Borders: A Very Short Introduction

First published in 2012, Borders: A Very Short Introduction began with the premise that "we live in a very bordered world." The intervening decade has witnessed a flurry of events and developments that continue to highlight the centrality of borders in contemporary domestic and international affairs, as well as the interstices between the two, including sudden surges in migrant and refugees flows; renewed emphasis on traditional border security and wall construction; growing tensions concerning maritime sovereignty; rapid advances in cybersecurity, surveillance, and biometrics; expanded detention and deportation infrastructures; proliferation of transborder organizations; revived populist and nationalist sentiments; and protectionist and integrationist trade practices, to name some prominent examples from recent headlines.

This revised edition accounts for recent developments including Brexit, the 2015 migration crisis across Europe, efforts to build a border wall between the US and Mexico, growing isolationist and nativist sentiments, demands for indigenous homelands, transnational protest movements, Russian cross-border incursions, and insurgencies and rebellions across much of North Africa and Southwest Asia.

Alexander C. Diener is Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on borders/borderlands, migration/diaspora, urban landscape change, and place attachment. He has authored and edited several books including One Homeland or Two? and Invisible Borders. Professor Diener has been the Regional Research Fulbright Scholar for Central Asia, a two-time Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and a Senior Fellow at both George Washington University and Harvard University. A native of upstate New York, Diener holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Joshua Hagen is Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He has published widely on a range of topics across human geography, including borders, historic preservation, nationalism, places of memory, territoriality, and urban planning in journals such as Annals of the American Association of Geographers, cultural geographies, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Geographical Review, Journal of Historical Geography, Journal of Urban History, and Political Geography, as well as authoring and co-authoring several books and book chapters.