Globalization and Border Secularization in International Discourse

• In Event: New Perspectives on International Collaboration

Abstract

International borders have become a growing concern for international security. Moreover, they appear to be associated with a growing set of international concerns arising from transnational nonstate violence and criminality. Because IR scholars have been concerned primarily with globalization (with images of a borderless world) and territorial disputes (obsessed with border specification and legitimation), international relations scholars are missing one of the most central changes in global security orientation: toward a perceived need for border control. This project documents the shift toward concerns with border control at the United Nations, explores its meanings, and tries to explain why it has so much purchase on security discussions in the world’s central security organs.

To do so, we combine original datasets of UNGA and UNSC resolution texts with an existing UNGA plenary speech dataset (Baturo et al. 2017) to identify all UN border-related discourse from 1970-2016. Using this dataset, we use a series of natural language processing methods to extract data on the locations, sentiment, and policy frames discussed in these documents, which we complement with a systematic human validation effort. This dataset - we suggest - offers a useful avenue through which to understand spatial and temporal variation in border national-level border orientation, at least as expressed in the international arena. Finally, we cross-reference these data on border discourse with data on both violent incidence and with a new international border infrastructure dataset (Simmons and Kenwick, 2018) which uses satellite imagery to track border infrastructure (e.g. construction of walls or guard posts and inspection stations) in all countries from approximately 2000 to the present. By triangulating discourse, violence, and infrastructure, this project sheds light on borders as spaces of heightened security concern.

Authors

• Robert Shaffer, University of Pennsylvania

• Beth A. Simmons, University of Pennsylvania