Kristine Beurskens: Belonging and Borders. Everyday Negotiations Between ‚Us‘ and ‚the Others‘ (EN)

Current developments in politics and society show that borders are still important and contested. Especially in crises and the uncertain contexts that come with them, there is often a recourse to historical imaginaries that promise a sense of security in everyday life. Here, spatial references and orientations along borders play an important role.

The lecture will highlight the importance of imaginaries, discourses/narratives, and practices as different phenomena of border demarcation and will discuss materialisations of borders as a part of negotiating belonging. An emphasis will be put on reflecting research practices in this thematic field.

Dr Kristine Beurskens is coordinator of the research group “Geographies of Belonging and Difference” at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography. She studied geography, political science, and sociology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the University of the District of Columbia, Washington, and received her PhD from the Institute of Geography in Potsdam (2012). In her research, she examines borders, particularly as political and emotional geographies. One focus of her work is on qualitative research methods and visualisation.