Intersectional Border(ing)s

This special issue of Political Geography marks a contribution to the fields of feminist geopolitics and border studies by bringing together a series of papers, which use approaches based on Yuval-Davis’ ‘situated intersectionality’ (2015) to explore everyday bordering within and without contemporary Europe. The special issue is comprised of work undertaken by colleagues from across Europe and beyond as part of work package 9 ‘Borders, Intersectionality and the Everyday’ of the EUBorderscapes project (2012-2016). We term our approach to studying borders, borderscapes and bordering processes as ‘situated intersectional bordering’. The main contribution of this approach is that borders and borderings are understood as dialogical constructs and that if we are to understand how they are being made and re-made we must attempt to explore them through the situated gazes of differentially positioned social actors. We therefore suggest a holistic approach to understanding border(ing)s, which is embedded in everyday life. Through the study of the multi-layered complexities of everyday borderings we can ‘approach the truth’ (Hill-Collins, 1990).