Abstract
Border studies have been mushrooming around the world during the last 20 years or so. Most studies in contemporary Europe scrutinize borders from the perspective of cross-border cooperation, often examining the politico-economic motives used to lower the borders inside the EU. Recently, increasing attention is paid to the external borders of the EU and the outsourcing and off-shoring of border control, especially in the Mediterranean. In the aftermath of 9/11, borders are also studied elsewhere in the framework of control and security. The terrorist attacks in the US and Europe swept away the happy optimism of a ‘borderless world’ that characterized the early post-Cold War period. It soon turned borders into uneven, mobile, and unreceptive landscapes of technical and symbolic control that stretch far away from the lines that were formerly regarded as ‘borders’. Border studies increasingly concentrate on the ‘fast landscapes’ of flows, security issues and mechanisms of control.
Catherine Nash, Bryonie Reid and Brian Graham provide a different perspective: their Partitioned Lives is a richly detailed history of one particular border context, the Irish borderlands. The book, published in Ashgate’s Heritage, Culture and Identity series, draws on the Irish Border/lands project (2004–08) which focused on the material landscapes, experiences and political-cultural identities in this area. The volume is based on literary materials, in-depth interviews of 80 borderland residents in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as on observations. The authors also use photographic materials as illustrations.
The key aim of the book is to make sense of how this politically deeply symbolic border has been practiced, experienced and materially present in the everyday lives and landscapes of the borderlands. Respectively, the authors are particularly interested in the senses of identity and belonging that are contextualized in the dynamic political landscape. The authors follow a multidisciplinary approach and, guided by their theoretical points of departure, do not draw only on political, historical and cultural geographic literature but also on writings from other fields.
This book offers the reader a much deeper and sensitive geo-history (and social history) than most studies of borders. As is the case with any border, this one has a geo-history where relatively open and less porous periods have followed each other. As with many other borders that divide uneven economic landscapes, the Irish border area has also been a site of intense smuggling during the more closed periods. It has also been an exceptionally contested border area where religious and ethno-national identities have been key sources of tension and violence. This is evident in the memories of the interviewees which were often conditioned by their position as members of wider ethno-national groupings. Particularly formative in this respect was the period of ‘the Troubles’ that extended from the first signs of violence in 1969 to about 1994 (after the IRA’s ceasefire that year), when many closed border roads were re-opened. Yet, the interviews display that the memories related to the dreadful experiences during this period are likely to remain and characterize everyday lives long into the future.
The book is somewhat divided in the sense that the first section focuses on more theoretical interpretations of borders, while the historical and empirical sections go largely on their own track. It is a pity that the theoretical perspectives are rarely set into a dialogue with the empirical part.
To conclude, Nash, Reid and Graham have written a stimulating and detailed book and have been able to pack their message in a short space (157 pages). It is refreshing to see a volume on a borderland that takes history seriously and at the same time gives voice to borderland people. Contrary to many contemporary texts on borders this book is also very much jargon-free.