The Local Politics of Border Control: Transnational Communities and Resistance

• In Event: Poster Session: Dynamics of International Conflict and Competition

Abstract

Why do communities of people near international borders sometimes resist border control? State efforts to facilitate or prevent the entrance of people or goods into national territories, such as border walls, are proliferating. Scholars have fruitfully developed macro-level explanations for this salient shift in governance and its implications for migration, smuggling, terrorism, and sovereignty. But it remains scientifically and normatively important to better understand how the many people who live near borders figure into this phenomenon. In this project, I advance the border politics literature by drawing attention to the interests of local communities and their engagements with states over border control. I theorize that transnationality, or the extent to which a borderland community is economically and socially connected to society across a border, is the key factor that explains where resistance to border control occurs. More transnational communities place greater value on open mobility across the border as the basis of local life. This disposes such communities to fear that intensified border control will disrupt prevailing practices and identities. Thus, all other things equal, borderland communities that are more transnational will be more likely than other borderland communities to resist border control. I statistically test the theory in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, using an original geospatial measure of transnationality and a hand-coded version of ACLED data on protests against border closures. Overall, this project spotlights border control as a significant point of conflict between states attempting to assert territorial authority and transnational borderland communities impacted by these efforts.

Author

• Jeffrey Coltman-Cormier, Rutgers University, New Brunswick