BIG Talk — What happens when closed borders reopen? Learning from a Central Asian example

with Dr. Nick Megoran (Visiting Fellow, Borders in Globalization) | Victoria, BC & Zoom | March 26, 2024

In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick Building, University of Victoria) or Zoom. The meeting will take place from 12:00pm to 1:30pm PST. Register in advance for this meeting here. Registration is free but required.

Much recent work in border studies has focussed on the violence of border closures. In an age of right-wing populism and xenophobia this is important but reflects western-centric preoccupations. There are other processes taking place in other parts of the world that sometimes get missed. This paper tells one of them, based on over 25 years conducting fieldwork in a village on the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan boundary. Dissected by new boundaries and borders in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with a change of political leadership since 2016 a gradual reopening of previously-closed crossings has occurred. This has happened without any of the damaging consequences that the politicians who closed the borders in the first place warned of. This seminar presents this story and asks what it says about our understanding of processes in an increasingly-bordered today.

Nick Megoran is a Visiting Fellow working with the Borders in Globalization program and the Centre for Global Studies and Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University. His work focuses on nationalism and border dynamics in the Danish–German and Uzbek–Kyrgyz borderlands, which he has been researching for three decades. He has authored numerous articles and books on this topic, including Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh 2017).

BIG Talk – Cross border women trafficking in the east of South Asia: Marginality, precarity and legality

with Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury (Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata) | Victoria, BC & Zoom | July 17, 2023

In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick building, University of Victoria) or Zoom. The meeting will take place from 11:00AM to 12:30PM PST. Register in advance for this meeting here. Registration is free but required.

In the contemporary globalized world, trafficking of women and children and their undocumented migration have increased in both magnitude and reach, thus becoming a major human rights concern. The recent publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) entitled Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022 reveals that women account for the largest share of trafficking victims (43 per cent) of the total detected trafficked persons in South Asia. In terms of shares of detected trafficked persons in South Asia, by area of citizenship (2022) accounts for 99 percent domestic while 1 percent across border. The clandestine nature of the crime makes it difficult to gather accurate data on the number of victims. However, government and non-government reports emphasize the serious nature of the crime. The routes, methods and activities of traffickers are increasingly more organized and there is a greater penetration of organized crime syndicates into trade and trafficking of women and children within and from outside the region. While several laws in South Asian countries aim to combat human trafficking, the response level of criminal justice appears to be limited. An effective remedy must include recovery assistance, safe repatriation, reintegration, and access to information for the victims, along with appropriate legal measures to bridge existing gaps in addressing human trafficking concerns. Against this backdrop, the deliberation seeks to assess the current situation of women trafficking in the eastern part of South Asia encompassing the adjacent area of India, Bangladesh, and Nepal- the epicenter of this transnational organized crime. How is trafficking related to forced migration? What makes women and fall vulnerable to trafficking? What are the reasons for insignificant legal integration of human rights, gender and child rights in domestic anti-trafficking laws and policies in South Asia? How to strengthen cross border understanding to combat women trafficking? These are a few questions that the presentation intends to ponder upon.

Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, Ph.D in International Relations, is a Senior Fellow with the Neighbourhood Initiatives, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata chapter. She is the Editor, ORF Bangla. She specialises in regional and sub-regional cooperation in South Asia, the Bay of Bengal region and the Indo-Pacific, energy forced migration and women in conflict zones. She was the coordinator of the research programme entitled “Proximity to Connectivity” and supervised/authored/co-authored a series of extensive field based reports related to connectivity and dynamics of cross border cooperative architectures. She is also the recipient of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust Senior Media Fellowship (Prasar Bharati,2007) and the Kodikara Award (Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, 1998–99). She was the Visiting Fellow (2012) at The Maison des Sciences de I’Homme, Paris. She is a member of the Editorial Board of international peer reviewed journals namely Borders in Globalization Review (Centre for Global Studies, Canada) and Journal for Indian Ocean Research (Routledge, New Delhi).

Her recent publications include Caste and Partition in Bengal: The story of Dalit refugees,1946-61 (OUP, UK, 2022); BIMSTEC: Mapping Sub-regionalism in Asia (Co-edited Routledge:UK, 2022); New futures of BIMSTEC: connectivity, commerce and security (co-edited Routledge: UK, 2021), India– Myanmar Borderlands: Ethnicity, Security and Connectivity (co-edited/ Routledge, UK, 2020); Connecting Nations: India and Southeast Asia (coedited/ Primus, New Delhi, 2019); The State of Being Stateless in South Asia (co-edited/ Orient Black Swan: New Delhi, 2015); Women in Indian Borderlands (co-edited/ Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2011).

Beyond Boundaries and Borders: South Asian Quest for Peace, Development and Regional Connectivity

Mumbai, India | March 1-2, 2019

South Asia is one of the fastest growing regions that exhibit a potential to emerge as a leading economic centre of the world. Nevertheless, South Asia is riddled with inter and intraregional conflicts embedded in ethnicity, religion, border disputes, and resource politics. These conflicts act as an impediment to peace, development and regional cooperation. In the post-1990’s economic restructuring (liberalisation and privatisation) paved the way for economic growth in the region. Not only India but other South Asian countries Like Nepal and Bangladesh recently earned a reputation of moving swiftly on the path of economic growth. It is a region, nascent in development and growth trajectory and all these are in favour of South Asia. It is expected that in the next couple of years both Nepal and Bangladesh will graduate from the category of the Least Developing Country (LDC) to Developing Country. At the same time, India with its newly acquired economic strength now transited from aid recipient to a donor country. While these are positive indications for a post-colonial region but some issues require serious academic deliberations. The foremost is the question of lack of peace, stability, development and regional integration that is also related to dismal connectivity and lack of cross-border mobility management/governance in South Asia. This is related to the fact that South Asian economies remained open to globalisation, but the same enthusiasm is missing for regional cooperation. Therefore the benefits associated with regional integration are still to be reaped. In short, South Asia is a region of hope and despair and the realisation of potentialities and overcoming the challenges largely depends on the prospect of peace, stability and regional cooperation/ integration.

The conference was organized by the Department of Civics and Politics (University of Mumbai, Mumbai), the Department of International Relations (South Asia University, New Delhi), the Center of Statelessness and Refugee Studies (School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai), and Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi).

.

Workshop: Borders and Regionalism in South Asia

New Delhi, India | August 25, 2018

South Asia is regarded as one of the least integrated regions of the world. This is despite the fact that the region shares a common history, culture and developmental challenges. Indeed, some hard borders and boundaries act as hurdles for regional integration in South Asia. Contrary to this dominant representation of the region, other realities are quite often ignored. One such important aspect is the socio-cultural and historical ties that exist among the people of the region. Thus, while acknowledging the official borders, we can also see that there are prospects for progress. The commonality between the people opens the possibilities for soft regionalism and in a way, could lead to regional integration in South Asia. This one day workshop invited papers from young scholars to discuss the possibilities of regional integration in South Asia by bridging the existing borders and boundaries. Young faculty members and doctoral students submitted abstracts on themes related to borders and regionalism in South Asia.

Some of the suggested topics were Culture and Borders in South Asia, Border Regions in South Asia, Economic Integration and Borders, South Asian Connectivity, The Mental Borders and Boundaries in South Asia, and Comparative Borders: Examples from Other Regions.

21st Century Borders in Japan — Early Career Researcher Writing Workshop

Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan | February 15–16, 2024

The International Research Center for Japanese Studies will be hosting an Early Career Writing Workshop titled “21st Century Borders in Japan” on February 15–16, 2024 at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. This workshop aims to develop academic articles and policy papers from early career researchers at both the graduate and postgraduate levels. More info can be found here.

21st Century Borders in Japan Writing Workshop

15 & 16 February, 9:30am–5pm

Room W302, Humanities and Social Sciences Building

Pre-Workshop Seminar

14 February, 4:30pm–6pm

“Quantifying Borders: Border Dyads and OSCE Disputes”

Prof. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (University of Victoria, Borders in Globalization Coordinator)

Co-Sponsored by the SRC (UBRJ/EES)

Slavic-Eurasia Research Center, Room 401 (Fourth floor)

21st Century Borders in Japan Writing Workshop

15 & 16 February

Room W302, Humanities and Social Sciences Building

#26 and #27 BIG Podcast – “Nation State Model and Creative Solutions for Border Problems”

featuring Nick Megoran, Political Geographer at Newcastle University, England

The Nation-State model is built on the synchronization between a so-called state territory and a so-called national population. The mechanical imposition of this specific model has led to serious conflicts in certain parts of the world (we will discover the ancient situation of Denmark/Germany border and the current one of Kyrgyzstan/Uzbekistan border). There have been several ways of thinking and representing the construction of this nation-state with its constituent factors, its regime of political sovereignty and territorial boundaries: community of origin, community of language, community of interests and values, cultural homogenization, elective community, common history and territorial patriotism but also imagined community. What are the consequences of this model on the design of the country’s borders? How to organize borderlands while avoiding conflicts with neighbors? With Nick Megoran, this podcast (in 2 parts) is an opportunity to talk about several original practices such as condominiums, joint development zones, territorial leasing, enclaves, the exchange of territory, statutory autonomy, free and customs zones, mobile borders, decoupling of international borders from other functional or administrative limits, juridical and economic cross-border cooperation. So many illustrations that allow us to think differently about sovereignty and state borders. Sovereignty doesn’t have to be Zero-Sum. Borders don’t have to be Walls and Barriers.

Listen to #26 (Part One): Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Listen to #27 (Part Two): Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Nick Megoran is a Visiting Fellow working with the Borders in Globalization program and the Centre for Global Studies and Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University. His work focuses on nationalism and border dynamics in the Danish-German and Uzbek-Kyrgyz borderlands, which he has been researching for three decades. He has authored numerous articles and books on this topic, including Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh 2017).

CFGS Global Talk — Whatever happened to our borderless world? An anarchist rethinking of the ‘open borders’ debate

with Dr. Nick Megoran (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Global Studies and Borders in Globalization, University of Victoria) | Victoria, BC & Zoom | November 8, 2023

In Person: CFGS C168 (Sedgewick building, University of Victoria) or Zoom. The meeting will take place from 10:30am to 12pm PST. Register in advance for this meeting here. Registration is free but required.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, some writers declared that humanity was on the verge of a ‘borderless world.’ Yet three decades later, the world is more fenced and bordered than ever. In response, many scholars and activists have restated the moral and political case for ‘Open Borders.’ How persuasive are these arguments, and do they help us think through what better borderlands might look like? This talk will draw on anarchist traditions in political theology, as well as the author’s own research in various borderlands, to open a broader discussion of borders in the world today.

Dr. Nick Megoran is a Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University, England. His research considers what it means to value human life in sites as diverse as international borderlands and the neoliberal workplace. He has studied the Uzbek-Kyrgyz and Danish-German borderlands for nearly three decades, and is interested in how critical geopolitical theory and African-American political theology can help us think through how borders can become places in which human life thrives. His publications include Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary (Pittsburgh, 2017) and Big Questions in An Age of Global Crises (Wipf & Stock, 2022).