Gabriel Popescu: Rearticulating Border Spaces: Technology, Bodies and Networks in the Age of Mobility

The production of borders in the globalization era is driven by the demands of unimpeded mobility on the one hand and of reliable territorial security on the other hand. Of particular interest for my research are the spatial outcomes these border discourses generate, as we are witnessing the emergence of complementary forms of state borders that evade the norms of territorial linearity. Risk management strategies associated with the quest to securitize transnational mobility have triggered a technological race to close the ultimate frontier - the human body. Accordingly, bodies are imagined as spaces to inscribe borders on. The problem is that techno-embodied borders construct a human subject that is detached from its human context. These developments increase the power of borders to order people's lives precisely at a time when these lives become more spatially mobile.