Borders Through Acts of Motion

Abstract

This article advances a posthumanist framework for understanding borders through the concept of acts of motion—the reflexive processes through which motions generated by both human and nonhuman agencies materialize as borders and bordering practices. While the ‘mobility turn’ in social sciences has foregrounded movement as a defining feature of modernity, border scholarship has largely remained anthropocentric, emphasizing human decision-making and neglecting nonhuman forms of agency such as environmental, viral, and material forces. This article argues that motion is not solely a human product but an entangled outcome of human and nonhuman interactions. Yet, these motions only acquire political and spatial forms as human beings interpret, channel, and institutionalize motion within existing hierarchies of power. By introducing acts of motion as an analytical hinge, the article reconciles the tension between human reflexivity and nonhuman agency, avoiding both human exceptionalism and environmental determinism. Empirically, the framework illuminates how phenomena such as climate-induced migration, viral spread, and infrastructural breakdown reshape borders beyond territorial fixities. Theoretically, it reframes borders as dynamic, relational assemblages sustained through recursive cycles of motion and act. Ultimately, this posthumanist approach demonstrates that borders were never purely human constructs but emergent sites of interdependence, where acts and motions continually co-produce the spatial and political realities of our planetary condition.