BIG Theme – History

In the realm of contemporary border studies, there is tendency at times to overlook or minimize the changeable, dynamic context of the existence of borders, and just accepting borders as a given. So in researching the history of borders in globalization, it is necessary to shake this idea up, to give its centrism a bit of a poke – which we hope to do.

In one of our focuses, looking at the evolution of the Canadian-American borderlands, we hope to emphasize how organic these places are, how they evolve over time to become different kinds of spaces, how borderlands and their histories are far from homogenous.

Following an approach that lead researcher Randy Widdis terms spatial grammar,  investigators will explore the evolution of five Canada-U.S. borderland regions – the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, the Prairies/Plains, and the Pacific Northwest – from the end of the American Revolution to the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989.

A second major theme will involve interrogating notions of sovereignty over time, and their relation to debates that occurred in these regions in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries over empire, immigration, and federalism. In particular, research will look at how this idea of sovereignty played a central role in historical debates about immigration in the North American west and explore how American, Canadian, British, Japanese, Chinese, and south Asian commentators in these often sharp debates understood sovereignty differently.

It will be especially important to interrogate how these patterns of thought had very real impacts on mobility and border-making, just as mobility and border-making, quite naturally, had very real impacts on these patterns of thought.

We need to know how fluid these concepts of sovereignty in the Pacific North were and how they interacted with each other. Were there overlapping conceptions of sovereignty amongst these different groups? How was it redefined, challenged and consolidated over the years? How did competing forces and visions of empire, state-building, border-making and indeed global capitalism complicate this question of sovereignty in this part of the world?

A third subtheme will focus on Aboriginal Borderlands, specifically addressing the following questions: How have Indigenous conceptions of space and territoriality evolved in relation to economic considerations, whether the use-rights of a seasonal economy, wage work, or reservation resources? How have conceptions of space and territoriality evolved in relation to diplomacy and warfare among Indigenous nations and between these nations and representatives of (neo) European empires (fur traders, missionaries, colonial officials, military personnel)? How have Indigenous conceptions of space and territoriality evolved in relation to neo-European nation-building, including the imposition of the international border, and the larger colonial process of political subjugation, territorial dispossession, and management of the dispossessed and subjugated population, rendering it dependent on the state?  How have Indigenous conceptions of space and territoriality evolved in relation to more recent reassertions of Indigenous national sovereignty in relation to the U.S.-Canada border?  

Randy Widdis at the University of Regina will lead the History theme. His colleagues are: David Atkinson (Purdue), Susan Gray (Arizona State), and Yukari Takai (York University).

BIG Theme – Governance

Recently borders have come to be understood as not so much the hard territorial categories they were once assumed to be in international relations, but something much more complex – ‘vacillating,’ ‘unpredictable,’ ‘volatile.’ even.

So the challenge of any research into governance now is to go beyond the ‘territorialist’ or ‘geopolitical’ intellectual policy traditions. When studying borderland regions, we also want to be talking about bottom-up processes where local and regional power and political clout, politics and cross-border governance are tightly woven into complex cultural, economic and political structures.

We could even say that the emerging principle that guides the contemporary governance is no longer spaces of places, i.e., territories – but spaces of flows. More non-state actors are engaged in border related activity and management, so governance has become layered and complex, with differing governance in different locales, regions, bi-national contexts and various parts of the world. We want to understand the policy implications of these governance changes on borders and borderlands.

Furthermore, if we are seeing worldwide a de-nationalization of legal regimes and a privatization of land ownership, as Saskia Sassen suggests, simultaneously we see the growth in international governance bodies. And there are many, many questions we can ask about this current conjuncture.

What are the challenges involved in such multi-level governance, and how do they concern themselves with flows and their concurrent challenges to existing state boundaries? Does the a-territoriality of flows and the rise of international governance fundamentally challenge democratic principles?

How are nationalist movements in borderlands affecting this process? During the nationalist period of the last century, grammarians and educators standardized language to harden cultural boundaries. How do the new systems of governance interact with cultural boundaries today? Do they harden or soften cultural borderlands?

Meanwhile, does this shift from a governance of territories to a governance of flows lead to the rise of borderland regions as economic and political power regions in their own right?

At the same time, the territory as a technique is not simply going to vanish into thin air. Quite the contrary is the case in some areas such as migration. Here, international governance structures such as the EU increasingly concern themselves with an attempt at limitation of inward migratory flows – and thus a hardening of new external boundaries for this category of flow. Although international migration remains stable at about three percent of the world population, there are phenomena that affect quantity, and overall population growth will only increase immigration toward international economic centres.

Separately, how do international non-state actors, both private and non-profit – businesses, trade unions, NGOs, political parties, churches – participate in this wider process?

There are also a number of concrete and high-profile policy topics that can only be tackled on a trans-boundary basis. Digital surveillance and the World Wide Web have a global reach, as do infectious-disease pandemics, the spread of antibiotic resistance, and a range of ecological phenomena, from climate change to biodiversity loss. What is the nature of the international governance structures – from the UNFCCC to the WHO to ICANN – that oversee these policy areas and how do they differ?

Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly at the University of Victoria and Dr. Elisabeth Vallet at the Université de Québec à Montréal lead the Governance theme.

BIG Theme – Flows

What do we mean when we talk about “flows”? BIG uses the term to describe any sort of domestic, cross-border and broader international movement of goods, services, capital and people. 

Due to the sheer scale of the type, number and volume of such flows, researching the patterns that lie within this subject requires identifying representative economic and policy sectors. What we are planning is to drill down and focus on two or three key sectors in each region that can address core issues.

Specifically, we will explore five core research themes: a) market flows and border management; b) regionalization – the geographic distribution of trade and investment flows inside and outside North America; c) transportation networks and supply chains; d) labour markets and migration; and e) the relationship between and among domestic, regional and international governance structures.

Through these themes, we will investigate how regional patterns of cross-border economic interaction have evolved significantly in recent years. We also want to ask to what extent differences in the form such patterns of interaction take are explained by generic factors that come with borders, e.g, the physical proximity of populations across borders; and the relative political clout and shared or divergent interests amongst different sectoral actors. Or is there something a bit more intangible at play here, such as variations in what could be called “local borderlands cultures”? To what extent have such developments changed the nature of Canada’s national and regional borders?  To what extent has all this provoked increased contestation of borders in relation to trade and investment?

And do these changes vary significantly by province or region, as existing data on flows already suggests significant interprovincial differences from national averages?

The flexibility and efficiency of supply chains and related transportation systems, border and gateway infrastructure are certain to have profound effect on the nature of cross-border flows – but how exactly? And how does such infrastructure vary from region to region? Relatedly, the evolution of supply chains has shaped the development of existing trade corridors, but in what ways? Equally, we regularly hear that significant changes to pre-clearance processes and similar arrangements have helped “push back” borders – but concretely, what are the contours of this transformation?

Transnational food-safety systems are a key example here, growing up alongside growing internationalization of agri-food trade. Citizens and consumers remain largely blind to this development until high-profile break-downs hit the headlines, but such incidents and the recent passage of major U.S. and Canadian food safety system legislation, provide valuable case studies on the evolution of cross-border management.

Migratory and labour market flows meanwhile vary sharply from region to region in Canada, with major cyclical and inter-provincial variations in the supply and demand for various skill sets. How have migration rules and the disparities in the recognition of credentials affected migration patterns? Have they resulted in significant distortions and inequities within labour markets?

Lastly, in the absence of international government, international governance proceeds apace through treaty and diplomatic processes rather than legislative processes, such as the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, parallel EU negotiations with the United States, and negotiations towards a prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. How do these new governance regimes compare?

Dr. Geoffrey Hale at the University of Lethbridge leads the Flows theme.

Canada’s Fluid Borders: Trade, Investment, Travel, Migration 

Trade and investment policies face a changing geopolitical environment. They also face challenges from the interactions and limits of Canada’s multiple trade agreements with other countries. These challenges take on varied forms in different sectors that involve the bordering of energy trade, food safety, and related environmental and public health issues. Similarly, bordering dynamics differ significantly for cross border flows of tourism, skilled labour, and irregular migration. This book uncovers and analyzes factors that govern economic activity and human interaction across Canada’s “fluid” border. The contributors to this collection engage major domestic political, technical, and administrative factors that shape the conditions for and constraints on effective international policy and regulatory cooperation.

BIG Theme – Culture

The culture we produce – in its absolutely widest sense – comes out of specific geographical spaces but also transcends them, meeting and crossing borders. This much is hardly controversial. But in an ostensibly borderless world, these cultural landscapes can also become matters for preservation. Culture can be something to preserve or cling onto in the face of expanding flows of ideas, people and capital.

Thus teasing out this precise interplay of border and culture, how culture alters borders and how borders alter culture must be central to any investigation of borders and globalization.

The dynamic relationships between borders and culture are what create and sustain “cultural islands” that are spatially distinct. Put another way, we cannot speak of distinct cultures without reference to borders. But this relationship at the same time is always in motion, and in borderlands, we see simultaneously cultural continuity and discontinuity. Furthermore, the zone of borderland transition is increasingly extended.

Yet despite this fluidity, this dynamism, specific cultural representation clearly is highly resonant, often stridently so, amongst individuals and communities, and can at times provide expressions of resistance or antagonism. The interplay between border and culture is what forms a sense of identity amongst those who claim indigeneity, but also amongst those excluded from that identity.

The contradictions are multiple however, as border and culture both push toward singular sense of belonging – pressing toward homogeneity in cultural identity – and plural expressions of identity.

At the same time, which cultural products and practices manage to and do not manage to cross borders suggests an underexplored selectivity in these processes. And the array of cultural expressions of course often plays differently at or near the border, and at different scales.

Concretely, the research looked at border culture and its relationship with globalization. The Culture theme focused on processes of cultural integration and disintegration; indigenous culture; and cultural continuity across borders.

Quite naturally, this will also involve an exploration of arts and literature on the border and in the borderlands, whether the meaning of the border happens to be expressed in writing, poetry, music, film, art, theater, dance, painting, graffiti, or architecture, or any other form of border art.

Dr. Victor Konrad at Carleton University leads the Culture theme.

BIG Region – International

Our international partners engaged with national and international policy-makers to draft a state of border studies paper in their country and organize a policy forum to present their paper to key stakeholders in their region. These studies ran from 2014-2016.

BIG Region – Québec

Québec’s long border with America faces four American states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, and meanders through Lake Le Beau Lac, along the Saint-François River to the Pohénégamook lake, heads down to the Saint-Jean River following the watershed delineation to the Hall River and then follows the 45th parallel onto the international rapids of the Saint-Laurence River.

There are some 33 different land border crossings between the US and Québec as well as a number of major air and maritime border crossings, most notably Montreal International Airport and Montreal International Port. And we cannot forget of course Québec’s northern border.

The province’s majority francophone population, a unique situation in North America, raises the obvious question amongst researchers: Precisely how central is the linguistic issue to consideration of borders?

A wide range of questions follows from this. How does language add to the “thickness” of the border and the perception of the fluidity of the flows? What is the impact of the sovereignist discourse on the perception of the border? What is the additional cost of this perhaps “thicker” compared to where the border bifurcates two Anglophone regions?

How does language influence trade flows and regulations? How does the (non) development of corridors as a result of the language barrier impact the fluidity of migration and trade? How does language affect border patrol practices? How must governance of the border – on both sides – be adjusted to take into account this language reality? How does the governance of the border – on both sides – adjusts (on an organizational level) to this language reality?

Beyond the language question, researchers also explored whether Québec’s northern border is also to be thought of as an external border and how Québec understands its “nordicity” in terms of borders. Relatedly, they will ask what role indigenous groups and reservations play in cross-border governance. How is this role perceived by the government? Additionally, researchers wanted to interrogate how NAFTA and 9/11 have had an impact on border-related issues along the Québec border, and explore the role of non-governmental entities such as businesses on border governance.

Finally, 2013’s deadly Lac Megantic train derailment incident offers a recent and high-profile case study for a consideration of the relations of borders to sustainability in the province. An unattended 74-car freight train carrying crude oil ran away and derailed, resulting in multiple tank car explosions, 42 dead, and the destruction of 30 buildings in the Lac Megantic town centre. Researchers wanted to know whether the Lac Megantic incident exemplify non-sustainable governance of the border? Or could the disaster actually promote better cooperation between the province and its neighbours?

Dr. Elisabeth Vallet at the Université du Québec à Montréal led the Québec region.

BIG Region – Prairies

The Prairies/Plains Region of North America is comprised of two provinces – Manitoba and Saskatchewan – sharing the 49th parallel with western Minnesota, North Dakota and eastern Montana. This section of the international border bisects a borderland region characterized by physical uniformity in its grassland ecosystem and continental climate, although there are widely divergent soil types, vegetation, and surface features on the local scale. The two sides also maintain a socioeconomic affinity in both enjoying a predominantly rural, resource and agrarian economy, with low population density and a geographical isolation from markets.

Yet while integration of the two sides has occurred to a considerable degree because of shared physical geographies, migration and capitalist influences, there have also developed divergent forces that have acted to distinguish the Canadian and American components.

Researchers wanted to explore the principal border-related issues identified by the Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments and whether these concerns have changed since NAFTA and 9/11. In terms of market flows, investigators wanted to look at what changes have occurred in the actual crossing of the Prairie region’s borders by goods, services, investment capital, and people, pre- and post- FTA, NAFTA, and 9/11. To what extent has the governance of Saskatchewan’s and Manitoba’s borders significantly changed related to trade and investment flows?

To what extent have changing patterns of trade, investment, travel and migration contributed to changes in governance? What roles, if any, do federal and municipal governments play in provincial policy-making? What degree of coordination exists among these different levels of government in policy-making?

What role, if any, do indigenous groups play in cross-border governance? And, on the cultural front, investigators are keen to explore to what extent the pattern of domestic relations, particularly intermarriages, among native peoples has been influenced by the border that transects and divides communities in Canada and the United States. To what degree has citizenship been a factor in patterns of cooperation, in religious, cultural, social and economic contexts among natives on both sides of the border? How has the pursuit of specific land claims been influenced in the cooperation of cultural leaders on both sides of the border?

Can a greater Plains borderland culture be identified? If so, at which scale does it manifest itself most clearly? How does borderland culture reflect historical patterns of settlement? How is Prairies/Plains culture imagined on both sides of the border? Are there similarities that transcend the geopolitical boundary?

What are the major mediums of cultural interchanges within the borderland region (trade, tourism, media, etc.)? At what scales are cross-border exchanges most pronounced?

Additionally, what role does the current transportation infrastructure play in facilitating market flows both east-west through the region and north-south with the United States? What effect does distance from markets play in determining market flows? Has this changed significantly over time with changing policy and changing transportation and other technologies?

When looking at migration and labour markets, researchers want to know what changes have occurred in people’s actual crossing of the region’s borders, both interprovincially and internationally, and in terms of changes in population mobility and patterns of movement of migrants, workers and students. To what extent have these changes been unilateral, cooperative, or reactive in nature, and to what extent have they stretched across national borders to international realms outside the US?

What have been the adaptations of existing corridors (i.e., extra-national changes that include the outsourcing or offshoring of bordering/border clearance processes)? Has there been a development or expansion of new corridors or geographies of distribution and settlement (i.e., devolution of policies and the relation to rural development strategies)? What are major border-related challenges that governments/employers face with regard to issues of recruitment and retention of workers/students?

With respect to questions of sustainability, what are the principal environmental challenges related to Manitoba and Saskatchewan’s physical borders and interprovincial and international economic relations? To what extent are the challenges based on traditional watershed and airshed management issues? What are the border-related parkland, wilderness and wildlife management issues? What are the broader climate issues as they relate to the prairies?

Of particular importance are questions relating to the continuing challenge of distance and isolation to commerce, trade and mobility, and the challenges facing cross-border cooperation and governance in an international region traditionally mired in political and economic peripherality.

Finally, researchers wanted to explore the challenges of developing economic diversity in a region that has been and continues to be dependent largely on the primary sector. However, questions regarding security will not be considered due to a lack of expertise in the subject amongst the researchers as it pertains to this part of North America.

Dr. Randy Widdis at the University of Regina led the Prairies region.