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This paper seeks to address the problem of strangeness within the context of migration in Africa. I draw on historical realities that inform existing international and African discourses on migration. I hope to show that most African countries have unconsciously bought into international arguments that drive the legitimacy of building walls, visible and invisible, and the promotion of stringent migration policies that minimise the influx of African immigrants. I draw on political and philosophical positions of African thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, among others, in my theorisation of strangeness and the need to dispel the potential negative conception of strangeness within Africa’s migration policies. I juxtapose these positions with Western political theories with the hope of emphasizing African humanism as a key conception worth considering when decolonising borders.

English abstract: This article addresses the importance of understanding the ethical values that underpin cross-border cooperation (CBC). This is done by elaborating a theoretical framework that focuses on the ethical dimension of CBC. A clear distinction is drawn between an ethical and a normative dimension of CBC. The article argues that European CBC policies lack a defined conceptualization of ethical, humanistic, and value-laden bases. By considering three ethical values—rootedness, empathy, and justice—underpinning European governance, this research finds that the operationalization of these values helps to overcome a consumeristic approach, according to which people are passive consumers of CBC. The analysis shows why and how the operationalization of these key ethical values develops a cross-border community where people feel responsible for the territory perceived as a “common good.”

Spanish abstract: Este artículo aborda la importancia de comprender los valores éticos que sustentan las actividades de cooperación transfronteriza (CBC) mediante un marco teórico centrado en explorar la dimensión ética de CBC. Una distinción clara plantea la dimensión ética de la CBC frente a la normativa. El punto ciego de las políticas de CBC europeas yace en la ausencia de una conceptualización definida de las bases éticas y humanísticas. Los valores éticos de arraigo, empatía y justicia sustentan las actividades de CBC, y su operacionalización ayuda a superar la aproximación consumista. El análisis muestra por qué y cómo la operacionalización de estos valores éticos contribuye a desarrollar una comunidad transfronteriza en la que las personas se sientan responsables del territorio percibido como un “bien común”.

French abstract: Pourquoi est-il important de mieux comprendre les valeurs qui sous-tendent les activités de coopération transfrontalière? Cet article aborde cette question à partir d’un cadre théorique centré sur l’exploration de la dimension éthique de la coopération transfrontalière en la distinguant de la dimension normative. Il soutient que la faiblesse des politiques européennes de coopération transfrontalière ne réside pas dans l’absence “normative”, mais dans le manque d’une conceptualisation précise de ses bases éthiques et humanistes. En considérant trois valeurs - l’enracinement, l’empathie et la justice - qui sous-tendent les activités de coopération transfrontalière, cette étude conclut que leur opérationnalisation aide à surmonter une approche consumériste de la coopération transfrontalière, selon laquelle les gens sont des consommateurs passifs. L’analyse montre pourquoi et comment l’opérationnalisation de ces trois valeurs contribue à développer une communauté transfrontalière dans laquelle les personnes se sentent responsables du territoire transfrontalier perçu comme un “bien commun”.

Based on fieldwork undertaken in 2004–2005, I analyze how the Irish border has been constructed, represented, challenged, and imagined by both the state and borderlanders as a means to discuss processes of constructing sovereignty. I focus on the concept of “assemblage” to integrate and highlight the tensions and contradictions between different levels of analysis: the juridical, the academic representation of the border, and the memories and practices of borderlanders. I argue that sovereignty, rather than a claim to be taken at face value by states, is the emergent property of the combination of a variety of forces, forms, and practices involved in the making of borders, and that its very enactment also produces anti-sovereign effects.

Based on an ethnographic case study in the border cities of Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and Słubice, Poland, this article explores the construction and maintenance of ethnic difference within the transnational economic and social spaces created by the European Union's common market. Through an examination of three domains of cross-border citizenship practice - shopping and consumption, housing and work - this article argues that even as the European Union deploys policies aimed at creating de-territorialised and supranational forms of identity and citizenship, economic asymmetries and hierarchies of value embedded within these policies grant rights differentially in ways that continue to be linked to ethnicity and nationality.