Bordering Turn

Since the mid-2010s at the latest, there has been discussion of the border as a complex phenomenon, aimed at a more comprehensive and differentiated understanding of b/orderings. However, there seems to be an imprecise use of the term ‘complexity’ in the academic debate, and sometimes, still, an everyday understanding of complexity prevails. To sharpen the debate around a border’s complexity, in this comment, in a first step, I show what border scholars currently consider complex and question which analytical and conceptual developments in the wake of the bordering turn have encouraged the increasing talk of complex borders. In the second step, I suggest how border research can be inspired by complexity theories, in focusing on performative interrelations and their emergent dis/orders that become spatially and socially effective.

Despite the increased discourse on the complexity of borders, there are hardly any references in the academic debate as to what exactly complex borders mean or complexity-oriented border research. This paper starts here and discusses the promising relationship between complexity thinking and border research. To this end, it explains what is currently qualified as complex in border research and what understanding of complexity can be found there. The core ideas of complexity thinking are then presented and linked to the ordering and ordered principle of the border. Building on this, border research approaches and methodologies are identified that can be considered enablers of the complexity perspective and, thus, as starting points for complexity-oriented border research.