Forschungsprojekt

The dissertation project examines the political violence of borders and the ways in which they contribute to an authoritarian restructuring of social and political life. To this end, the project connects political theorizing with existing empirical research, enabling a ‘thick description’ of the manifold determinations and relations of borders. Practices of bordering, it is argued, (i) produce and exacerbate social antagonisms, (ii) expand the capacities of states to capture people and control their daily interactions, and (iii) enable the circulation of state-sanctioned as well as extra-legal forms of violence. Along these three axes, the project traces the authoritarian dynamics of borders and their implications for democratic theory. In doing so, it can draw on recent work in political philosophy that analyses how basic democratic rights are undermined by increasingly restrictive border regimes. Contrary to this body of work, however, borders are not understood as antithetical to an enlightened liberal tradition. Instead, the project argues that violent practices of bordering have been central to the formation of liberal visions of political order. The dissertation thus seeks to offer a new perspective on the relationship between borders, liberalism and democracy. Complicating previous analyses, it shows how authoritarian dynamics – mediated through different practices of bordering – are already inscribed into the inner structures of liberal-democratic orders.