This chapter addresses the concept of in/visibility in border-related trauma narratives through a discussion of the representation and reception of border crossers’ traumas in literature dealing with Finnish–Russian borderlands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by writers including Boris Cederholm, Kirsti Huurre, Arvi Perttu (Finland), Nikolai Jaakkola and Antti Timonen (Karelia, Soviet Union). The chapter reveals how historical and political discourses related to border crossers and their experiences have influenced the discourses on migrants and their traumatic experiences up to the current day. The public reception of these narratives both in Finland and the Soviet Union/Russia has tended to evaluate them according to their truth-value and documentary value, and ignored the affective and emotional aspects of the narratives, i.e., their role as trauma literature. More recent trauma narratives by border-crossers apply elements of fictional genres, such as Russian postmodernism and grotesque, and are increasingly intertextual and layered. Since affects, personal experiences and inner reflections play a central role in these texts, aesthetic strategies play an important role in mediating the trauma of the border. The chapter shows that the marginalised experience of the border trauma gains gradual visibility, and the public perception of the past is gradually transforming.

The operation of power has been a central concern within International Relations, and this is also true within critical thinking. The various critical approaches have contributed differing analyses of the operation of power. Amongst critical thinkers Foucault’s work on power is the most influential, and this chapter will focus on the way that his work on power developed over the course of his lifetime and how this has been taken on by writers in International Relations. One of the major concepts developed by Foucault was ‘governmentality’. This term has been used in International relation very widely, though some authors are not convinced by its utility. The chapter will also discuss how power has been conceived within Frankfurt School influenced Critical Theory, and Posthumanism drawing on the notion of fitness landscape.

This chapter examines the locales and clubs that formed the foundation of the northern soul scene, including the Catacombs in Wolverhampton, the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, and Blackpool Mecca. There is a detailed analysis of the social context of the emergence and success of such clubs and the authors locate them within the framework of strong local political and cultural identities. The ‘rare soul’ scene of the late 1960s formed part of a midlands and northern soundscape that was still predominantly industrial and thrived in localities in which particular class and gendered identities were relatively fixed. The chapter also situates the rare soul scene as part of tradition of dancing that had deep roots in the working-class cultures of the midlands and the industrial north-west. The transition from rare soul to northern soul is mapped through a critical reading of specialist music magazines, diaries and oral testimony.

‘Gender ideology’, an umbrella term covering sex education, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and gender mainstreaming, figures at the heart of various political conflicts in Poland (and throughout Central Europe) and is presented as the major threat to the nation. Political analysts assert that the attack on ‘gender ideology’ contributed significantly to the electoral victory of the radical right in Poland, in 2015. This chapter traces the historical roots of the current attack on ‘gender ideology’ and argues that it had already started by the mid-1980s when the Communist Party, hoping to win the battle over young’s people hearts against the Catholic church, published a progressive sex education handbook to be used in all Polish high schools. The publication ignited a heated debate: reviewers called it ‘the handbook of masturbation and defloration’ and warned about its demoralising effects. Conservative critics explicitly equated sexuality and gender with issues of national belonging, mobilising opposition around these concepts. This chapter argues that it was at this moment in the 1980s when current conservative thinking about gender and sexuality vis-à-vis the nation was born and shows that recent neo-conservative approaches towards gender and sexuality have in fact been forged over the last three decades.

This chapter introduces the readers to the main topics and arguments of the book, and explains its main goal, which is to explore borders and boundaries, both external, geo-political and internal, socio-political, in order to unpack processes of social reproduction and of exclusion and inclusion in Europe. The chapter presents briefly the ethnographic contributions of the book, and the three main sections framing the individual chapters: Part I comprises ethnographic and phenomenological discussions of people’s changing lives as they cross borders; Part II centres around migrants’ navigation of social services in their destination countries, putting at the core questions about rights and limitations on citizenship; and Part III focuses on policy formation at the level of the state in relation to sexuality, reproduction, and care regimes

This introduction addresses the role of the aesthetic forms such as narratives and images for politics of the border on the basis of the work of the philosopher Jacques Rancière. It also suggests that stories of the border are means for negotiating identity in the borderscape, the site where border-crossings and bordering processes take place, generating new belongings and becomings, as the border theorist Chiara Brambilla argues. Providing a shared basis for the interdisciplinary volume, the introduction asks three key questions that concern (1) the role of the form, medium, aesthetical strategies in (trans)forming the borderscape, (2) their entry into the public sphere and diverse functions in border discourses and (3) their role in making visible and giving voice to diverse experiences of the borderscape, including those of migrants and other minorities. The introduction also reviews the case studies collected in the volume.

This chapter examines the problem of territoriality and borders in the digital age through an investigation of the materiality of data clouds as well as their artistic representation by the US artist and activist Trevor Paglen. Starting from the ambiguity of the idea of capturing clouds, the chapter addresses social and political implications of the increasingly ubiquitous technology of cloud computing. What and how do data clouds capture? Are these clouds themselves captured both in physical infrastructure, ownership, state conduct and through artistic responses to their inherent dynamics? Following Amoore’s distinction between two different geographies of data clouds, the chapter addresses issues of territoriality, power and digital borders by asking where the capturing clouds behind the US National Security Agency (NSA) bulk surveillance materialise, and where such clouds fundamentally challenge spatial notions of state sovereignty and borders. Through an analysis of the artworks of the US photographer and activist Trevor Paglen that visualise the materiality of NSA surveillance, the chapter shows that Paglen reconnects the apparently fluid and ephemeral nature of digital technology and surveillance with its often classified material and institutional basis.

This chapter develops a working definition of critical theory, and argues for the need for critical approaches to understand current global crises and the operation of power. Following a brief discussion of the notion of critique, the chapter provides an analysis of Horkheimer’s agenda-setting essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’. Horkheimer’s essay is compared to Robert Cox’s distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. The chapter closes with a discussion of the emergence of a range of critical theories within International Relations, namely Critical Theory itself, feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and complexity thinking.

This chapter contributes to key debates in border ontology and border anthropology through a critical re-evaluation of the work of the social theorist Georg Simmel. Through a theoretical discussion and an analysis of several border images and narratives, it argues that life at the border always involves a need to negotiate between the territorial, cultural and linguistic demands of the different spaces, revealing the instability and ambivalence of liminality. In an attempt to explore the potentiality of the theoretical frame for the study of border narratives and images, the chapter investigates various border figurations associated with limits and thresholds, often marked symbolically as bridges, staircases, windows and doors, which are part of an aesthetics of the border. The final section of the chapter addresses the film Babel (2006) directed by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu. It suggests that the multi-locational and multicultural elements of the film, seen in its locations ranging from Japan, the United States and Mexico testify to global cultural entanglements and the potentiality for border-crossings embedded in globalisation, but are challenged by the closed space of the tourist bus prohibiting communication between international tourists and the space travelled through.

Since the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, grassroots activism around care has significantly increased in Spain, and particularly in Catalonia. Especially significant has been activism by immigrant domestic workers, but other groups, such as informal family carers and professionals from the public health and welfare system, have also made themselves heard. Under renewed forms of political activism, they all have addressed the so-called crisis of care, which for decades has been affecting Spain’s capacity to meet the care and social reproductive needs of broad sectors of the population. In 2017, the Care Network was created in Barcelona, an attempt to bring together claims from different social groups affected by cutbacks and austerity policies. This chapter analyses these new forms of grassroots activism around care. Based on recent literature on citizenship and border regulation, it shows how social activists challenge the boundary drawing at play in the stratified system of entitlement. Adopting a critical feminist perspective, it describes how activists respond, through their demands and alliances, to the logic of value extraction underlying the current care regime in Spain, which is feminised, precarious, and stratified. Ultimately, it highlights the central role that solidarity plays in the politicisation and democratisation of care.

This chapter focuses on China’s encounters and negotiations across its borders with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam where cross-border interaction and enhanced mobility play an increasingly more important role. It shows how narratives and imaginaries of border crossings and processes contribute to border negotiation in the public sphere, and, particularly, how these aesthetic forms deliver a range of top-down and bottom-up discourses among national interests and a richly intertwined tapestry of minorities in the region. On the basis of field research in the localities of Ruili, Kokang and Dalou/Mongla along the China–Myanmar border, the China–Laos border at Mohan/Boten and the China–Myanmar border at Hekou, it is shown how images and narratives of borders and borderlands function differently at different levels of discourse in the public sphere, but also that border space allows these diverse discourses to co-exist, particularly if the border space accommodates plural cultural memories. Making visible and giving voice through border images and narratives empowers minority constituencies, as long as the local images and narratives do not eclipse the national discourse. The border functions as a catalyst for mediating and merging of various border narratives as well as negotiations in the border space.