Borders, Power and Security

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course attempts to make sense of borders, which is also the title of the first chapter of the textbook. We begin with a variety of key terms and concepts, including an examination of the origin of the concept of sovereignty and how states voluntary give up sovereignty. We’ll spend some time on the history of borders and what happens when an “outsider” draws national borders, as happened in colonial Africa. Moving from politics and geography into economics, we’ll talk about types of flows across borders and consider modern (post-9/11) concepts of “secure” borders. This will lead us to look at the borders of the United States, including border infrastructure, and how we do/should balance security and trade. Then by looking globally, different types of borders appear, such as China’s “Great Firewall” that restricts citizens’ access to information, and borders that exist based on identity documents (and what happens when people can’t obtain them)