; as sea ice melts and previously unnavigable regions become accessible, maritime traffic, including shipping and tourism, has increased. Search and rescue (SAR) responders in both Canada and Denmark have expressed concern, as the waters these vessels traverse are dangerous, remote, and not fully charted (Byers, 2010). As the maritime traffic increases, so too will the number of search and rescue missions, and due to the sparseness of personnel and equipment, these missions are often cooperative efforts between responders from neighbouring countries. Interaction between Arctic states has been largely collaborative, however in the past decade tensions amongst the states have begun to rise as the countries vie for resources and attempt to exert claims of sovereignty. Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea it was feared that Arctic cooperation might break down entirely1, but amongst this trepidation, cooperation in Arctic SAR operations remained unaffected (Byers, 2015). The first part of this paper will provide an explanation as to the circumstances particular to Arctic SAR, as well as to the governance of Canadian search and rescue. The second part will provide a historical context of international cooperative search and rescue efforts and an examination of current Arctic SAR governance, followed by several preliminary policy recommendations.

Adrianne Dunsmore

Taiwan Strait: An Aching Suture between the Mainland China and the Taiwan Island – A study of the Identity of Taiwanese Youth

Weiyn Wang | BIG Research Reports | #55