Bordering the Middle East

<p>This volume focuses on the influence that borders in the Middle East can have on actors’ identity building as well as how local national or transnational actors re/ define borders and boundaries.</p><p>The Middle East is facing a political crisis revealed by the Arab uprisings that is affecting states’ borders in a paradoxical way: while local communal or tribal dissent tends to contest international borders states are trying to affirm their control over national territory in building border fences. Focusing on borders in their materiality as well as their symbolic dimensions – their representations – may help with reappraising the region’s own history the local/national specificities as well as regional/ global constraints affecting borderlands and those who cross borders; be they workers migrants or jihadists. In this book six case studies will provide insights on state- community relationships through the lens of border issues in the Levant and the Gulf. The theoretical framework provided by the border studies conceptual tools allows authors to delve into the process of bordering de- bordering and re- bordering which is affecting the region raising questions on sovereignty authority and the political legitimacy of the regimes.</p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Geopolitics</i>.</p>