Geographical Connections: Law, Islands, and Remoteness

Abstract

The paper introduces a special issue dedicated to cross-disciplinary research on insular condition and insularity. Situated at the crossroads of legal and geographical studies, it explores the intriguing topic of “Island-ness” by placing emphasis on how physical, legal, and imaginative remoteness articulates a variety of geographical connections. These reflect several issues, such as territorial (and maritime) localisation, insular ontology, colonial and post-colonial imaginaries. The special issue delivers both a synthetic view of these questions and opens up further perspectives for reflection. The papers examine how geographical connections trigger different legal, as well as constitutional, frameworks suitable for geographically distant islands, which, evidently, depend on how remote these islands actually are. The contributions survey various topics and adopt different approaches in order to ascertain how geographical connections and remoteness intertwine. Beyond this richness of inputs, the essays reveal some common features of islands and remoteness as objects of geographical and legal representation. Besides organising society, the law arranges geographical connections so as to act as a bridge linking the reality of remoteness to an imagined alternative able of securing the governance of the above-mentioned remote societal contexts.