Rescaling the border: national populism, sovereignty, and civilizationism

This chapter draws on emerging trends in border studies to explore how spatial imaginaries of sovereignty are instrumental in structuring some of the key debates of our time, including the future of the European Union, responses to humanitarian crises and migrant flows, as well as notions of Great Power status and value spaces. The power of such imaginaries has contributed to a global materialization and proliferation of borders not seen since the end of the Cold War. The first part of this chapter will note the rationale and reasons behind a dangerous and destabilizing detachment of representation from reality. It will highlight a state of enhanced ontological uncertainty, where hyper-real imaginaries are used to reassert security by placing the border and sovereignty at the centre of national debates on identity and insecurity. Alongside this exploration of hyper-real imaginaries of sovereignty, the chapter will also explore the notion of the hyper-border, where the instrumental and pragmatic nature of identity can puncture imaginaries of uncontested national space and immutable borders. It reveals how the fluctuating political authority of the state at its extremities can render national identity as contingent, malleable and instrumental in such borderlands. This chapter seeks to stimulate a broad debate on ways of reconceptualizing prevailing categories for dividing geographical space while recognizing the power of the hyper-real and imagined spatialities for constantly making and remaking the relationship between people and territory.