XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-27

The Wall and the Border -the Roots of Social Violence in Borderlands.

RC54 The Body in the Social Sciences (host committee)
RC05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity

Language: English

Even if human globalization lags way behind the voluminous and easy circulation of capital, goods, political ideas or images, it is still the case that globalization in general makes existing borders more uncertain, and future ones more fragile. The borders, far from disappearing, have acquired a new kind of centrality in our societies, becoming reference points for the growing number of people who do not find a place in the countries they wish to reach. What do we know about these border places, these liminal zones between countries and continents, that have become the focus of so much attention and anxiety today, and what do we know about the individuals who occupy these places? The borderlands identified by Anzaldua (1981) have become reinforced as sites for a renewed kind of social actor, the "Border Dweller", who is both "inside" and "outside", enclosed on the one hand and excluded on the other, and who is obliged to learn, under harsh conditions, the ways of the world and of other people. In this respect, the lives of migrants, even in the uncertainties or dangers of the borderlands, tell us something about the condition in which everyone is increasingly living today. This is, a "cosmopolitan condition", in which the experience of the unfamiliar is more common and the relation between self and the other is in constant renewal.