Letter of Introduction

Abstract

Dear Readers,

Our much-anticipated 7.1 issue of Borders in Globalization Review is here, with new research into European border narratives, artwork on the historical displacement of the Sámi people, and more! As always, our content is free, published open access, with print editions available and distributed at cost by the University of Victoria’s Bookstore. BIG_Review is produced on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples and we are very grateful to live and play on these beautiful lands.

Leading the issue is the Special Section “Narrating Europe From the Borders”, guest edited by Birte Wassenberg and Pierrick Bruyas, with a substantial introduction and four research articles by the editors plus Katja Sarmiento-Mirwaldt, Sara Svensson and Oriana Miraka, Pierrick Bruyas, and Peter Balogh. The collection emerges from a Jean Monnet Program funded project, En Movement: quels modèles pour l’union européennes (FRONTEM). Their research examines cross-border life inside the Union through the lens of cross-border integration and management as narrated in local and regional media. Collectively, they retrace and analyse discourses, perceptions, and attitudes towards European integration since the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on Germany, Hungary and Slovakia, and across the Franco–German and Swedish–Danish borderlands. We learn that while states relied on state-of-emergency legislation and closed their borders, border regions had to manage life in borderlands and across borders despite national policy decisions. The core FRONTEM claim is that border regions and their multiple managerial responses to governance challenges shed light on European integration. Indeed, the assumption that COVID-19 stalled integration remains salient in borderlands.

This issue also features three policy papers: a report on the role of interparliamentary institutions in cross-border assessments, an essay on the 40^th anniversary of the Schengen Agreement and the future of the European Union, and a report on the Italy–Albania agreement externalizing EU asylum processes.

As always, the Editor in Chief’s Choice Portfolio is published at the centre of BIG_Review. In Borders, Sámi artist Lena Stenberg shares work first exhibited at the Nordic House of the Faroe Islands (2023) and then in Norway at the Sámi Center for Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš in Kárášjohka /Karasjok (2023). Through sculpture, print, and photography, Stenberg documents the experience of her Sámi ancestors as they were forced to relocate at the time of the creation of the international boundaries across the Nordic States (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and the Sámi experiences of displacement. For Kristin Nielsen (2025, 1–13), Stenberg powerfully expresses the “fugitive aesthetics” of resistance to settler colonialism. Sámi political science professor Rauna Kuokkanen characterises settler colonial practices as Indigenous erasure by institutionalized assimilation and annexation of land and resources (2020, 512).

Our Art & Borders section begins with a creative commentary by Maidie Hilmo on the ongoing resonance of artwork depicting historical standoffs and massacres at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, USA. Then, Section Editor Elisa Ganivet brings us an interview with Judith Depaule, cofounder of the Workshop For Artists in Exile, which has supported refugee artists in France since 2017.

Poetry Editor Natasha Sardzoska presents border poems by British poet Adam Horowitz and by Marija Dejanovic who was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In our new section, Dispatches, we share a letter to the border studies community written by Nicodème Emerusabe, who was forced to live in Manila International Airport for over a year while seeking asylum for himself and his family.

The issue also offers a Film Review, “Dunki: Immigrating No Matter the Cost”, by Dev Pandya, and a Book Review, “Pending Lives”, by Parushi Ruhil Angra, both exploring themes of migration in South Asia.

BIG_Review is made possible by Caitlin Janzen, Michael Carpenter, and our team of wonderful editors, board members, blind reviewers, and all the other colleagues who contribute the labour of reviewing and producing the work. We are also immensely grateful to our expert copyeditor Michelle Braiden and outstanding designer, Arifin Graham of AlarisDesign. We are also grateful to the Centre for Global Studies and University Libraries at the University of Victoria for hosting and supporting BIG_Lab. BIG_Review would not be published without the support of the European Erasmus+ funding programs. And, thanks to the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Aid to Scholarly Publications program, BIG_Review is now a Diamond open-access publication, meaning both reading and publishing in BIG_Review will be free after June 2026.

The recent funding and exponential growth of online views and downloads demonstrate the demand for more and diverse knowledge about global borders. Please continue reading, sharing, and contributing to all of our open-access content. Your support is invaluable!

Sincerely,

Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Editor

Kuokkanen, Rauna. 2020. “The Deatnu Agreement: A Contemporary Wall of Settler Colonialism” Settler Colonial Studies 10(4): 508–528. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2020.1794211

Nielsen, K. 2025. “Fugitive Aesthetics in Sámi Artist Lena Stenberg’s Exhibition Borders (2023) and Paulina Feodoroff’s Performance Matriachy (2022)” Critical Arts. 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2024.2430475