Beyond territorial discontents: the surprising persistence of borders in a fragmented world

This response to Castan Pinos and Radil’s territorial discontent framework argues that their geopolitical focus, while valuable, inadequately captures contemporary border resurgence in its complexity. Beyond territorial revisionism, borders increasingly function as psychological anchors, digital infrastructures, and biopolitical regulators. The response demonstrates how borders are cast to function as protective skin during crises, mediating ontological anxieties about identity and belonging rather than merely asserting territorial control. Understanding border dynamics requires embracing border perplexity – their contradictory and unpredictable operations across multiple registers. The response calls for theoretical frameworks transcending state-centric territorial analysis to account for borders’ simultaneous material and symbolic dimensions.