Borders

Since the inception of the discussion of globalization in the early 1990s, critical studies have exhibited a growing interest in borders. It is no exaggeration to say that the question of borders has shadowed claims for greater global integration and interconnection. Primarily borders have been understood as a negative enabler of these processes" the limit to be overcome, to recall a memorable phrase from Marx's Grundrisse (1973: 408). In this conception, borders were primarily national territorial borders, and thus predictions or hopes for a 'borderless world', elaborated in popular business manuals such as those authored by Kenichi Ohmae (1990, 1995), were accompanied by debates about a decline of the nation-state (see, for instance, Miyoshi, 1993). While this perspective, which takes the nation-state as the privileged object of global processes, has never fully disappeared, it has been relativized by approaches that emphasize the role of the city (Sassen, 1991), the transnational corporation (Barnet and Cavanagh, 1994), or the environment (Foster, 2002). The question of the nation-state's persistence has been eclipsed by the need to trace its transformations, adaptations, and diversification of forms. At the same time, there is wide recognition that globalization has occasioned open borders for capital and goods but the multiplication of barriers for the movement of human bodies. This realization has prompted since the early 1990s a rigorous theoretical engagement with the topic of the border in the work of "‚tienne Balibar, who has played a pioneering role in placing it at the center of critical studies (see, for instance, Balibar, 1992). It has led a number of commentators (see, for instance, Dalby, 1998) to apply the term 'global apartheid' to the geographies of globalization. The use of the term apartheid implies not simply a normative condemnation of the inequalities created and enforced by the differing mobilities of populations. It also registers the operation of borders beyond state demarcations and highlights the need to rethink politics and obligations across boundaries in ways that take seriously 'the social and economic consequences of the current global division of labour' (140). It is particularly with regard to this latter endeavor that a reflection on the role of borders in Marxist thought remains a vital and urgent task.