Available via license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
Expanding Border Temporalities:
Toward an Analysis of
Border Future Imaginations
Dominik Gerst
*
Hannes Krämer
**
Even though questions about the future have played a central role
in recent times of polycrisis, border studies have long been relatively
silent about the future. Our article develops a research perspective
through which the sensitization of border research for the temporal
dimension of the future can be achieved. To this end, social and cultural
studies’ perspectives on the future are mobilized to approach the
interplay of borderwork and/as futurework. We develop a foundation
for an analysis of what we call “border future imaginations”. In this
way, this study expands our understanding of border temporalities
with reference to the future orientation of contemporary societies.
Keywords: border temporalities; future; borderwork; futurework;
sociology of time.
_R
* Dominik Gerst, M.A., Faculty of Humanities, Institute for Communication Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen,
Germany. Email: dominik.gerst@uni-due.de
** Hannes Krämer, PhD, Faculty of Humanities, Institute for Communication Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen,
Germany. Email: hannes.kraemer@uni-due.de
BIG_Review
journal homepage: https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/bigreview
Borders in Globalization homepage: https://biglobalization.org/
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC 4.0
Borders in Globalization Review
Volume 6, Issue 1 (Fall & Winter 2024): 37–49
https://doi.org/10.18357/bigr61202421667
Introduction
The omnipresent and multiple experiences of crisis have
led to the present being a time of a changing and open
future (Urry 2016; Delanty 2021). Terrorist threats to
open society, humanitarian catastrophes in the context
of ight and migration, worsening socio-economic
inequalities, a global pandemic, a war of aggression
in Europe, and the looming certainty of an existential
climate crisis hovering over everything have promoted
the state of affairs to that of a “polycrisis” (Dinan 2019;
Zeitlin et al. 2019). In these times of crisis, the question
of the future comes to the fore and challenges national
and global self-understandings. In Western societies
especially, where a linear, progress-oriented idea of
the future touches the core of modernist and capitalist
conceptions of society (e.g., in the form of an imperative
of development and growth), the question of the shape
of the future has repeatedly been raised in recent years.
This “struggle for the future” is particularly evident in
the European Union (EU), where these assumptions
about societal, political, and economic developments
are eroding (ibid.). The EU is responding to these
changes with an increased self-positioning toward
what is to come—no less than a search for the “future
of Europe” (Grande 2018).
ARTICLE
SPECIAL
ISSUE
38
_R
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
While the topic of the future has been increasingly
entering the spotlight in some disciplines, border
research to date can be characterized by a restrained
focus on the future. This is despite the fact that the
occupation with the temporality of borders has made
a signicant contribution to border research in recent
years (e.g., Pfoser 2020; Leutloff-Grandits 2021). It
must be noted that systematic analyses of
border
temporalities
encompassing different time dimensions
are rare and that the futurity of border making has so far
been addressed incidentally at best. This is astonishing
because borders are treated as important focal points
for societal debates about the future. For example, in
discourses on the prospects of migrants staying, the
permanence or abolition of transit spaces at borders, the
risk-related scenario analyses of Frontex (the European
Border and Coast Guard Agency), the security of
(energy) supply in border regions in times of climate
change, or the shifts of borders in the Anthropocene,
it is noticeable that central societal debates (on
immigration, solidarity, social risks, or nature–culture
relations) are linked directly to practices and discourses
of border making. The resulting assumption motivating
this contribution is that current forms of
borderwork
are more and more oriented toward the future by their
incorporating aspects of
futurework
.
Based on this general assessment, our contribution
aims to develop a research perspective through which
sensitization of border research on the temporal
dimension of the future can be achieved. To this end,
we rst discuss how time and temporality have been
addressed in border research (section 2). By applying
social and cultural science approaches to the future,
we then aim to overcome the disregard of the future
in border research (section 3). We outline the core
elements of future-sensitive border research, centring
on the relationship between borderwork and futurework
(section 4). This article concludes with a call for research
that focuses on the future of borders to arrive at a more
adequate understanding of border making under the
conditions of contemporary European societies in an
era of crisis and uncertainty (section 5).
Time and Temporality in Border Studies
Like all cultural phenomena, borders exhibit a specic
temporality. They unfold in the ow of time, as
well as being subject to temporal changes in their
manifestations, interpretations, and evaluations (Adam
1995). In border studies, temporality usually comes into
view by addressing the fundamental changeability of
the border. Borders exhibit a specic history, which
is considered a signicant characteristic (Anderson
& O’Dowd 1999; Paasi 1999). Thus, Paasi (1999, 670)
calls for making the “changing meanings” of borders
the starting point of border research. Accordingly, the
historical processes of change are examined, and an
understanding of temporality is applied. For example,
Reitel (2013) refers to the sequence of border episodes.
In this way, temporal transformation processes
come into view. Temporality is usually equated with
changeability by applying a retrospective perspective
(Nugent 2019). As an inuential example, the widely
acknowledged life cycle model for border regions can
be mentioned here. Baud and van Schendel (1997)
distinguish the historical phases of border-regional
integration. Recent studies have examined more closely
the conditions and expressions of border change,
conceptualizing the transformative dynamics of
borders, whether as a result of their multi-perspectivity
(Doevenspeck 2011; Rumford 2012), the variability of
local border practices (Amilhat Szary & Giraut 2015;
Brambilla 2015), or changing global macro-phenomena
(e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) (see Ulrich et al. 2021;
Brodowski et al. 2023). With regard to these studies,
one can differentiate between representational and
materialistic approaches. In the rst case, studies
have traced the changing meaning of borders by
analysing memory narratives in border regions for
their contribution to border identities (Stokłosa 2019;
Pfoser 2020) or by examining historically solidifying
border narratives as border imaginaries (Acero-Ferrer
2019; Weinblum 2019; see below). This is contrasted
with materialistic approaches, which describe the
shape-shifting nature of borders, for example, in terms
of their changing practices of fortication, control, and
exclusion (Sassen 2015; Nail 2016; Mau 2022). What
these approaches to the temporality of borders have
in common is that they often operate with a linear and
progress-oriented understanding of time, which usually
conceives of the future as a seamless extension, or at
least a causal consequence, of the present.
In addition to considering the changeability of borders,
border studies in recent years have increasingly
addressed the intrinsic temporality of borders and
related aspects thereof. Such a perspective benets
from the fact that border studies have opened up to
inuences from the social and cultural sciences. Telling
in this regard is research at the intersection of border
and migration studies (e.g., Donnan et al. 2017), in which
the temporal orders of border crossing, the rhythm of
transnational migration movements, or the duration
while waiting (at the border crossing, in the “reception
camp”, and at the immigration ofce) come into view. In
addition, the connections between geopolitical changes
and their perception as discontinuities and temporal
boundaries are elaborated (Höer 2019). However, the
futureness of the temporal border phenomenon has
not received further attention so far. Worth highlighting
is the concept of “complex temporalities” (Little 2015),
which aims to grasp the multiplicity of temporalities
that emerge
at
,
through
, and
across
borders. The
concept is also interesting because it not only leads to a
sensitivity to the interplay of different temporal border
phenomena, but also to a critique of the predictability
of border developments. As early as the 1990s, Barzilai
and Peleg (1994) designed a model for predicting
39 _R
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
border developments, using the Israeli–Palestinian
border as an example, to allow border-specic path
dependencies to be extrapolated into the future—a
task whose success is highly doubted when following a
perspective of complex border temporalities.
The conceptual development and theorization of border
research increasingly benet from both tendencies (the
changeability of borders and the intrinsic temporality
of borders). On the one hand, the characteristic of the
historical changeability of borders moves to the centre
of contemporary conceptual designs, in which borders
are conceived as borderscapes or assemblages “in the
making” (Brambilla 2015; Sohn 2016). On the other
hand, sensitivities to the inherent temporality of border
phenomena ground theories of borders in motion
(Konrad 2015; Schiffauer et al. 2018) and a theory of the
border that starts from the circularity of movements
(Nail 2016).
However, an approach to the futurity of borders that
goes beyond a linear understanding of time can
benet only from a few preliminary studies. When
the future of borders is addressed, it usually appears
as a “by-product” or as an aspect of subordinate
relevance. For example, this concerns research in the
eld of cross-border cooperation that treats a
border
future
, identied by actors, as an opportunity or risk
of cross-border cooperation, but does not pursue the
plurality of possible futures of the border itself (e.g.,
Pallagst et al. 2018).
Some studies in different contexts have suggested
that borders can become sites where questions
about the future become pervasive. Green (2012)
juxtaposes border narratives from two Greek border
regions at different times to show that speculations
about spatial relocations and thus border change are
embedded in everyday narratives. Studies on security
of supply in border regions indicate that adaptations
to changing environmental conditions include a
future dimension. While Fishhendler, Dinar, and Katz
(2011), use the example of the Isreali–Palestinian water
dispute to show how the choice in favour of a “uilateral
environmentalism” results from the anticipation of
future political tensions, Biemann and Weber (2021)
devote themselves to the conict over nuclear energy
in the German–French–Luxembourgish border region
and work out that divergent national discourses
on future-related security of supply and threat
scenarios constitute a cross-border conict. At the
intersection of border and migration studies, visions
of alternative futures are linked to migrants’ border
crossings (Leutloff-Grandits 2017). Conversely, the
unpredictability of a future beyond borders can make
them relevant as a “decision-making site” for refugees
(Mapril 2019). A different perception, in which borders
are associated as sites of emerging threads, leads to
the phenomenon of preparedness. These reactions to
expected threats, as Binder (2020) elaborates, show a
clear orientation toward the future in pre-emptive logic.
In another study, seeing and anticipating are described
as specic optics of border management, in which the
predictability of future threat scenarios is a resource of
border control practice (Fojas 2021). Könönen (2023,
2801) deals with practices of entry bans to nation
states as well as the Schengen area and conceptualizes
them as “forward-looking governance of migration”.
In a few studies in which the “imaginability of future
borders” (Trauttmansdorff 2022, 146) is explicitly
made the subject, the construction of future borders is
situated in terms of a narrative of digital transformation
(Trauttmansdorff & Felt 2021). The latter four studies
demonstrate that the futurity of borders is being
discovered at the intersection of borders and security.
At the same time, however, the emancipatory impetus
of some critical border (control) research leads to a
future-engaging position: for example, an approach
can be identied that starts from a vision of an open
and peaceful border dened as a future ideal, and ends
pointing out ways to this preferred future. Drawing
on scenario theory, which distinguishes “possible”,
“predictable”, and “preferred” futures, Weber (2015, 9)
introduces a “preferred-future method” for developing
desired border effects.
In summary, when border studies discover the
temporality of borders, they do so with sensitivity to
either the past or the present of temporal bordering.
When the futurity of borders is addressed, it tends to be
en passant
as an incidental by-product or, alternatively,
in the context of normative approaches intended to
lead to scientically driven border change. Although
sporadic initial approaches within border studies are
emerging that recognize the future as an efcacious
temporal mode of borders, it should be noted that the
concrete (overlapping, contradictory, self-sufcient,
etc.) forms of the future have received little attention
in border studies to date. Given the presence of what
is to come in contemporary border discourses, and the
advanced engagements with the future from the social
and cultural sciences, it is apparent that research on
the temporality of borders is still based on a simplistic
understanding of the future. We argue for a greater
consideration of insights from social and cultural
science into the topic of the future. In what follows,
we identify key insights from this eld of research with
which border studies can be brought into productive
dialogue.
Future in the Social and Cultural Sciences
In recent years, the topic of the future has received
increased attention in many disciplines of social and
cultural science, not least as a result of the social
developments mentioned in the Introduction. From the
rapidly growing research on the future, these studies
are of particular interest for border research that refers
to cultural fabrication and, therefore, the contingency
40
_R
character of the future (Coleman & Tutton 2017; Beckert
& Suckert 2021). We want to consider some aspects of
this
future-as-a-cultural-form
approach.
Fundamentally, in these studies, the future is not seen
as an ontological entity but as a cultural form. What
counts as the future within a society is variable in terms
of scope, shape, and relation to other time horizons.
Therefore, the form of the future depends on the socio-
cultural conditions of its recognition, imagination,
description, and more. This has been emphatically
pointed out by historical studies (Koselleck 2004; see
also Minois 1996) that have identied the formation
of new temporal orders with the emergence of an
industrialized, capitalist, mass society (Delanty 2020).
Whereas pre-modern times were mainly characterized
by a notion of the recurrence of the same or a
fundamental rupture, such as “the Day of Judgement”,
the temporal order of modern contemporary society is
characterized by an “open future” (Luhmann 1976, 131).
This openness—and, thus, the changeability of futures—
have recently been highlighted in more detail in various
studies (Rosa 2015; Urry 2016; Krämer & Wenzel
2018). Such an understanding is underpinned by an
anthropocenic self-image. According to Bensaude-
Vincent (2022), the age of the Anthropocene goes
hand in hand with a radical questioning of chronological
concepts of time. In the face of ecological crises,
Western metaphysical notions of linear temporality are
eroding and the view is widening towards polychronicity
and “a variety of heterogeneous temporal trajectories”
(ibid., 206). The sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1976,
148) reserves the term “present futures” for the ideas
that a society currently has about what is to come.
By contrast, the futures that will occur are called
“future presents” (ibid.). Subsequently, this sensitivity
to different temporal modes has been extended. On
the one hand, the inuence of futures on the present
time has been emphasized—that is, the control of the
present from the future (Anderson 2010). On the other
hand, the inuence of societal considerations in the
present on the future has been more clearly elaborated
(cf. Adam & Groves 2007). Therefore, engagement with
the future is not a purely virtual speculation but is also
a momentous practice for the present. Beckert (2016)
elaborates on this by using the term “performativity”
to highlight the current effects of imagining the future.
In addition to the cultural variability of futures, another
important point is the shaping of the concrete forms of
futures. In recent studies, there has been an increased
emphasis on efforts to bring imagined futures to life.
The coming is marked as something that is not only
variable but is shaped and actuated by various practices,
discourses, and technologies. Such a perspective
sensitizes concrete work on the future. It considers the
“anticipatory practices” (Groves 2017, 34), “practices
of speculation” (Cortiel et al. 2020), “future-practices”
(Wenzel et al. 2020; Krämer 2022), and “future-making
practices” (Meyer et al. 2018), thus emphasizing
the routinized material (i.e., technical and corporeal
accomplishments) involved in the identication,
shaping, and dissemination of present futures as part
of effective discourse practice arrangements. Studies in
this context point to the potential and the promising
characteristic of the imaginaries of the future, or
question the uncritical enthusiasm for technological
solutionist narratives (for example, Färber 2019;
Bachmann 2021). Various studies have also pointed
to the technological and social preconditions of
future techniques, such as forecasting and scenario
analysis (Bradeld et al. 2005; Krämer & Wenzel 2018;
Reichmann 2019). In turn, other analyses focus more
strongly on the discursive and narrative routines of
producing future imaginaries (Gibson 2011; Horn 2018)
or highlight the communicative and conversational
modes of interpersonal future production, for example,
in the domains of family or institutional communication
(Ayaß 2020; Leyland 2022). Moreover, future practices
are often stabilized by different types of “future objects”
(Esguerra 2019).
From a process-oriented perspective, research that
analyses the actual production of the future is interested
in the conditions of production
with
and
in which
the
future is created. The question then arises as to who
designs the future and who is not involved in these
designs, a topic that plays a major role in, for example,
the climate debate on sustainable lifestyles (Adloff &
Neckel 2021). Accordingly, there are actors that have
more “communication power” (Reichertz 2011) than
others with regard to the interpretation of the future.
Such power asymmetries are not only reected in
the successful creation of speaker positions and
publics, but also in professional practices of modelling,
simulating, or sensing what is to come. We refer to
this as
imagining
. Therefore, the details of modelling
the future, whether by means of scenarios, traditional
planning tools, or technical simulations, are not neutral
procedures but rather effective epistemic time regimes
with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion (Andersson
2018; in general: Krause 2021).
The growing number of material-based historically
and present-oriented studies has shown that the
future in contemporary societies occurs in the plural.
Accordingly, in different social elds, different things
can be considered part of the future. This simultaneity
of different conceptions of what is to come makes
researchers speak of future
s
in the plural (Urry 2016;
see also Luhmann 1976). Specically, in the English-
speaking discussion on futures, corresponding
conceptual considerations have been advanced (Adam
& Groves 2007; Urry 2016; López Galviz et al. 2022).
Currently, different futures not only stand side by side
but also against each other. Futures can reinforce,
hinder, question, or even clearly contradict each other.
This can be summed up as a “synchronization problem”.
The plurality of futures produces different temporal
rhythms, tempos, and dynamics. These different
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
41 _R
temporal orders can produce considerable tensions,
especially in globalized and functionally differentiated
contemporary societies.
Various empirical studies have provided individual
results that can further sharpen the understanding
of the future in border studies. Sociological research
on future orientation in the nancial market (Beckert
2016; Esposito 2018) is worth mentioning. It points to
the character of a “future as a resource” without which
speculative products would not exist at all. Beckert
(2016) reserves the term “imagination” for this. Oomen,
Hoffman, and Hajer (2022, 253) point out that the
performative effects of futures must be taken seriously,
as “the identication, creation, and dissemination
of images of the future shape the possibility space
of action, thus enacting relationships between past,
present, and future”.
With the insights gathered into the future as a cultural
form, a perspective can be drawn for border research
that aims at the production of specic
border futures
.
The central question is not what but how the border is
designed as a prospectively changing object. What is
relevant is not the ontological time but the praxeological
time analysis of the future. Therefore, the analytical
focus sheds light on the time mode of the future as
a concrete gestalt produced by conventionalized
routines integrated into the corresponding contexts
of production and reception. In the following section,
we discuss how border research can be constructed to
pursue borderwork and its relation to futurework.
Borderwork and/as Futurework
This article reacts to a restrained thematization of
the future in border research. To focus on the social
production of border futures and to adequately address
an increasingly important feature of contemporary
borderwork, an expanded understanding of
border
temporality
is needed that addresses the futurity of
borders. We propose that border research interested
in the future of borders must start by considering
borderwork and futurework more closely together. Work
on borders, in the sense of its production, processing,
and transformation, is increasingly connected with
work on the future. In bringing together border-
analytical and future-analytical insights, interconnected
research perspectives emerge that can point to a better
understanding of contemporary borders. As we argue in
more detail below: rst, it is fruitful to adopt a practice-
theoretical perspective in which the accomplishment
of border futures comes into focus. Second, such a
social-theoretical grounding can be protably linked
to a focus on the work of coherent border future
imaginaries. This requires a reorientation of the concept
of the imaginary that has been prominently taken up
in border research. Third, engagement with these
border future imaginaries is especially promising if the
multi-dimensional internal structure of such imaginaries
is explored in more detail. Fourth, such an approach can
be placed in tension with a perspective that looks into
the relationship between designed border futures and
alternative temporal orders (of the past, present, and
future). Fifth, the specic in/stability of border futures
can be questioned by addressing their epistemic status
and social effects.
Praxeology of Border Futures
Border futures are cultural forms whose production,
social dissemination, and modication are based on
a specic interplay of border and future practices.
Border futures can be understood as a kind of focal
point at which various activities merge. The analytical
access point is borderwork, referring to an opening
of border research to practice-theoretical approaches
that have been taking place in recent years (Wille 2015;
Connor 2021). In practice-sensitive border research, “the
border” is conceptualized as, for example, “bordering”
(Houtum 2011; Yuval-Davis et al. 2019), “borderwork”
(Rumford 2013), “border -making ” (Brambilla et al. 2015),
or “doing borders” (Hess 2018). The shared focal
point of praxeological border analyses is a focus
on the knowledge-based and bodily enactment of
the activities of the involved border actors. Such an
analytical perspective of border praxeology provides
three impulses for an understanding of border futures.
First, practice-theoretical approaches sensitize us to
the activity dimension of borders and to the plurality
of actors involved in the work of future borders. The
previous prioritization of state actors is countered
by the fact that a vernacularization of borders can
be observed (Rumford 2013; Jones & Johnson 2016),
insofar as border actors can be identied in different
social elds. This means that “everyday border-making”
(Kolossov & Scott 2013) gains relevance. Looking at the
everydayness of border futures (for the everydayness
of the future, see Spurling & Kuijer 2017; Pink & Postill
2019) sensitizes two aspects. On the one hand, work
on the future of borders is dispersed. This can be seen,
for example, in the case of intra-European cross-border
economic cooperation and the border future
imaginaries unfolding in these contexts, these being
oriented toward the future of European economic
activities. Here, various actors, such as chambers
of commerce, economic development institutes,
local administrations, private companies, and even
individuals with their hopes and desires, are involved in
the border future’s accomplishment. On the other hand,
in terms of work on the
futures of the border
, different
groups of actors work on their specic border futures.
In the case of cross-border cooperation, the interests of
economic development agencies may differ from those
of private local companies. Peña and Durand (2020)
show by reference to the case of Basel–Mulhouse region
and Tijuana–San Diego region how different actors with
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
42
_R
different imaginations of the future are involved in joint
planning activities.
Second, border practices can take on different
“levels of activeness” (Parker & Adler-Nissen 2012).
In this way, practices can be identied that produce
non-intended side effects on the border future and
activities that explicitly aim at the shape and meaning
of borders. Accordingly, forms of explicit and implicit
border futurity can be distinguished. For example, the
border management agency Frontex is responsible
for an explicit treatment of the border future. In its
continuously produced “risk analyses”, forecasts of
migration movements and global “megatrends” are
translated into scenarios to provide a future-oriented
basis for current border practices (Horii 2016).
More implicit border-related future processing can
be recognized in the Polish government’s effort to
prolong the operation of the Turów open-cast lignite
mine located on the borders of the Czech Republic
and Germany. In the resulting dispute with the Czech
government, a future component became visible
insofar as the procedure was set in the framework of
climate policy and the future of the border region (cf.
Kurowska-Pysz et al. 2022).
Third, a fundamental processual unxity of the border
can be observed (Kolossov & Scott 2013; Brambilla
2015; Sohn 2016). As contingent cultural forms, border
futures are understood as productions of constant
becoming that require specic stabilization work.
Depending on how open—for example, as a general
horizon of possibility (cf. Kramsch 2017, 27)—or
how certain the border future itself is designed, this
stabilization work is based on reassurance procedures
(to be discussed in section 4.4). From a practice-
theoretical perspective, the border and its future are
a result of a process shaped by plural inuences and
groups of actors. Therefore, ambivalences, paradoxes,
and conicts resulting from the interplay of distributed
borderwork can come into focus (Hess 2018). This was
particularly evident in the context of the question of
border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not
only did divergent national visions of the future clash—
for example, on predictions about pandemic events and
their transborder transmissibility—but conicts also
arose with regional perspectives that opposed border
closures in the sense of shared border-regional visions
of the future (Renner et al. 2022).
Imaginations of Border Futures
From a praxeological perspective on the work on the
future of borders, questions of how border futures are
concretely expressed and how they become public,
recognizable, and describable phenomena have
arisen. Here, we suggest understanding border futures
as interweavings of borders and future imaginaries
(Trauttmansdorff 2022). This suggests a notion that
can capture the constitutive
material provisionality
of
futures, as future presents can only occur in virtuality. In
border studies, the concept of imaginaries is becoming
increasingly popular (e.g., Dorsey & Diaz-Barriga 2010;
Brambilla et al. 2015; Bürkner 2017; Turunen 2021).
In the present article, we discuss
imaginations
, a term
that brings the time dimension into focus as a horizon
of possibility and connects more closely to tangible,
empirically observable forms. By
imaginations of the
future
, we refer to collective ideas about what is to
come, as expressed in shared images, scenarios, myths,
and stories. Drawing on various theoretical traditions
from philosophy (Ricoeur 1978; Bergson 1988) and
social theory (Schütz 1932; Castoriadis 1987; Taylor
2004), imaginations denote social phenomena in the
state of being imagined. The concept is grounded in
the fundamental capacity of human imagination and
imaginative power (Schulte-Sasse 2001). It begins
when there are social implications, that is, when socially
relevant imaginative worlds are produced. In doing
so, imaginations support the “social imaginary” as an
“unconscious” edice of ideas, an effective order of
knowledge (Taylor 2004).
Since imaginations provide a foundational orientation
for social practice (Herbrik & Schlechtriemen 2019),
a separation between reality on the one hand and
imagination on the other seems to be misguided.
Practice and imagination are in a constitutive
relationship: border-future practices can be seen as
“processings” of imaginaries (Bürkner 2017) in the
same way that border imaginations are shaped by
the “performance effects” of border-future practice
(Langenohl 2010). Above all, these practices become
signicant through their collective binding power.
As “collective fabulations” (Bergson 1988), they are
discursively repeated and shared and create differences
with collectives in which alternative imaginations
are established. Characteristically, they also have a
normative component, as they seek legitimacy for
implicit notions of normality. This makes the clash
of conicting imaginations particularly interesting
(Weinblum 2019; Trauttmansdorff & Felt 2021), for
example, when it becomes apparent that hierarchies
of imaginations are formed and counter-designs of the
future are suppressed.
To reconstruct the central imaginations of the future,
it is necessary to start with the observable (discursive)
practice of relevant actors, as border futures attain
social relevance and stability as repeated practices.
(Discursive) border future practices are a central
context of reference through which the discursive
construction of future imaginaries can be empirically
described (Beckert 2016; Urry 2016; Haupt 2021).
Thus, statements about future borders have emerged
in daily newspapers, such as in the course of the
so-called refugee crisis (e.g., Rheindorf & Wodak
2018); in political pronouncements, such as those
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
43 _R
published by the Commission of the EU (e.g., “White
Paper on the Future of Europe”); and in documents
of organizations, such as the risk analyses of Frontex.
Furthermore, specic events of border future-related
communications are also of interest, such as panel
discussions, parliamentary debates, citizens’ forums
(e.g., the Conference on the Future of Europe), and
interpersonal conversations. This also includes semiotic
and artefact-related accesses. Images of and about
borders are a central means of making demarcations
discursively available. Objects, such as walls or fences,
can also become important symbols of communicative
referencing (Brown 2010; Rael 2017).
Multi-Dimensionality of Border Future
Imaginations
Border future imaginations not only allow for a
preoccupation with the ways and means of their
production in and through discursive practices:
coherent border future imaginations also bundle
ideas of future borders, and their internal structures
provide information about their social meanings. At
least four aspects can be emphasized with regard to
contemporary border formations.
First, border future imaginations can be understood as
outputs through which collectives design themselves
and distinguish themselves from others (Castoriadis
1987; Taylor 2004). The dissolution or “shift” of the
EU’s internal borders in the course of the so-called
EU enlargements, for example, was accompanied
by different imaginations of what the future EU as a
confederation of states and as a “European society”
should look like. In this sense, European funding and
cultural programmes, which are supposed to create
social cohesion between the “old” and the “new”
member states, carry implicit expectations for the
future; their expected effectiveness is linked to ideas
about the coming European society and is thus
supposed to help contain an “uncertain future after
EU enlargement” (Vaughan-Whitehead 2003, 463).
Projections of social boundaries are at work here: just
as borders produce current structures of inclusion and
exclusion, of belonging and otherness, notions of future
borders are oriented toward existing, anticipated, and
desired (changes in) modes of social relations. Who will
and should belong? Which regimes of distinction are
marked as prospectively relevant?
Second, border future imaginations exhibit specic
temporal orders. The “complex temporality” (Little
2015) of border future imaginations is fed by two
interconnected temporal references. On the one
hand, imaginations exhibit inherent temporal horizons
through which a basal distinction between past, present
time, and future is established and specically qualied.
The “White Paper on the Future of Europe” published
by the European Commission in 2017 (European
Commission 2017) was based on a future horizon of
2025, with ve scenarios describing anticipated paths
to this future. Moreover, this assembly of futures was
based on a recurrent recourse to the last 70 years of
peaceful coexistence.
The Ventotene Manifesto
(1941) is
used in the “White Paper” as a historical starting point
of a development narrative that provides a shared past
framework for the future imaginations inscribed in the
scenarios. On the other hand, border future imaginations
can be based on notions of rhythms, duration,
sequentiality, development, and the identication of
tipping points/thresholds (cf. Schiffauer et al. 2018).
For example, the strategic documents of the EU reveal
the coherent progression of a European idea. The EU
and its predecessors are considered a response to
the equally social and geopolitical rupture after 1945
(Dockrill 1994). The current debate on how to deal
with migration movements also shows the orientation
toward tipping points and thresholds, which, as “limit
values”, signicantly structure future perspectives for
action (cf. Rheindorf & Wodak 2018).
Third, also of interest are the spatial aspects of border
future imaginations, such as geopolitical structural
imaginations in which the EU or distinct social elds (e.g.,
economy, security, and culture) conceive themselves in
relation to their borders (Bürkner 2017; Turunen 2021).
For example, the so-called “EU enlargement to the
East” was preceded by notions of spatial change, as an
envisaged enlargement was supported by a geopolitical
reinterpretation of “European space”, which stimulated
thinking about future “East–West relations”.
Fourth, in light of the currently emerging smartication
and digitization of the border (Pötzsch 2015; Löfmann
& Vaughan-Williams 2018; Mau 2022), special attention
should be paid to socio-technical imaginations (Jasanoff
& Kim 2009; Trauttmansdorff & Felt 2021). Examples
include anticipated or announced technological
changes and their position within border future
imaginations. Trauttmansdorff and Felt (ibid., 10–18)
show how the imaginary of a “digital transformation”
shapes the work of professionals in the eld of border
security and their orientation toward a “secure future”.
They trace how the development of border control
technologies is supported by the idea of a future
marked by crises and undesirable dangers, which are
used to legitimize the mentioned innovations.
Future Relations
Border-related future imaginations are not only
characterized by a future that is imagined in each
case but also by specic time horizons that come into
play in the process. Border future imaginings can have
different forms of what is to come, for example, cultural
utopias and dystopias, or planning processes that
secure expectations. In turn, these are associated with
divergent inuences on shaping the future. Based on
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
44
_R
this, the study of border future imaginations is especially
informative for understanding border temporality when
the relationship of articulated border futures with other
temporal orders is considered. This is based on the
insight that border futures are not usually conceived
as relationless entities but as an interplay of different
temporal dimensions. Accordingly, Hurd, Donnan, and
Leutloff-Grandits (2017, 4, emphasis in the original)
state in their conceptualization of border temporality
that “past, present, and future may
coexist
in experience
and imagination and/or
follow
one another”.
First, this shows the position of different futures in
relation to each other, from which a coherent (or
conictual, see below) border future imagination is fed.
For example, the current future imaginations of Frontex
are characterized by the fact that processes with
diverging future horizons are synchronized within the
framework of a “master narrative” and integrated into a
coherent future imagination. Predicted time horizons of
migration movements are linked to long-term economic
developments, such as inuential political changes in
neighbouring states or the technological development
of surveillance tools in the Global South. However, the
relation of contrary future imaginations to each other
is also of interest. It is worthwhile to question the
link of imaginations to “alternative” or “revolutionary”
border imaginations (Fellner 2020; Brambilla 2021), as
various relations can be observed. Heretical positions
can be studied as deviations from established future
dimensions. For example, security policy imaginaries
regarding Frontex are atly rejected by other actors
who replace them with alternative narratives. This can
be seen, for instance, in the activities of the No-Borders
Network, which seeks alternative border narratives in
its events and output, such as the No-Borders Festival,
conferences, and publications. Similar to the direction
of “another future is possible”, various artistic positions
argue against contemporary border practices. Debates
about visions of the EU’s future are conducted in the
context of “border art” and border-related cultural
organizations. Artists and scientists who produce
visions of tomorrow include Charles Heller (2020), who
pleads for the reduction of global obstacles to mobility
based on a forensic architectural study of the island of
Lesvos. In these contexts, border art and border culture
become utopian and dystopian discursive spaces. In
other words, border art aims at “demonstrating the
performative function of contemporary walls and
barriers, designed to impose a geopolitical vision
through landscape changes” (Amilhat Szary 2012,
213). Therefore, it encourages a different perspective
on borders and their future—a perspective that is
fundamentally attributed to the art eld (e.g., European
Commission 2018).
Second, the relationship between imagined border
futures and time horizons (i.e., to pasts or presents) is
also of interest. Futures are discussed as continuity or
as a break with past or present conditions. What is to
come then appears, for example, as a radical change or
as a resumption of past, even forgotten aspects, or as
an (invisible) extension of established conditions. The
exact empirical relations are manifold, as evidenced
by the justications around border shifts in various
discourses, such as Russia’s war of aggression on
Ukraine (Von Löwis & Sasse 2021) and the EU’s
Neighbourhood Policy in North Africa (Bürkner & Scott
2019). In our context, it is interesting to note that the
order of temporal relations itself becomes a strategic
argument with powerful consequences, as it qualies
the revolutionizing, the preserving, or the unifying of the
respective border future imaginations. This can be seen,
for example, at the Ecuador–Colombia Border where
“futurism” is an education strategy to prevent young
people from joining armed conicts which overshadow
the present lifeworld in the border region (Rodríguez-
Gómez 2022). Here, various pathways to a peaceful
future are pointed out which aim at “controlling young
people’s relationships to the present” (ibid., 314).
In/Stability of Futures
Thus far, we have suggested that border future
imaginations should be understood as practical
accomplishments and that the plural and contingent
characteristics of futures should be taken into account
in the analysis of present border practices. The
indications of multi-dimensional internal differentiation
and the links to other temporal orders also suggest
that border future imaginations should be conceived
as complex achievements. Both features—the principle
incompleteness and plurality of the future, as well
as the heterogeneity of its discursive contouring
possibilities—make it necessary to nally consider
the epistemic mode of bringing forth imaginations.
Generally, different forms of imagination (prediction,
planning, anticipation, estimation, hypothesis, etc.) are
tied to divergent degrees of articulation of certainty.
Making the future of the border an object means
making use of discursive and objectual assurances and
uncertainties to (de)stabilize the respective border
futures. Therefore, imaginations of border futures can
be analytically located on a continuum of stability and
instability. To do so, it is necessary to focus on actors
and their positions and alliances, the arenas of future
expressions, and the agendas behind the imaginings
of the future. Who are the beneciaries of future
stabilization? On which inclusions and exclusions
does this stabilization build, and which one does it
reproduce? Könönen (2023) for example analyses
national and European entry bans and shows that
ctions of certainty about future mobilities play a role
on the part of the authorities, while uncertainties are
stabilized on the part of the migrants insofar as they
become part of a “particular group of banned migrants,
who are subject to recurrent removals and detention
due to entry bans, and for whom deportations are
indeed ‘a form of life’” (ibid., 2812).
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
45 _R
Furthermore, the duration of stabilization activities
must be addressed. This shows that the inscribed
uncertainty of border futures spreads out and that
various
ctions of certainty
can be analysed. Forms
of this incidental assurance of a border future can be
reconstructed, for example, through the in/coherence
of narratives of the future. In Frontex’s risk analysis,
expected migration movements to Europe are traced,
in which the respective expectation horizons differ
and are provided with different discursive markers of
certainty and uncertainty. Thus, futures are sorted in
terms of their probability of occurrence on a continuum
between the poles of path-dependent development
and possible change.
Finally, the socio-material constellations in which futures
are stabilized by
future objects
should be examined.
Esguerra (2019) distinguishes three types of future
objects, each of which is used to produce different
degrees of certainty about futures: 1) objects that are
used to extrapolate the present, that is, to anticipate a
linear development to secure the present (e.g., statistics
on developments); 2) experimental objects through
which new futures and visions of the future are to be
created (e.g., future conferences); and 3) objects in the
making (e.g., prototypes) that can be considered as still
part of the future.
Prospectus: Toward the Future of Borders
In this article, we have argued that the future is (again)
becoming increasingly important to social practice in
times of polycrisis. Although borders are becoming
prominent sites for negotiating the future, border
studies have not been sufciently interested in the
futureness of borders. We observe that contemporary
forms of borderwork can exhibit an orientation toward
the future in a variety of ways. Taking the EU as an
example, it becomes clear that European internal and
external borders become focal points for questions
of future community, economic exchange, ecological
stability, and the scope of rights. Here, implicit and
explicit assumptions about the future of borders are
embedded in the current design. These imaginations of
the future have decisive effects on the now. This raises
the question of how border research can analytically
position itself vis-à-vis this circumstance. Against
this background, we aimed to develop a research
perspective that would sensitize border research to
border futures.
The starting point is the observation that border
research is concerned with the temporality of borders.
Approaches to border temporality have attracted the
interest of border research in recent years, and the
temporal dimension of borders has been discussed in
many ways. However, the future has been understudied
as a specic temporal mode. Therefore, we argue that
a recourse to social and cultural studies of the future
holds illuminating insights that can be used to reorient
border research. Central to this is to understand not
only borders but also the future as a cultural form,
which entails questions about its production, meaning,
changeability, and relationality. In combining border
research and future research, we have outlined the core
elements of future-sensitive border research based
on this. These elements revolve around the impulse
to describe observable border practice (borderwork)
in terms of its future orientation—that is, to make
the interplay of borderwork and/as futurework the
topic. Therefore, we propose analysing border futures
in terms of their practical production. This means
empirically determining observable border future
imaginations and focusing on the work on their more
or less coherent forms. In doing so, it makes sense to
decipher the complex internal structures of border
future imaginations as they are represented in social,
spatial, temporal, and socio-technical ways. In particular,
the relationships among different futures should be
examined to trace the tensions, contradictions, and
struggles in the interpretation of border futures. In view
of the current erosion of social assumptions of certainty,
it is of particular interest to include the respective
stabilization efforts for the production of border futures
to address the work on the certainty of specic border
futures and their strategic use.
In summary, contemporary border research must take
the temporal dimension of the future seriously, take a
holistic look at the temporal orders of the border to
discover their relationship with the pasts and presents,
emphasize the contingent characteristic and the
contested nature of border futures, and, lastly, reveal
the practical achievements of the future. In this way,
border research can react to the multiple crises of the
present and expand its analytical basis to accompany
them appropriately.
Works Cited
Acero-Ferrer, Hector A. 2019. “Imagining Borders, Imagining
Relationships: Can We Build Enlarged Communities Through
Narrative Imagination?”
Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion
and Transformation in Contemporary Society
5: 447–468.
https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-00502008
Adam, Barbara. 1995.
Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time
.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adam, Barbara, and Chris Groves. 2007.
Future Matters:
Action, Knowledge, Ethics: Supplements to The Study of
Time
. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Adloff, Frank, and Sighard Neckel. 2021. “Futures of Sustainability:
Trajectories and Conicts”
Social Science Information
60(2):
159–167.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018421996266
Amilhat Szary, Anne-Laure. 2012. “Walls and Border Art: The
Politics of Art Display”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
27(2):
213–228.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2012.687216
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
46
_R
Amilhat Szary, Anne-Laure, and Frédéric Giraut. 2015.
“Borderities: the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders”
in Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary and Frédéric Giraut (eds.)
Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile
Borders
. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–19.
Anderson, Ben. 2010. “Preemption, Precaution, Preparedness:
Anticipatory Action and Future Geographies”
Progress
in Human Geography
34(6): 777–798.
https://doi.org/
10.1177/0309132510362600
Anderson, James, and Liam O’Dowd. 1999. “Borders, Border
Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings,
Changing Signicance”
Regional Studies
33(7): 593–604.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00343409950078648
Andersson, Jenny. 2018.
The Future of the World: Futurology,
Futurists, and the Struggle for the Post-Cold War
Imagination
. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Ayaß, Ruth. 2020. “Projektive Gattungen. Die kommunikative
Verfertigung von Zukunft” in Beate Weidner, Katharina König,
Wolfgang Imo, and Lars Wegner (eds.)
Verfestigungen in der
Interaktion
. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. 57–82.
Bachmann, Götz. 2021. “The Promise of the Promise—The
Dynamic Medium Group in Oakland, California” in Christoph
Ernst and Jens Schröter (eds.)
(Re-)Imagining New Media:
Techno-Imaginaries around 2000 and the case of “Piazza
virtuale” (1992)
. Wiesbaden: Springer. 15–30.
Barzilai, Gad, and Ilan Peleg. 1994. “Israel and Future
Borders: Assessment of a Dynamic Process”
Journal
of Peace Research
31(1): 59–73.
https://doi.org/10.1177/
0022343394031001006
Baud, Michiel, and Willem van Schendel. 1997. “Toward a
Comparative History of Borderlands”
Journal of World
History
8(2): 211–242.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20068594
Beckert, Jens. 2016.
Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations
and Capitalist Dynamics
. Cambridge and Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
Beckert, Jens, and Lisa Suckert. 2021. “The Future as a Social
Fact. The Analysis of Perceptions of the Future in Sociology”
Poetics
84: 101499.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2020.
101499
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. 2022. “Rethinking Time in
Response to the Anthropocene: From Timescales to
Timescapes”
The Anthropocene Review
9(2): 206–219.
https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211006888
Bergson, Henri. 1988.
Matter and Memory: Essay on the
Relation of Body and Spirit
. New York: Zone Books.
Biemann, Julia, and Florian Weber. 2021. “Energy Borderlands—
eine Analyse medialer Aushandlungsprozesse um das
Kernkraftwerk Cattenom in der Großregion SaarLorLux”
in Florian Weber, Christian Wille, Beate Caesar, and Julian
Hollstegge (eds.)
Geographien der Grenzen: Räume—
Ordnungen—Verechtungen
. Wiesbaden: Springer. 73–94.
Binder, Clemens. 2020. “Developing Future Borders: The
Politics of Security Research and Emerging Technologies in
Border Security” in Antonio Calcara, Raluca Csernatoni, and
Chantal Lavallée (eds.)
Emerging Security Technologies
and EU Governance: Actors, Practices and Processes
.
London and New York: Routledge. 148–163.
Bradeld, Ron, George Wright, George Burt, George Cairns,
and Kees Van Der Heijden. 2005. “The Origins and
Evolution of Scenario Techniques in Long Range Business
Planning”
Futures
37(8): 795–812.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
futures.2005.01.003
Brambilla, Chiara. 2021. “In/visibilities Beyond the
Spectacularisation Young People, Subjectivity and
Revolutionary Border Imaginations in the Mediterranean
Borderscape” in Johan Schimanski, Jopi Nyman, Sarah
Green, and Hastings Donnan (eds.)
Border Images,
Border Narratives: The Political Aesthetics of Boundaries
and Crossings
. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
83–104.
Brambilla, Chiara. 2015. “Exploring the Critical Potential of the
Borderscapes Concept”
Geopolitics
20(1): 14–34.
https://
doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2014.884561
Brambilla, Chiara, Jussi Laine, James W. Scott, and Gianluca
Bocchi (eds.). 2015.
Borderscaping: Imaginations and
Practices of Border Making
. Farnham: Ashgate.
Brodowski, Dominik, Jonas Nesselhauf, and Florian Weber
(eds.). 2023.
Pandemisches Virus—nationales Handeln:
Covid-19 und die europäische Idee: Räume—Grenzen—
Hybriditäten
. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Brown, Wendy. 2010.
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty
. New
York and Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bürkner, Hans-Joachim. 2017. “Bordering, Borderscapes,
Imaginaries: From Constructivist to Post-Structural
Perspectives” in Elzbieta Opiłowska, Zbigniew Kurcz, and
Jochen Roose (eds.)
Advances in European Borderlands
Studies.
Baden-Baden: Nomos. 85–107.
Bürkner, Hans-Joachim, and James W. Scott. 2019. “Spatial
Imaginaries and Selective In/Visibility: Mediterranean
Neighbourhood and the European Union’s Engagement
with Civil Society after the ‘Arab Spring’”
European
Urban and Regional Studies
26(1): 22–36.
https://doi.
org/10.1177/0969776418771435
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987.
The Imaginary Institution of
Society
. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Coleman, Rebecca, and Richard Tutton. 2017. “Introduction to
Special Issue of Sociological Review on ‘Futures in Question:
Theories, Methods, Practices’”
The Sociological Review
65(3): 440–447.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12448
Connor, Ulla. 2021. “Border or Bordering Practice? Changing
Perspectives on Borders and Challenges of Praxeological
Approaches”
Borders in Perspective
6: 7–38.
http://hdl.
handle.net/10993/36122
Cortiel, Jeanne, Christine Hanke, Jan Simon Hutta, and Colin
Milburn. 2020. “Practices of Speculation. An Introduction”
in Jeanne Cortiel, Christine Hanke, Jan Simon Hutta, and
Colin Milburn (eds.)
Practices of Speculation: Modeling,
Embodiment, Figuration
. Bielefeld: transcript. 7–30.
Delanty, Gerard. 2020.
Critical Theory and Social
Transformation: Crises of the Present and Future Possibility
.
London: Routledge.
Delanty, Gerard. 2021. “Imagining the Future: Social Struggles,
the Post-National Domain and Major Contemporary Social
Transformations”
Journal of Sociology
57(1): 27–46.
https://
doi.org/10.1177/1440783320969860
Dinan, Desmond. 2019. “Debating Europe’s Future”
Irish
Political Studies
34(4): 490–506.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0
7907184.2019.1647173
Dockrill, Saki. 1994. “Review: Re-Ordering Europe after 1945”
International History Review
16(4): 758–774.
https://www.
jstor.org/stable/40107386
Doevenspeck, Martin. 2011. “Constructing the Border from
Below: Narratives from the Congolese-Rwandan State
Boundary”
Political Geography
30(1): 129–142.
https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2011.03.003
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
47 _R
Donnan, Hastings, Madeleine Hurd, and Carolin Leutloff-
Grandits. 2017.
Migrating Borders and Moving Times:
Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe
.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dorsey, Margaret E., and Miguel Diaz‐Barriga. 2010. “Beyond
Surveillance and Moonscapes: An Alternative Imaginary of
the U.S.–Mexico Border Wall”
Visual Anthropology Review
26(2): 128–135.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-7458.2010.01073.x
Esguerra, Alejandro. 2019. “Future Objects: Tracing the Socio-
Material Politics of Anticipation”
Sustainability Science
14(4): 963–971.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00670-3
Esposito, Elena. 2018.
Predicted Uncertainty: Volatility Calculus
and the Indeterminacy of the Future
. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
European Commission. 2017.
White Paper on the Future of
Europe: Reections and Scenarios for the EU27 by 2025
.
Brussels: Publications Ofce.
European Commission. 2018.
A New European Agenda for
Culture
. Brussels: Publications Ofce.
Färber, Alexa. 2019. “How Does ANT Help Us to Rethink the
City and its Promises?” in Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías, and
Celia Roberts (eds.)
The Routledge Companion to Actor-
Network Theory
. London: Routledge. 264–272.
Fellner, Astrid M. 2020. “Counter-Mapping Corporeal
Borderlands: Border Imaginaries in the Americas” in Florian
Weber, Christian Wille, Beate Caesar, and Julian Hollstegge
(eds.)
Geographien der Grenzen, Räume—Grenzen—
Hybriditäten
. Wiesbaden: Springer. 287–300.
Fishhendler, Itay, Shlomi Dinar, and David Katz. 2011. “The
Politics of Unilateral Environmentalism: Cooperation
and Conict over Water Management along the Israeli-
Palestinian Border”
Global Environmental Politics
11(1):
36–61.
https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00042
Fojas, Camilla. 2021.
Border Optics: Surveillance Cultures on
the US–Mexico Frontier
. New York: New York University
Press.
Gibson, David R. 2011. “Speaking of the Future: Contentious
Narration During the Cuban Missile Crisis”
Qualitative
Sociology
34(4): 503–522.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-
011-9206-0
Grande, Edgar. 2018. “Die Zukunft Europas—Auswege aus den
Entscheidungsfallen”
Leviathan
46(4): 603–618.
https://doi.
org/10.5771/0340-0425-2018-4-603
Green, Sarah. 2012. “Reciting the Future: Border Relocations
and Everyday Speculations in Two Greek Border Regions”
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
2(1): 111–129.
https://
doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.007
Groves, Christopher. 2017. “Emptying the Future: On the
Environmental Politics of Anticipation”
Futures
92: 29–38.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.06.003
Haupt, Joachim. 2021.
Die Konstruktion unternehmerischer
Zukünfte: Eine Studie zur Kommunikation und Legitimation
von Zukunftsvorstellungen
. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Heller, Charles. 2020. “De-conning Borders: Towards Freedom
of Movement in the Time of the Pandemic”
Mobilities
16(1):
113–133.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2021.1873563
Herbrik, Regine, and Tobias Schlechtriemen. 2019. “Editorial
for the Special Issue ‘Scopes of the Social Imaginary
in Sociology’ in the ÖZS”
Österreichische Zeitschrift
für Soziologie
44(2): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-
019-00370-3
Hess, Sabine. 2018. “Border as Conict Zone. Critical
Approaches on the Border and Migration Nexus” in Doris
Bachmann-Medick and Jens Kugele (eds.)
Migration:
Changing Concepts, Critical Approaches
. Berlin and
Boston: De Gruyter. 83–100.
Höer, Concha M. 2019. “Establishing the End of the Soviet
Union as a Temporal Boundary. Perspectives from Georgia’s
Greek Community”
Working Paper Series B/ORDERS IN
MOTION
4: 1–27.
https://doi.org/10.11584/b-orders.4
Horii, Satoko. 2016. “The Effect of Frontex’s Risk Analysis
on the European Border Controls”
European Politics and
Society
17(2): 242–258.
https://doi.org/10.11584/b-orders.4
Horn, Eva. 2018.
The Future as Catastrophe: Imagining Disaster
in the Modern Age
. New York: Columbia University Press.
Houtum, Henk van. 2011. “The Mask of the Border” in Doris
Wastl-Walter (ed.)
The Ashgate Research Companion to
Border Studies
. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. 49–62.
Hurd, Madeleine, Hastings Donnan, and Carolin Leutloff-
Grandits. 2017. “Introduction: Crossing Borders, Changing
Times” in Madeleine Hurd, Hastings Donnan, and Carolin
Leutloff-Grandits (eds.)
Migrating Borders and Moving
Times: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe
.
Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1–24.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim. 2009. “Containing the
Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Power in
the United States and South Korea”
Minerva
47(2): 119–146.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9124-4
Jones, Reece, and Corey Johnson (eds.). 2016.
Placing the
Border in Everyday Life
. London and New York: Routledge.
Könönen, Jukka. 2023. “Borders in the Future: Policing
Unwanted Mobility through Entry Bans in the Schengen
Area”
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
49(11):
2799–2816.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2029375
Kolossov, Vladimir, and James W. Scott. 2013. “Selected
Conceptual Issues in Border Studies” Belgeo 1(1): 1–16.
https://doi.org/10.4000/belgeo.10532
Konrad, Victor. 2015. “Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
30(1): 1–17.
https://doi.org/10
.1080/08865655.2015.1008387
Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004.
Futures Past: On the Semantics of
Historical Time
. New York: Columbia University Press.
Krämer, Hannes. 2022. “Auf der Suche nach Zukunft—zur
Methodologie von Zukunftspraktiken in ungewissen Zeiten”
in Sören Altstaedt, Benno Fladvad, and Martina Hasenfratz
(eds.)
Praxis und Ungewissheit: zur Alltäglichkeit sozial-
ökologischer Krisen
. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. 187–215.
Krämer, Hannes, and Matthias Wenzel (eds.). 2018.
How
Organizations Manage the Future: Theoretical Perspectives
and Empirical Insights
. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kramsch, Olivier Thomas. 2017. “EU Cross-Border
Passagenwerk” in Hastings Donnan, Madeleine Hurd, and
Carolin Leutloff-Grandits (eds.)
Migrating Borders and
Moving Times: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in
Europe
. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 25–41.
Krause, Monika. 2021.
Model Cases: On Canonical Research
Objects and Sites
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kurowska-Pysz, Joanna, Ewa Łaźniewska, Hynek Böhm,
and Artur Boháč. 2022. “Cross-Border Cooperation
in the Shadow of Crisis—the Turów Coalmine Case”
Journal of International Studies
15(4): 43–63.
https://doi.
org/10.14254/2071-8330.2022/15-4/3
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
48
_R
Langenohl, Andreas. 2010. “Imaginäre Grenzen. Zur
Entstehung impliziter Kollektivität in EU-Europa”
Berliner
Journal für Soziologie
20: 45–63.
https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11609-010-0118-8
Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin. 2017. “New Pasts, Presents and
Futures: Time and Space in Family Migrant Networks
between Kosovo and Western Europe” in Hastings Donnan,
Madeleine Hurd, and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits (eds.)
Migrating Borders and Moving Times: Temporality and the
Crossing of Borders in Europe
. Manchester: Manchester
University Press. 121–139.
Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin. 2021. “Die zeitlichen Dimensionen
von Grenzen und Grenzüberquerungen” in Dominik
Gerst, Maria Klessmann, and Hannes Krämer (eds.)
Grenzforschung. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium
.
Baden-Baden: Nomos. 419–435.
Leyland, Christopher. 2022. “‘Pre-Enactment’ in Team-Teacher
Planning Talk: Demonstrating a Possible Future in the
Here-and-Now”
Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the
International Pragmatics Association (IPrA):
675–704.
ht
tps://doi.org/10.1075/prag.26.4.07ley
Little, Adrian. 2015. “The Complex Temporality of Borders:
Contingency and Normativity”
European Journal of
Political Theory
14(4): 429–447.
https://doi.org/10.1177/
1474885115584831
Löfmann, Georg, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. 2018.
“Vernacular Imaginaries of European Border Security
Among Citizens: From Walls to Information Management”
European Journal of International Security
3(3): 382–400.
https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2018.7
López Galviz, Carlos, Emily Spiers, and Monika Büscher (eds.).
2022.
Routledge Handbook of Social Futures
. London and
New York: Routledge.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1976. “The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal
Structures in Modern Society”
Social Research
43(1):
130–152.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40970217
Mapril, José. 2019. “Waiting for a Future in Lisbon: Borders,
Migrations and Biographies”
International Journal of
Migration and Border Studies
5(4): 324–338.
https://doi.
org/10.1504/IJMBS.2019.105808
Mau, Steffen. 2022.
Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of the
Border in the 21st Century
. Medford: Polity Press.
Meyer, Uli, Cornelius Schubert, and Arnol Windeler. 2018.
“Creating Collective Futures: How Roadmaps and
Conferences Recongure the Institutional Field of
Semiconductor Manufacturing” in Hannes Krämer and
Matthias Wenzel (eds.)
How Organizations Manage the
Future: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Insights
.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 253–276.
Minois, Georges. 1996.
Histoire de l’Avenir: Des Prophètes à la
Prospective
. Paris: Fayard.
Nail, Thomas. 2016.
Theory of the Border
. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Nugent, Paul. 2019. “Border Studies. Temporality, Space, and
Scale” in Matthias Middell (ed.)
The Routledge Handbook of
Transregional Studies
. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
179–187.
Oomen, Jeroen, Jesse Hoffman, and Maarten A. Hajer. 2022.
“Techniques of Futuring: On How Imagined Futures Become
Socially Performative”
European Journal of Social Theory
25(2): 252–270.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431020988826
Paasi, Anssi. 1999. “Boundaries as Social Practice and Discourse:
The Finnish–Russian Border”
Regional Studies
33(7):
669–680.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00343409950078701
Pallagst, Karina, Andrea Hartz, and Beate Caesar (eds.).
2018.
Border Futures—Zukunft Grenze—Avenir Frontière:
Zukunftsfähigkeit grenzüberschreitender Zusammenarbeit
.
Hannover: Akademie für Raumforschung und
Landesplanung: Leibniz-Forum für Raumwissenschaften.
Parker, Noel, and Rebecca Adler-Nissen. 2012. “Picking and
Choosing the ‘Sovereign’ Border: A Theory of Changing
State Bordering Practices”
Geopolitics
17(4): 773–796.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.660582
Peña, Sergio, and Frédéric Durand. 2020. “Mobility Planning
in Cross-Border Metropolitan Regions: The European
and North American Experiences”
Territory, Politics,
Governance
10(2): 219–236.
https://doi.org/10.1080/216226
71.2020.1769716
Pfoser, Alena. 2020. “Memory and Everyday Borderwork:
Understanding Border Temporalities”
Geopolitics
27(2):
566–583.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2020.1801647
Pink, Sarah, and John Postill. 2019. “Imagining Mundane
Futures”
Anthropology in Action
26(2): 31–41.
https://doi.
org/10.3167/aia.2019.260204
Pötzsch, Holger. 2015. “The Emergence of iBorder: Bordering
Bodies, Networks, and Machines”
Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space
33(1): 101–118.
https://doi.
org/10.1068/d14050p
Rael, Ronald (ed.). 2017.
Borderwall as Architecture: A
Manifesto for the U.S.–Mexico Boundary
. Oakland:
University of California Press.
Reichertz, Jo. 2011. “Communicative Power is Power over
Identity”
Communications
36(2): 147–168.
https://doi.org/
10.1515/comm.2011.008
Reichmann, Werner. 2019. “The Interactional Foundations of
Economic Forecasting” in Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk
(eds.)
Uncertain Futures: Imaginaries, Narratives, and
Calculation in the Economy
. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press. 105–123.
Reitel, Bernard. 2013. “Border Temporality and Space
Integration in the European Transborder Agglomeration
of Basel”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
28(2): 239–256.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2013.854657
Renner, Nona, Judith Miggelbrink, Kristine Beurskens, and
Antonia Zitterbart. 2022. “Schengen Borders as Lines that
Continue to Separate? Media Representations of Pandemic
Dimensions of Insecurity in Eastern German Border Regions
to Poland”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
37(4): 825–846.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2022.2039265
Rheindorf, Markus, and Ruth Wodak. 2018. “Borders,
Fences, and Limits—Protecting Austria From Refugees:
Metadiscursive Negotiation of Meaning in the Current
Refugee Crisis”
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies
16(1–2): 15–38.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2017.1302
032
Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. “Imagination in Discourse and in Action” in
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.)
The Human Being in Action
.
Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. 3–22.
Rodríguez-Gómez, Diana. 2022. “Disputed Futures: Rural
Entrepreneurship and Migration in Postsecondary
Trajectories on the Ecuador–Colombia Border”
Ethnography
and Education
17(3): 314–330.
https://doi.org/10.1080/174578
23.2022.2049333
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
49 _R
Rosa, Hartmut. 2015.
Social Acceleration: A New Theory of
Modernity
. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rumford, Chris. 2012. “Towards a Multiperspectival Study of
Borders”
Geopolitics
17(4): 887–902.
https://doi.org/10.1080
/14650045.2012.660584
Rumford, Chris. 2013. “Towards a Vernacularized Border
Studies: The Case of Citizen Borderwork”
Journal of
Borderlands Studies
28(2): 169–180.
https://doi.org/10.1080
/08865655.2013.854653
Sassen, Saskia. 2015. “Bordering Capabilities versus Borders:
Implications for National Borders” in Anne-Laure Amilhat
Szary and Frédéric Giraut (eds.)
Borderities and the Politics
of Contemporary Mobile Borders
. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan. 23–52.
Schiffauer, Werner, Jochen Koch, Andreas Reckwitz,
Kerstin Schoor, and Hannes Krämer. 2018. “Borders in
Motion: Durabilität, Permeabilität, Liminalität”
Working
Paper Series B/ORDERS IN MOTION
1: 1–28.
https://doi.
org/10.11584/B-ORDERS.1
Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. 2001. “Einbildungskraft/Imagination”
in Karlheinz Barck, Martin Fontius, Dieter Schlenstedt,
Burkhart Steinwachs, and Friedrich Wolfzettel (eds.)
Ästhetische Grundbegriffe
. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. 88–120.
Schütz, Alfred. 1932.
Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt.
Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie
. Wien: Julius
Springer.
Sohn, Christophe. 2016. “Navigating Borders’ Multiplicity:
The Critical Potential of Assemblage”
Area
48(2): 183–189.
https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12248
Spurling, Nicola, and Lenneke Kuijer (eds.). 2017.
Everyday
Futures
. Lancaster: Institute for Social Futures.
Stokłosa, Katarzyna (ed.). 2019.
Borders and Memories.
Conicts and Co-operation in European Border Regions
.
Berlin and Münster: LIT.
Taylor, Charles. 2004.
Modern Social Imaginaries
. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2022. “Borders, Migration, and
Technology in the Age of Security: Intervening with STS”
Tecnoszienza
13(2): 133–154.
http://www.tecnoscienza.net/
index.php/tsj/article/view/531/316
Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Ulrike Felt. 2021. “Between
Infrastructural Experimentation and Collective Imagination:
The Digital Transformation of the EU Border Regime”
Science, Technology, & Human Values, OnlineFirst
.
https://
doi.org/10.1177/0162243921105752
Turunen, Johanna. 2021. “Mapping the Idea of Europe – Cultural
Production of Border Imaginaries through Heritage”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
38(3): 1–20.
https://doi.org/1
0.1080/08865655.2021.1918569
Ulrich, Peter, Norbert Cyrus, and Anne Pilhofer. 2021. “Grenzen
und Ordnungen in Bewegung in Zeiten der Corona-
Krise. Analysen zu Region und Gesellschaft”
Working
Paper Series B/ORDERS IN MOTION
8.
https://doi.
org/10.11584/b-orders.8
Urry, John. 2016.
What Is the Future?
Cambridge and Malden:
Polity Press.
Vaughan-Whitehead, Daniel. 2003.
EU Enlargement versus
Social Europe? The Uncertain Future of the European
Social Model
. Cheltenham: Elgar.
Von Löwis, Sabine, and Gwendolyn Sasse. 2021. “A Border
Regime in the Making? The Case of the Contact Line in
Ukraine”
Historical Social Research
46(3): 208–244.
https://
doi.org/10.12759/hsr.46.2021.3.208-244
Weber, Leanne (ed.). 2015.
Rethinking Border Control for a
Globalizing World: A Preferred Future
. Abingdon and New
York: Routledge.
Weinblum, Sharon. 2019. “Conicting Imaginaries of the
Border: The Construction of African Asylum Seekers in the
Israeli Political Discourse”
Journal of Borderlands Studies
34(5): 699–715.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2018.1436
001
Wenzel, Matthias, Hannes Krämer, Jochen Koch, and Andreas
Reckwitz. 2020. “Future and Organization Studies: On
the Rediscovery of a Problematic Temporal Category in
Organizations”
Organization Studies
41(10): 1441–1455.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406209129
Wille, Christian. 2015. “Spaces of the Border: A Practice-
Theoretical Cultural Studies Perspective in Border Studies”
Europa Regional
21(1–2): 60–71.
https://nbn-resolving.org/
urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-429524
Yuval-Davis, Nira, Georgie Wemyss, and Kathryn Cassidy. 2019.
Bordering
. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Zeitlin, Jonathan, Francesco Nicoli, and Brigid Laffan. 2019.
“Introduction: The European Union Beyond the Polycrisis?
Integration and Politicization in an Age of Shifting
Cleavages”
Journal of European Public Policy
26(7):
963–976.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2019.1619803
Borders in Globalization Review
| Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Fall & Winter 2024
Gerst and Krämer, “Expanding Border Temporalities: Toward an Analysis of Border Future Imaginations”
