Globalization, Border Reconstruction Projects, and Transnational Crime

GLOBALIZATION HAS PROFOUNDLY CHALLENGED THE GEOGRAPHIC BORDERS THAT HAVE historically demarcated the boundaries of sovereignty, citizenship, and the nation-state. Although many anticipated that globalization foreshadowed a "virtual" world in which national borders would be largely irrelevant, instead it appears that many Western nations are reconstituting and reinforcing geographic and social divisions through border reconstruction projects, reaffirming the importance of "place"-based privileges and rights, as well as "insider" versus "outsider" identities. These border reconstruction projects are often ideologically cloaked in the language of security and transnational crime reduction but, in fact, they frequently facilitate both old and new forms of social harm and transnational crime. This article explores the relationship between globalization, border reconstruction projects, and the growth and changing character of transnational crime. Globalization and Border Reconstruction Projects Despite widespread claims about the porosity of borders and the diminished power of nation-states under globalization, borders remain critically important and nation-states are key players in the construction of the global economy. Indeed, as Sassen (1998) and others have argued, the nation-state is the critical site for facilitating globalization. Global cross-border flows are "not only endured, but are also facilitated, by states in order to facilitate their interests" (Rudolph, 2005: 3). Nonetheless, some features of globalization do threaten the traditional power held by nation-states. "As the traditional politics of interstate rivalries cedes place to the global market, governments lose unique attributes of their power. Armies and territory count for less," and the critical "levers, many of which used to be in the hands of government, pass to the private sector" (Treverton, 1999: 47). Under globalization, state capacities have been "questioned" in ways that have required states to (re)act in order to reassert authority; "borders represent an act of authority, real or symbolic, which serves to consolidate the state's power in domains where its capacities are questioned, but where they can be reactualized" (Pellerin, 2005: 53). Thus, border politics today reflect the conflicts and contradictions faced by the nation-state under globalization. I use the phrase "border reconstruction project" to refer to a variety of state-sponsored strategies designed to reinforce and/or reconstitute borders in response to challenges posed to nation-states and borders by globalization. These projects are historically situated, dynamic processes that often involve not just governments and their agents, but also major corporations, the business sector and the media, and even, increasingly, ordinary citizens. The objectives of specific border reconstruction projects vary, but today most seek to respond to key structural contradictions within the global economy and to keep important aspects of state power intact while extending power into new, transnational spaces. The concept of a "border reconstruction project" recognizes that borders are socially constructed and are in a constant state of re-creation. In fact, borders might better be conceived of as a "performance" rather than a location (Wonders, 2006). Borders are performed and constructed via changing laws and policies, but also via daily practice; similarly, they can be made irrelevant by daily practice. Today, national sovereignty--that is, the power and control a nation-state has over its own future--is determined in large part by the ability of nation-states to create the architecture for what I have elsewhere termed "semi-permeable" borders, facilitating the mobility of capital "and those with resources, while restricting access for vulnerable and marginalized populations who might make claims upon nation states' diminishing capacity to serve citizens" (Ibid. …