Maison des Sciences Humaines
11, Porte des Sciences
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval
Salle de conférence (1st floor)
seminars@liser.lu
Abstract
Despite, and some say because of, decades of globalization and the postmodern turn, the territorial trap (cf Agnew), to see states as static, native containers with manifest borderlines on maps and in the sand that would clearly separate an inside (here, us) from an outside (there, them), still is the dominant projection of our world. In this lecture Henk van Houtum will show how, especially in public and political debates on borders, cross-border cooperation and (labour) migration, such methodological nationalism (cf Wimmer & Schiller) still prevails. Using Derrida’s notion of autoimmunity, he will explain the counterproductive fallacies of this thinking in borders as merely lines or walls that typically then, either should be crossed (e.g. the internal market, Euregions) or be defended and militarized (e.g. EU external border policies). He will conclude by discussing recent academic and artistic attempts of coming to a much needed more creative, resourceful and sustainable thinking on borders and the (daily) crossing of them.
Biography
Henk van Houtum graduated in Economics and wrote a dissertation on the relationship between political borders and economics at Tilburg University. At Radboud University Nijmegen, he co-founded the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research . He currently holds a professorship in Political Geography and Geopolitics at Radboud University Nijmegen. In addition, he is co-director of the Radboud University master specialisation on Europe: Borders, Identities and Governance and the master specialisation on Conflicts, Territories and Identities. He has published extensively on borders, cross-border cooperation between cities and regions, migration, and cartography.
