For a Sociology of Borders

States define and frame the empirical existence of modern societies, and drawing, maintaining, controlling and regulating borders is a key preoccupation of states. This essay interrogates some theoretical possibilities of an explicit sociology of borders, and the flows that cross them, as social facts. Referring to literatures on international migration, the political economy of global relations and postcolonial studies, it argues that borders unify two distinct institutional logics, introduced with the paired metaphors of the Door and the Bridge (borrowed from Simmel). The study examines formal and informal institutions of Door and Bridge in six types of crossborder flows: streams of people, commodities (including money and capital), direct physical coercion (and its threat), technologies, cultural content (including “information” as well as “high” and “low” culture) and ideas. An earlier version of the paper, entitled “The Door and the Bridge” is available in English in the author’s online collection of works at http://borocz.net.