Borders between states have affected, and continue to affect, people's lives in different ways according to their citizenship, economic status, ethnic background and so on. Moreover, the affects of such borders on different people do not remain static but may change according to individual and broader historical and political circumstances. Today, especially in the West, many people seem to experience what might be considered a globalised borderless world whereby entering and exiting a state is a mere formality, and mobility is taken as almost a given. But for others, such as those in South America or Africa, notions of borderlessness do not make much sense at all as their movement is subject to intense scrutiny and methods of control. In other words, different people experience border politics differently depending on who they are, where they are coming from and going to, and what their motivation for travelling might be.

When we think about borders in contemporary political life, a number of iconic images perhaps come to mind: the Berlin Wall; the United States–Mexico border; the straight lines dividing the African continent. According to this picture, paradigmatically represented by Mercator's map, global politics is characterised by territorial borders that separate states into sovereign political entities. On this view, ‘the border’ is a marker of the limits of the sovereign power of the state located at a fixed site at its geographical outer edge.