The multilectics and multiplicities of borders and border studies

The proliferation of international borders and the related attention to issues of sovereignty, citizenship, security, migration and social justice have led to the expansion in scholarly border studies since the 1990s. The disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary study of international borders by scholars, which may be viewed as part of new inter- and multidisciplinary scholarship, or as a focus on borders within more traditional academic disciplines, reflects a worldwide public awareness of what borders do and mean in the lives of nations and states, as well as in many other organizations, groups, and individuals who reside and work in or traverse borderlands. This, in turn, has led to the growing realization that international and other borders are more complicated conceptually than was once supposed, and that borders are multiplying at an astonishing rate in their numbers, functions, and meanings in equally expansive public and private domains. This chapter examines how the multiplicity of borders demands a corresponding multiplicity in methods and theories to understand them. This multiplicity suggests that multilectical approaches may be one productive way forward in the advancement of multidisciplinary approaches within the growing field of border studies.