My dissertation contributes to the current scholarship of border studies, post-Soviet transformations, and education in conflict territories by expanding the scope of pedagogical practices necessary for peaceful coexistence. This research analyzes the capacity and potential of educators to contribute to more peaceful relationships and makes clear the constraints of schools in fulfilling this role. Specifically, my research focuses on the ways in which the idea and reality of “the border”-as well as teachers’ memories of the “border”-shape classroom practices, textbook content, and pedagogical theory in post-conflict Armenia. This dissertation suggests that borders are central to the defining of identity-as studied among Armenians-and that border thinking has the potential to expand pedagogical practices to not only inform/(re)define identity, but also to sustain peace and make room for an alternative way of being that refutes the dichotomies of colonialism and imperialism, and other prevalent isms. I argue that teachers have the potential to act as key change agents in transforming the Armenia-Azerbaijan and Armenia-Turkey conflicts of the Caucasus region through their distinctive influence both on curriculum and pedagogy, and by creating supportive learning environments in classrooms. Using a critical educational ethnographic approach, my dissertation examines educators’ memories of bordering practices and experiences to rethink national borders and identities in Armenian education. The paper (and the special issue) seeks to elaborate a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the challenges of shifting borders of European (in)securities, thus shedding light on complex migration phenomena and contributing to better understanding of these issues and what can be done about them in, but also beyond, academia.īorders have deep symbolic, cultural, historical, and religious meanings, and can therefore become mobilized for various political endeavors.
Like the rest of the special issue, it shows that state security and human security are not mutually exclusive and can in fact be mutually reinforcing, even if this unfortunately remains the exception rather than the norm in practice. In particular, this introductory paper opens up the possibility of disentangling the complexity of (in)securities and (im)mobilities. It sets the scene to examine the proliferating insecurities at and in reference to EU borders, suggesting a migrant-centred understanding of human security and mobility and its complex relations to-and tensions with-more traditional conceptions of border security. This article introduces the special issue ‘Shifting Borders of European (In)Securities: Human Security, Border (In)Security and Mobility in Security’ going beyond the traditional dichotomy vision of borders, namely inclusion versus exclusion (Panebianco 2016). Over the past decade, the European Union (EU) has faced a severe migration crisis that brought to the fore the issues of borders and security-including security at borders and the borders of security.
The result is a book that proposes a wandering through a constellation of bordering policies, discourses, practices and images to open new possibilities for thinking, mapping, acting and living borders under contemporary globalization. In so doing, they suggest that rethinking borders means deconstructing the interweaving between political practices of inclusion-exclusion and the images created to support and communicate them on the cultural level by Western territorialist modernity. The authors offer a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of the border not as an entity to be taken for granted, but as a place of investigation and as a resource in terms of the construction of novel (geo)political imaginations, social and spatial imaginaries and cultural images. Contemporary bordering processes and practices are examined through the borderscapes lens to uncover important connections between borders as a ’challenge' to national (and EU) policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through conceptual (re-)framings of social, political, economic and cultural spaces. Accordingly, it encourages a productive understanding of the processual, de-territorialized and dispersed nature of borders and their ensuring regimes in the era of globalization and transnational flows as well as showcasing border research as an interdisciplinary field with its own academic standing.
Using the borderscapes concept, this book offers an approach to border studies that expresses the multilevel complexity of borders, from the geopolitical to social practice and cultural production at and across the border.
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