The Border

Abstract

The global phenomena of our current time requires us to reflect on the nature of borders, as one of the main human devices to organize experience in sociological, psychological, cultural, and geographic terms. With the expansion of capitalism and the globalization processes, there has been an intense phenomenon of intersections and ‘insemination' between different cultural forms and previously separate. The advent and widespread diffusion of ICT contributes and accelerates transformations. Therefore, the distance no longer seems to matter much, and space has ceased to be an obstacle. Paradoxically, in this intensification of contacts and displacements, it happens that the borders, rather than being zeroed out, undergo a multiplication. Therefore, borders raise many issues and concerns. Beyond a simplistic view of separation of an ‘inside' and an ‘outside', borders are always both limen (threshold) and limes (demarcation); they ‘write' our personal and social space; it is that line along which two people can touch (cum-finis), allowing to define an identity and/or differentiate it.