Borders as information flows and transnational networks

Abstract

The international communication subfield has assumed that cross-border information flows and the national borders they traverse are two different kinds of phenomena: information flows are viewed as fluid and mobile, while national borders are understood to be the rigid and immobile edges of the nation-state ‘container’. This paper unsettles this assumption by showing that state actors in the US and the EU are stretching border controls into neighbouring and distant territories. These borders, which are dependent on transnational ICT networks, are permitting state actors to re-scale border controls in a way that transcends the territorial framework of the nation-state system. These network-like borders are discussed in terms of their contribution to mobility inequality; their implications for those who have turned to concepts such as ‘diaspora’ as a way of escaping ‘the iron grip of the nation-state on the social imagination’; and their implications for state power.