Research report 2016 - Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

The reinvention of territoriality: Legal cartographies of borders and migration control in a globalized world

Authors
Shachar, Ayelet
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften, Göttingen
Summary
The fortified border has always served as a powerful symbol of sovereignty, governance and jurisdiction. Now a new and striking phenomenon—the shifting border—has emerged. Unlike a refortified physical barrier, it is not fixed in time and place. Instead, prosperous countries increasingly rely on sophisticated legal tools to detach migration regulation from a fixed territorial location. This reinvention relies on law’s admission gates rather than a specific frontier location with dramatic implications for the scope of rights and protections that migrants and other non-citizens may enjoy.

For the full text, see the German version.

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