Maintaining borders: From border guards to diplomats

Abstract

The article aims at integrating the cultural psychology perspective of into the multidisciplinary field of border studies. It analyses the border phenomenon as a co-genetic system. The authors investigate the psychological side of people who relate to the border out of different motives. Then, it expands some of the theoretical concepts current in border studies by introducing psychological dimensions such as intentionality and directionality. Finally, the framework is applied to two case-studies representing the northern and southern European Union frontiers: The case of Estonian officer Eston Kohver in the Setumaa region on the Estonian-Russian border; and the experiences of border guards in the re-bordering process on the Spanish- Moroccan border. It offers an innovative conceptual resource based on a triadic co-genetic epistemological approach, which allows us to overcome the binary oppositions still very present in the contemporary debates in borders studies.