The cosmopolitan dream of a borderless world has little to do with reality. Today’s borders bear witness to regulatory intervention in the circulation of goods, information, capital and people. These interventions, naturally, have an impact at border regions. For analyzing these impacts, we map, quantify and relate border typologies, development dynamics near borders, and economic and political indicators of neighboring nation-states. We do so on global scale for all current 315 land borders. We rely on data from a mix of border dossiers, in-depth literature review, censuses and multi-temporal mapping products from satellite imagery. Our analysis strategy is two-fold: First, in a descriptive analysis, we map the various border typologies. And, we also compute development dynamics over a 15-year period from 2000 to 2015.

At the latest since the so-called migration and refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016, immigration has been regarded as an area of conflict in society that is becoming increasingly contested. While some groups promote a «welcoming culture« and experience migration as a social enrichment, opponents advocate border closures and see immigration as a cultural and economic threat. It is also argued that it is primarily the upper classes that advocate openness, whereas lower classes tend to have more critical attitudes toward migration. Our paper examines patterns of attitudes toward migration as well as the social structuring of these attitudes over time. We focus on different aspects of the migration issue: willingness to grant legal equality to migrants (inclusiveness), openness to close contact with migrants (social proximity), and negative judgments about migrants (migration stress). In addition, we use a class indicator based on the theoretical considerations of Andreas Reckwitz. The German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) of the years 1996, 2006 and 2016 serves as the data basis. No increasing polarization can be detected for any of the attitudinal dimensions. We also find hardly any systematic changes in the social structuring of attitudes.

This article investigates how states design their border infrastructures. We attempt to link the characteristics of borders to specific socio-political contexts, with a particular focus on borders as material and physical structures that states set up in order to demarcate, control, and seal off their territory. For this purpose, we introduce the “border infrastructure data” that seeks to capture the infrastructure at the border line. Our empirical investigation of all land borders worldwide (N=630) classifies border architecture into five categories – from relatively open to completely closed – that we describe respectively as “no-man’s-land” borders, landmark borders, checkpoint borders, barrier borders, and fortified borders. While we find that checkpoint borders are by far the most common type of design, we also observe that barriers and fortified borders are frequently used, particularly on the Asian and European continents. Fortified borders are often put in place by relatively affluent states when there is a significant wealth gap with their neighboring countries. Barrier borders typically are erected by states to separate different political systems. Landmark borders are maintained among a community of equally democratic and affluent states. Lastly, “no-man’s-land” borders are found between poor states.

This article investigates the reintroduction of temporary border controls in the Schengen Area. The Schengen Borders Code (SBC, Article 25 et seq.) allows signatory states to reinstate temporary border controls in specific circumstances that constitute a serious threat to public policy or internal security either due to foreseeable events (Art. 27), situations that require immediate action (Art. 28) or exceptional circumstances caused by deficiencies at the external border (Art. 29). In response to successive “polycrises”, signatory states have made ample use of this previously rarely-used policy instrument. This article explores the reasons for temporary border controls, their extent and duration, in order to address when, where and why member states reintroduce them. The novel data is based on notifications that Schengen members use to inform the EU Commission about their intent to reintroduce temporary controls at their land borders (1999–2020). The analysis finds that member states expanded the use of temporary border controls in terms of number and duration, as the intended purpose of temporary border controls shifted from the protection of specific events to immigration control.