ABSTRACT
The tearing down of the Berlin Wall and emphasis on cross-border cooperation within a globalized world was believed in the 1990s to have harkened in an age when the inclination was to be towards new ideas and practices which sought to distance the notion of the international boundary as a linear barrier (Laitinen 2003: 37). It is true that the conditions of globalization in the modern world – including the flow of information across boundaries, the rise in international trade, the proliferation of corporations with worldwide influence, the ease of international travel and, most significantly, the increase in the number of regional economic unions – have affected the traditional characteristics of a boundary as a distinct line of separation.1 These factors led to a notion that absolute state sovereignty over fixed parcels of territory was being eroded.2 This process was succinctly defined as ‘de-territorialisation’ and was described by Newman as:
This notion of absolute form of political legitimacy that occurs within a rigidly defined state territory, determined by the course of human-made boundaries, is being called into question. State sovereignty is, so it is argued, being broken down as boundaries
have become more permeable than in the past and no longer fulfil one of their basic functions – to act as physical barriers to transboundary movement. (Pratt and Brown 2000: 20)
Even in the midst of presumed ‘de-territorialisation’, many nation states and their populations remained passionate about territory.3 However, the pervading sense of global insecurity in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks has led many more states to re-examine their territorial boundaries less as areas of interaction with neighbouring states, and more as areas that need to be monitored and secured.
