In recent decades, Border Studies have gained importance and have seen a noticeable increase in development. This manifests itself in an increased institutionalization, a differentiation of the areas of research interest and a conceptual reorientation that is interested in examining processes.
So far, however, little attention has been paid to questions about an integrated understanding of borders, how knowledge can be productively linked together and how Border Studies are related to other scientific areas. In addition, there is a significant lack of systematic and comparative considerations regarding the methodological foundations of Border Studies and the associated consequences for border research. The number of case studies on borders and border regions is indeed growing steadily and theoretical and conceptual considerations are being further advanced and developed. However, methodological and practical research aspects and their interrelationships remain insufficiently examined: Which epistemological perspectives are used in Border Studies? How is the choice of research methods justified? To what extent is the scope of empirical work assessed by reflecting on data types and their explanatory power? How are considerations about the research process and the role of researchers included? Which assumptions about the use of theories and their heuristic potential guide studies?
The thematic issue „Identities and Methodologies of Border Studies: Recent Empirical and Conceptual Approaches“ addresses some of the desiderata mentioned and aims to unite promising conceptual and empirical perspectives of research on borders, bring them into conversation with one another and provide impulses for a broader debate about (inter)disciplinary self-perceptions and methodological orientations in Border Studies. The collection of nine articles framed by a foreword of the President of the Association for Borderlands Studies and largely based on presentations at the second World Conference of the Association for Borderlands Studies in Vienna and Budapest in 2018, are intended to contribute a long-overdue self-examination of Border Studies
“The authors in this special issue rightly point to the need to go beyond interdisciplinarity as a mere trendy buzzword and question what – and I would add also how – specific disciplines and approaches can contribute to an integrated understanding of borders.”
Jussi P. Laine (President of the Association for Borderlands Studies)
Bibliographic information and download
Christian Wille, Dominik Gerst, Hannes Krämer (Eds.) (2021): Identities and Methodologies of Border Studies: Recent Empirical and Conceptual Approaches. Borders in Perspective 6, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, download
Contents
- Foreword (Jussi P. Laine)
- Border Studies: a long-overdue self-examination (Christian Wille, Dominik Gerst, Hannes Krämer)
- The multiplication of border methodology (Dominik Gerst, Hannes Krämer)
- Border or bordering practice? Changing perspectives on borders and challenges of praxeological approaches (Ulla Connor)
- Researching State Borders: (Checkpoint) Practices, Materialities and Discourses (Annett Bochmann)
- Cross-border Collaborations as “Contact Zones” – Methodological Reflections on Ethnographic Studies in Border Regions (Sarah Kleinmann, Arnika Peselmann)
- Of borderlands and peripheries: The promise of cooperation (Ulrike Kaden)
- Borders, Migration, Struggles: A Heuristic for Analysis of Border Politics (Simon Sperling, David Niebauer, Laura Holderied)
- The Seven Follies of Lampedusa (Chiara Dorbolò)
- The Approach of Contemporary History to Border Studies in Europe (Birte Wassenberg)
Editors
Christian Wille (University of Luxembourg)
Dominik Gerst (University Duisburg-Essen)
Hannes Krämer (University Duisburg-Essen)
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