Childhood and Borders

Childhood and BordersMarek Tesar

LAST REVIEWED: 13 MAY 2015LAST MODIFIED: 15 JANUARY 2015DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199791231-0154

Introduction

Childhoods and borders are contested categories and spaces. Following the tradition of childhood studies, this articleutilizes a wide range of theoretical perspectives on these concerns. The subject of childhood and borders continues to bean underresearched area of study, spanning from notions of global childhoods to localized experiences, and geographical,sociological, anthropological, and philosophical perspectives on childhood and borders. In this article, borders andborderlands and acts of crossing them are argued in both a real and a metaphorical sense. Childhoods are exposed toand experience many types of borders and borderlands, including both real and imaginary experiences. This articleaddresses these complexities and perspectives. This article contributes to the paradigm shift in research concerningchildren and childhoods that allows the resurfacing and elevation of traditionally subjugated knowledges and stories.Moreover, forthcoming publications both theorize and tell the narratives of childhood crossing/living/being over/in/withborders and border spaces. This article should therefore be treated as a live commentary that will be regularly updated asnew knowledge, ideas, research, and narratives emerge. Children’s voice, participation, experience, and resistance areparticularly seminal in this context. This article juxtaposes such influential and seminal sources with texts that may seemmore obscure, yet that are important to contextualize issues in local settings with global practices, and to present thebreadth and richness of the scope of childhood studies. By exploring borders, boundaries, and borderlands, this articleleads also to notions of space, place, and power, and further into constructs of foreigners and strangers, andanthropological, sociological, and philosophical perspectives on childhoods. As borders and borderlands change andevolve in a geographical sense, so do the ideas and notions around them. Borders and borderlands can therefore also beseen as metaphorical, and present a fascinating view of children’s lives and experiences of their childhoods. This article of“Childhood and Borders” thus draws on diverse disciplines to examine notions of borders, boundaries, borderlands, andcrossings from actual, real, and metaphorical imagined perspectives. What unites the disciplinary diversity in this article isthe focus on the child and childhoods through a childhood studies lens, and the various manifestations of it in relation tochildren, childhoods, and borders.

General Overview

Developing a general overview of childhoods and borders requires thinking about broad perspectives on these notions, forexample to expand borders to borderlands, border spaces, and border crossings. The texts in this general overviewsection are focused on such topics, and it attempts to contextualize and theorize these two events—childhood andborders. This section demonstrates the breadth required in order to encompass the diversity of childhood and borders.One of tasks of this general overview is to provide an analytical, multiple view of thinking about childhood, boundaries, andborders on a global scale, and contextualized within local experiences. Featured publications utilize scholarship onchildren/adults and borders/boundaries, rather than specifically “childhood”; as this is one of the gaps that needs to befurther theorized. The special issue of European Journal of Social Theory (2006) uses social theory to theorize the notionof borders and boundaries, with the subjects of crossings and issues of identity and boundaries; this special issue of thejournal gives an excellent background and overview of border studies. Similarly, Aitken, et al. 2011 provides an excellent

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overview of relationships between adults, children, and border studies (published earlier as a special edition of Children’sGeographies). Both of these special issues and collections of various authors emphasize the importance of consideringmultiple perspectives on this subject, and how these perspectives can provide an important overview of such subjects asborder studies, that require an interdisciplinary perspective. Adams and Kirova 2007 postulates yet another excellentoverview of the subject—this time from the perspective of education and global perspectives on migration, with a clearlyfocused overview of demonstrating “how to do things better.” Smith 2007 gives an important overview of qualitativemethodologies that both negotiate and struggle with borders and boundaries, while Kok-Chor Tan 2004 presents anoutstanding overview on debates of cosmopolitanism—a subject that is a key consideration in relation to childhood andborders. Finally, Donnan and Wilson 2000 delivers an overview of identity, nation, and state with respect to borders andfrontiers. These are general overviews of subjects that are directly or indirectly implicated in research and thinking aboutthe complexities of childhood and borders.

Adams, Leah, and Anna Kirova, eds. Global Migration and Education: School, Children, and Families. Mahway,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007.

This book presents global perspectives on immigrant children, families, and education. Primarily focused on educators, itis one of the better “hands on” publications. It uses voices of children and families in an attempt to critique and influenceeducational policy. Very clear writing that students particularly interested in the education side of the notion of borders willappreciate. Great global scope covering many experiences and perspectives.

Aitken, Stuart C., Kate Swanson, Fernando J. Bosco, and Thomas Herman. Young People: Border Spaces andRevolutionary Imaginations. New York: Routledge, 2011.

This tiny, yet powerful and rigorous publication was published as an outcome of a special issue of Children’s Geographies.It serves as a great overview of the material and metaphorical manifestation of borders. It deals with children’s culturesand ideas in border spaces, by working with narratives of children and young people, including marginality, identity, andexclusion.

Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson. Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 2000.

An excellent overview of the concepts of nation and state and the local levels of borders. Drawing on many globalperspectives, this book gives a very good comparative view on what is culture and how it is performed at state boundaries.Examining the micro and macro practices, this book’s insightful and broad scope offers multiple perspectives on bordersand power relations of everyday border life.

Kok-Chor Tan. Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004.

This book provides an excellent overview of the contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and patriotism.Focused on the notion of justice, this book provides a solid overview of the subject, and of the tensions that these debateshave with each other. Serves both as a critique and an overview of cosmopolitanism, particularly from the perspective ofphilosophy, and political and social theory.

Smith, Math, ed. Negotiating Boundaries and Borders: Qualitative Methodology and Development Research.London: Elsevier, 2007.

This edited book presents an extremely important challenge, using a range of global perspectives and exemplars. It builds


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upon the important notion of considering research to be political, to be contextualized locally, and to relate to practice.Using diverse disciplines and making links to research and the notion of change complicate the relationship betweenresearch and subjects. Recommended as a great overview for students doing qualitative research about borders.

Special Issue: European Journal of Social Theory. 9.2 (2006): 155–299.

An excellent special issue of a sociological journal that utilizes and works with the notion of borders and boundaries.Features eight studies that theorize boundaries and provide a meaningful and rigorous overview of the subjects ofborders, boundaries, its constructions, and crossings. Highly recommended for its theoretical grounding and as anexcellent starting point to the complexities of border spaces.

Theories of Childhoods

This section explores the subject of childhood, through seminal texts that present essential underpinnings of this field.While these texts do not directly tackle the subjects of borders and boundaries, they are relevant to a conceptualization ofchildhood and borders. They allude to as well as explain and theorize the subject of childhood, and provide a lens throughwhich borders and borderlands can be implicitly studied in relationship to childhood. While the texts featured in this sectiontry to explain the subject of childhood, they also complicate it and present alternative views of childhood, as they argue forand perform a paradigmatic shift between understanding childhoods, and contradicting biologizing, reductionist tendenciesof childhood and the traditional focus on individual developmental milestones and domains. At first, this rejection oftraditional paradigms is lead through social constructivism, and later on, these theoretical frameworks are furtherproblematized. These texts open up possibilities for multiple disciplines and interpretations. The collected essays in Jenks1982 are perhaps the first iteration of the field of childhood studies through various texts and stories. James, et al. 1998and Prout 2005 add to the theoretical grounding of childhood studies, and provide childhood studies scholars with a strongand solid point of reference. Montgomery 2008, a seminal work, elevates the anthropology of childhood, as distinct fromthe sociology of childhood, as a major theoretical grounding for childhood studies, while Stables 2008 utilizes anddemonstrates the importance of philosophical concepts to the study of childhoods. Children’s geographies is another lensthat is pertinent to researching childhood, particularly in relation to borders, as is demonstrated in Holloway and Valentine2000 that utilizes diverse scholarly expertise. Christensen and James 2008 shifts the understanding of conductingresearch, to focus on the aspect of being with children, while Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers 1992, focused on thestories and narratives of childhoods, is a seminal performance and exploration of childhoods. These texts are generaloverviews of the subject of childhood and serve as a springboard to address the concern of borders and borderlands inrelation to children living in border spaces, encountering borders, and crossing boundaries. Many of these texts can befound in other Childhood Studies module of the Oxford Bibliographies articles, and they are featured here as they serve asa disciplinary grounding to “childhood and borders,” despite arguing the notion of “borders” directly.

Christensen, Pia, and Allison James, eds. Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices. New York:Routledge, 2008.

Edited by top scholars in the field, James and Christensen argue for an important paradigm shift from research “on” toresearch “with” children, as they deal with methodological and paradigmatic concerns. Apart from theorizing, this bookargues for research with children in order to demonstrate the capacity of this approach, and makes important linksbetween the theory and practice of research with children.

Holloway, Sarah L., and Gill Valentine, eds. Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning. New York:Routledge, 2000.

A seminal edited collection on critical children’s geographies that focuses on contemporary sociological understandings of


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children’s competence and experiences as social actors. Working with the spatiality in interdisciplinary social studies ofchildhood, this publication provides a theoretical overview of children’s lives, and their use of open, free, public, and cityspace. Well edited and presented, it justifies children’s geographies as a discipline in its own right.

James, Allison, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout. Theorizing Childhood. New York: Teachers College, 1998.

Close in its focus to James and Prout’s Constructing and Reconstructing Childhoods (London: Falmer, 1990), this bookmoves the critique past the binary of developmentalism and social construction, as it opens up to possibilities andtheoretical perspectives of childhoods. Through widening the scope of sociological perspectives and theories, the subjectof childhood is thoroughly theorized and examined. Of particular interest are the concepts of space, change, and diversity.

Jenks, Chris, ed. Sociology of Childhood: Essential Readings. London: Batsford, 1982.

One of the very first articulations of the sociology of childhood that presents diverse perspectives through collected essaysin this edited book. An excellent and surprising selection of twenty-four sociological and philosophical texts that serves asan overview that enables new theoretical thinking about childhood as an event rather than as a separate period. Thestarting point of childhood studies and still a refreshing theoretical read.

Montgomery, Heather. An Introduction to Childhood: Anthropological Perspectives on Children’s Lives. Oxford:Blackwell, 2008.

Montgomery’s excellent reading of childhood and children in a history of anthropology further legitimates the discipline ofthe anthropology of childhood, as it provides strong justification for ethnographic studies of children and childhoods incontext. Accessible and engaging writing presents an important contribution to a cross-disciplinary understanding ofchildhoods. This book is particularly useful when researching concepts of borders, boundaries, and border spaces.

Prout, Alan. The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children. New York:RoutledgeFalmer, 2005.

Prout’s book is an iteration of thinking about the place and role of childhood in contemporary and future society.Acknowledging the complexities and hybridized nature of childhoods, this theoretical exploration pushes the theories ofinterdisciplinary studies of childhood further: emergent assemblages constructed from heterogeneous materials. Thispublication is highly recommended, as it theorizes the materiality and technological aspects of childhood.

Stables, Andrew. Childhood and the Philosophy of Education: An Anti-Aristotelian Perspective. London:Continuum, 2008.

Stables provides a great overview of the philosophies of childhood and the child that are beneficial to studies ofchildhoods. His own contribution to a semiotic view of the child produces a volume that can be read as a history of thephilosophy of childhood studies. Very readable and informative, and provides a philosophical argument for the child as anagent in his or her own right.

Stainton Rogers, Rex, and Wendy Stainton Rogers. Stories of Childhood: Shifting Agendas of Child Concern.Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1992.

The authors’ book provides an alternative view on a child through different stories of childhoods. With a primary focus onrepresentations of childhoods that can become little more than language games, this book carefully analyzes the shiftingagenda of child knowledges and cultures. Utilizing vast materials, and including popular culture and a playful style, this


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publication is an essential contribution to the understanding of the child and childhood.

Philosophies of Childhoods and Borders

Theorizing and underpinning an exploration of the subject of childhoods and borders has a long history. The focus is toexplore and theorize diverse experiences of childhoods and borders from different philosophical perspectives. Theseessential texts featured in this section give a deeper grounding in and overview of the problems of childhood, borders,boundaries, and borderlands. These texts do not necessarily deal with these subjects directly, but their articulation ofontological and epistemological concerns significantly contribute to childhood studies and thought about childhood andborders in different ways. Following the postmodern tradition, Kristeva 1991 articulates the ideas of the stranger andforeigners. The experiences of being a stranger and foreigner, within oneself and toward others, are essentialphilosophical concepts that borders and borderlands evoke. Kristeva’s unique contribution is the philosophical treatment ofthe private realm and the way that it becomes a part of the public discourse. Foucault 1977 is articulated in manydisciplines through the notions of power, subjectivities, and discourses. The author’s understanding of power, surveillance,the institution, and the subject provides a new lens through which to consider, theorize, and research childhoods andborders. Deleuze and Guattari 1987, a rhizomatic exploration of multiple subjectivities and complicating singularity as linesof flight and plains of immanence, provide fresh and exciting thinking of these experiences of childhoods and borders.Further considering the liquid as opposed to the solid, Bauman 2000 argues for the complexities and multitudes that canbe seen as the ever-changing liquid, fluid nature of childhood, borders, and borderlands. Freire 2000—positioned as thearchetype of critical pedagogy and critique of the simplistic, deterministic banking education of knowledges—reinforceswhat children with experiences of borders and border spaces encounter. Rousseau 1957 calls for nature and its idyllicgoodness as opposed to social/institutional decadence questions, and juxtaposes the idea of borders and nature in aninteresting binary. Rousseau’s final articulation through the novel Emile also celebrated the notion of childhood, whilesimultaneously lauding the natural ethics of the child and blaming society for all its deficiencies. Lefebvre 1991 rethinks thenotion of space, while Latour 1993 demonstrates the importance of “hybrid” thinking. These theories and philosophieshighlight the complexity of childhoods and borders, and provide a solid intellectual foundation for thinking and rethinkingchildhoods and borders, in less simplistic and therefore more divergent ways. These texts form an important conceptualcontext for this childhood and borders article, despite their indirect references to borders.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000.

Defines the present condition of the world as liquid, as opposed to solid, modernity, within which clear and readable normsexisted and subsequently structured people’s lives. Individualization has enabled liquid performances of subject positions,through notions of freedom that may be very elusive. Freedom is liberating and constraining, and the liquid condition isessential to the human condition. An important book that treats the shift from modernity in sociological terms.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by BrianMassumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

In this important text, Deleuze and Guattari challenge singularity and produce different views of subjectivities. Using,explaining, and performing the notion of rhizomes and rhizomatic thinking, this text is not an easy read, but it is veryrewarding. Chapters can be read in any order, and its thinking about nonlinear and multiple becoming subjectivities isessential to thinking about the subjectivities of children in border spaces.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage,1977.

Foucault explores the intransigence of discursive power through an analysis of the shift in modern societies to institutional


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forms of discipline and control, which can be extended to ideas about borders and controls, and governing of childhoods.With its exploration of panoptic power, and softer, less visible forms of bodily punishments, this text is the emphaticarticulation of a brilliantly composed discourse on societal control exercised through institutions.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2000.

Freire’s exploration of trenchant and endemic inequality is an important examination of dialogue and the possibilities forliberatory practice. Freire introduces the notion of banking education, which has become and remains a highly influentialconcept. He highlights the contrasts between education forms that treat people as objects rather than subjects, importantlygrounding thinking about childhood and borders in education.

Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press,1991.

Kristeva’s seminal work deals with the idea of the stranger and foreigner in the contemporary world. Positioning thestranger/foreigner both inwardly and outwardly, her writing is essential toward thinking about identity from both historicperspectives and contemporary culture. It provides an excellent theoretical grounding to thinking about borders,foreignness, and childhood, as Kristeva theorizes her psychoanalytical practice and experiences.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1993.

In his book, Latour argues for reconnecting the social and natural paradigms of our world. He claims that readers mustrework their thinking about natural and social phenomena and discourses, to perceive them as hybrids. The interaction ofsubjects, objects, and concepts create the deeply philosophical and influential text that post-human scholars utilize to thinkof childhood and boundaries.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Lefebvre’s book utilizes insights to a variety of philosophical concerns on perception, construction, and the reproduction ofspace from many directions, both mental and physical. It includes metaphysical and ideological considerations of themeaning of space, relating it to everyday experiences. He carefully navigates through a range of disciplines and providesgreat opportunities to theorize the space of borders and borderlands.

Rousseau, Jean J. Emile. Translated by Barbara Foxley. London: Dent, 1957.

A classic in the history of philosophical and education theory, Rousseau outlines his main thesis as the natural goodnessof man and the social origin of evil in the context of education. The introduction offers a great lead into this reading, as itobserves Rousseau’s contributions to the notion of childhood and its implications. An essential contribution to theories ofchildhood, nature, and borders.

Borders, Frontiers, and Border Spaces

The studies of borders and boundaries, also referred to as border studies, have been conceptualized in recent years as acrossing of disciplinary borders, and drawing on scholars from the fields of human geography, sociology, anthropology,philosophy, political science, and others, that have theorized what borders and boundaries might mean. Somewhat


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paradoxically, researching border studies creates an interesting tension in the face of the rise and increasing influence ofglobalization. The concept of “borders” and the “borderless” world shifts the way we think about borders into the concernof multiple and complex meanings that open up new positions for theorization. Border studies research topics includedifferent domains such as boundary demarcation, borderlands and transition, the nature of zones and frontiers, and theways in which borders are crossed. These explorations require multiple disciplinary perspectives. Borders still hold variousroles and functions; they are material and discursive, and the notion of “freedom” often relates in some capacity to theborder or border space. The theorizing of borders in Rumford 2006 is refreshing and unites multiple perspectives, whileVrcan 2006 explores a case study and a theoretical distinction between borders and frontiers. On the other hand, Walters2006 utilizes philosophies to theorize borders and control, and Newman 2006 argues for a paradigm shift after 9/11 in thetheorization of borders and controls. The excellent study in Jones 2009 plays with the notion of categories and borders,and calls for an open and flexible approach, and Linke 2006 argues for a sensual, affective space of state and emotionalitywhen dealing with these concepts. Donnan and Wilson 2010 brings together ethnographic and anthropologicalapproaches to border studies, while Wastl-Walter 2011 utilizes many scholars and scholarships in an attempt to make anessential, wide-ranging contribution and to summarize the scholarship of border studies. These texts do not directlyaddress the childhood and borders nexus, but they provide a strong grounding of the notion of borders in interdisciplinaryscholarship. They therefore create a pathway for childhood studies scholars to think about children and childhood inrelation to borders and border spaces through multiple theoretical lenses.

Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson, eds. Borderlands: Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power, andIdentity. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2010.

An excellent, albeit short eight-chapter-long edited collection that tackles the concerns of ethnographic approaches.Primarily through the lens of anthropology, this book explores the world of borders and borderlines beyond the binaries ofsecurity/insecurity, power/powerlessness, and identity/nonidentity. A particular focus on state borders; raises theinteresting concern of sustainability.

Jones, Reece. “Categories, Borders and Boundaries.” Progress in Human Geography 33.2 (2009): 174–189.

Jones’s scholarship in human geography rethinks categories and concepts such as notions of space, place, nature, scale,gender, and identity. Her post-structural analyses of categories, borders, and boundaries add to the theoretical cannon, asshe argues that the process of bounding results in fixed categories that shape, organize, and control our everyday life, andthat they should be flexible and open.

Linke, Uli. “Contact Zones: Rethinking the Sensual Life of the State.” Anthropological Theory 6.2 (2006): 205–225.

Primarily focused on the notion of power, Linke’s article argues for the state as not only imagined or discursive, or arisingfrom cultural regimes, but also as an embodied form. This political lens about nationalist spaces deals with the sensualand emotional as affective space/place. This theorizing of entanglements argues for a very interesting and importantanalytics, of political regimes as flexible and affective borders and boundaries.

Newman, David. “Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” European Journal of SocialTheory 9.2 (2006): 171–186.

Newman’s article discusses the post-9/11 world with yet another shift in understanding of borders and borderlands. Heargues for a multidisciplinary understanding of borders and of the bordering process. He argues that borders do not needto be seen as territorial constructs and as societal organizations and orderings, and calls for more fluid and elasticunderstandings of negotiated borders by crossing conceptual and disciplinary borders.


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Rumford, Chris. “Introduction.” Special Issue: Theorizing Borders. European Journal of Social Theory 9.2 (2006):155–169.

Rumford’s excellent introduction to the special issue on social theory and borders works as a theoretical foundation andprovides thoughts about what borders are and may represent. The argument is made for thinking beyond boundaries ofopen/closed and security/network, and explores challenges to social theory when theorizing borders, including possibleissues arising when doing “border work.”

Vrcan, Srdcan. “A Preliminary Challenge: Borders or Frontiers?” Social Compass 53.2 (2006): 215–226.

This article is set within the background of multiple religions/state/borders of former Yugoslavia and uses sociologicalthinking to explore distinctions between “borders” and “frontiers,” and boundaries as frontiers, and makes links to thecomplexities of culture, nation, and religion in areas and times when boundaries are contested. Utilizing a historicalexperience of space, the ideas about borders and frontiers are multifaceted as well as explored through variousperspectives.

Walters, William. “Border/Control.” European Journal of Social Theory 9.2 (2006): 187–203.

This article theorizes borders and control through a historical lens using Foucauldian and Deleuzian concepts. This articleperforms an important genealogy of the notion of the border and explores border crossing techniques, identities, practices,and power relations. It is essential for its analysis of the notions of border and control, which enact the question ofborder/control changes, and how they govern and shape our subjectivities.

Wastl-Walter, Doris, ed. The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.

An excellent edited collection that features mostly geographical and sociological perspectives, and encompasses a globalscope. It is focused on the premise that borders can only be understood in context. This publication features many topscholars in the field and engages with a range of topics that makes it a very useful, multidisciplinary textbook particularlyfor students.

Home, Borderlands, and Crossings

Home, borderlands, and crossings are vast territories, which performatively affect the way childhoods and borders arecontextualized and experienced. This section is concerned with experiences of childhoods and crossings. The Martin 2007narrative explores neighboring communities in a Western city and argues not necessarily for the differences betweenthese communities, but for the lack of engagement in the border spaces: such as that the children from one community didnot seem to play with children in the other. The Vaquera-Vasquez 2006 narrative and metaphorical explorations of theborder as a sound, noise, vise, danger, movement, and global corridor, as well as a language, are original and interesting.The border reforms and reinscribes, and examines people’s histories and identities. Ericsson and Simonsen 2008 arguesthat the solution to conflicts on a macro level entails considering “border children” in different ways. The symbolic statusthat children receive has tangible consequences in their personal lives. In Christou and Spyrou 2012, children becomewitnesses as researchers unravel the ways that children’s narratives reveal the mechanisms through which ethnicdifference is constructed, such as ethnic stereotypes, while they connect key issues in childhood and ethnicity through theconcept of space as a central question in the material and symbolic construction of difference. Deane 2010 argues thatdespite the formal recognition of children and women trafficking, it remains a major problem, and is even on the increase,particularly through a lack of enforcement of laws and policies in countries such as India and Nepal. Yuval-Davis andStoetzler 2002 argues that women embody borders and boundaries, but also the possibility of crossing and transcendingthem, and that children and childhood remain part of the women’s narratives. Helleiner 2007 works with retrospective


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accounts of children’s border experiences that demonstrate how the production of childhood intersects with a stratifiedborder to reinforce forms of privilege and exclusion. The author calls for the reconsideration of the political economy andsocial inequality at border spaces. Cooper and Rumford 2013 argues that differentiation is integral to the ways in whichborders connect. Furthermore, through examining border monuments, the work presents another aspect of thinking aboutthe cosmopolitan dimensions of borders. Flynn 1997 explores the tensions between the instability of borders, and howtheir fixed boundaries reveal processes of cross-border cultural negotiation. It raises questions about the relationshipsbetween local and global, space and place, and nation and state. Being at the “border” implies separation as well asunification, exclusion as well as inclusion, independence as well as interdependence. These accounts demonstrate hownotions of home, borderlands, and crossings can be not only repressive, but also productive.

Christou, Miranda, and Spyros Spyrou. “Border Encounters: How Children Navigate Space and Otherness in anEthnically Divided Society.” Childhood 19.3 (2012): 302–316.

Christou and Spyrou’s article presents important ethnographic material from a study of children and childhood followingGreek and Cypriot children’s experiences. They argue that to understand how children navigate ethnic divisions, there is aneed to focus research on place making in the construction of identity. Very interesting visual methodologies are used.

Cooper, Anthony, and Chris Rumford. “Monumentalising the Border: Bordering through Connectivity.” Mobilities8.1 (2013): 107–124.

This article by Cooper and Rumford theorizes and complicates the notion that claims that cosmopolitans are able to crossborders with ease, or even live on/at borders. Working with the notion of cosmopolitan agency, it challenges the traditionalrelationship between borders and cosmopolitanism by focusing on the changing nature of contemporary border processes.Interestingly, this paper also further analyzes border monuments.

Deane, Tameshnie. “Cross-Border Trafficking in Nepal and India—Violating Women’s Rights.” Human RightsReview 11.4 (2010): 491–513.

This article examines cross-border trafficking of children and women in Nepal to India. It considers the complexities ofthese violent acts that lead to sexual exploitation, forced marriage, child soldiers, domestic servants, circus entertainment,and factory workers. It examines the effectiveness of policies, aimed at human trafficking, and provides an interestinganalysis of the problem of their enforcement.

Ericsson, Kjersti, and Eva Simonsen. “On the Border: The Contested Children of the Second World War.”Childhood 15.3 (2008): 397–414.

This article argues for the complexity of border children, who, as the authors argue, became symbolic bearers of deepsocietal conflicts. The personal experiences of children are used to discuss being a “border child” in relation to theconstruction of a nationalist narrative. A very interesting historicizing research perspective on border and border spaces.

Flynn, Donna K. “‘We Are the Border’: Identity, Exchange, and the State along the Benin-Nigeria Border.”American Ethnologist 24.2 (1997): 311–330.

Flynn’s excellent ethnographic study of the life on Nigeria and Benin’s border explores the centralizing marginality of theseborder experiences. In these borderlands, people have embraced their life on the edges of their countries, as theymaintain control over the social and economic space, albeit with increased state presence. Through their identity, peopleof borderlands remain deeply situated in both their border region and in their respective countries.


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Helleiner, Jane. “‘Over the River’: Border Childhoods and Border Crossings at Niagara.” Childhood 14.4 (2007):431–447.

Focused on the borderlands and actual border between the United States of America and Canada, this article examineschildhood experiences of place/space. It uses memory research and accounts of childhood border experiences to analyzehow childhood is produced and experienced through border crossings. It stresses the importance of forms of privilege andexclusion associated with class, citizenship, gender, and racial/ethnic positioning.

Martin, Megan C. “Crossing the Line Observations from East Detroit, Michigan, USA.” Qualitative Social Work 6.4(2007): 465–475.

Martin’s paper is concerned with the crossings between the neighborhoods. Addresses the stark racial, economic, andphysical divides between two proximate communities, and the way that the boundary line between these communities isenacted. Physical barriers are put in place to reinforce the imaginary line of the city. The very clear social justice focus ofthis research adds a different perspective to the notion of “crossing.”

Vaquera-Vasquez, Santiago. “Notes from an Unrepentant Border Crosser.” South Atlantic Quarterly 105.4 (2006):699–716.

Vaquera-Vasquez uses a powerful story and narrative to address the story of borders, borderlands, and border wanderers.She gives an account of crossings and living in/on/across borderlines. Through stories about the United States of Americaand Mexico border, and rethinking the borderlands, an argument is presented where identity is rooted in place and spaceand enforced by movement.

Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Marcel Stoetzler. “Imagined Boundaries and Borders: A Gendered Gaze.” EuropeanJournal of Women’s Studies 9.3 (2002): 329–344.

This paper explores boundaries and territorial borders, and crossing them, as experienced and imagined by women. Thiswork draws on autobiographical narratives from all around the world. Children and childhoods are embedded in thesenarratives by women and produce very important accounts of global experiences of borders and borderlands, and what itmeans to cross them.

Children’s Border Spaces

In this section the child of border spaces is positioned under the well-patrolled conceptual divides and synergies of localand global, and private and public. The exploration of children’s border spaces and places in the section provide amultitude of interdisciplinary sources and experiences. It disrupts the space and place of childhood, and the borders thatare often erected and exist in this environment. Through this varied collection of articles, chapters, and books, this sectionconsiders many contrasting settings and situations. This section takes on the task of combining theoretical grounding andrigor, and methodological originality and importance, coupled with passionate advocacy for the rights and participation ofchildren in borderlands, urban settings, homes, or classrooms. Working with border spaces requires diverse theoreticallenses, as it deals with an environment within which a specific border culture emerges. In particular, Christensen andO’Brien 2003 takes the notion of borders into a different setting: working with the everyday experiences of children, andtheorizing them, creating an interesting framework that works with the border spaces, border lines, and border cultures ofhome, neighborhoods, cities, and communities. Millei and Cliff 2014 presents more of a microculture examination as theauthor researches children’s bodies and conduct, and how they are regulated within the space of a preschool bathroom,how particular subjectivities are being produced, and how resistance manifests in these intergenerational border spaces.Duhn 2012, on place, further theorizes the place as pedagogical. Duhn’s articulation of place serves as the formation of


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identity and of ethical encounters as well as crossings, and moves beyond the view of a child as a mere individual in thecomplex web of social settings, but rather as entangled in relationships with the human and the nonhuman world. Moss2010 focuses on space and time, and the influence of social arrangements and change in childhood related to variousnotions including borders and migration. The author considers how they shape children and childhood. Aitken 2001 addsto the theoretical landscape with an excellent overview of theories and concepts, and argues for the morally contestedspaces of identity. Tam Cho and Nicley 2008 argues for the importance of political theories when considering borders andboundaries. Through a typology of political outcomes that feed into national trends, the authors permit a contextualunderstanding that will clarify whether, when, and how social institutions matter, and within which geographical contexts.These diverse research projects that consider children’s border spaces directly, or indirectly, are essential in our thinkingabout childhood and borders, and present us with a rich context and theoretical grounding.

Aitken, Stuart C. Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity. London: Routledge,2001.

This book argues for new theories, and theoretical rigor, and for the need to articulate the interdependent relationsbetween material societal transformations and the social constructions of childhood. He calls for an explicitly moralgeography of childhood, of which the principal component is empathy, moving between the local and global; however, thisstudy lacks children’s voices. An impressive theoretical grounding for childhood, space, place, and identity.

Christensen, Pia, and Margaret O’Brien, eds. Children in the City: Home, Neighbourhood and Community. NewYork: Routledge, 2003.

This excellent and seminal book considers children’s lives in connection to borders of cities, neighborhoods, and homes.Focused on what are “good” places to live, these international studies focus both on spatial and intergenerationalperspectives. Using a child-sensitive framework, this is an excellent interdisciplinary study from anthropological,sociological, and urban planning perspectives, with respect to children’s urban realities.

Duhn, Iris. “Places for Pedagogies, Pedagogies for Places.” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 13.2 (2012):99–107.

Duhn in her article works with the notion of place and the theories of new materialism in order to theorize the tensionbetween place-based local environments and globalization. She argues for an understanding of the forces and forms thatmake places. An important theoretical perspective on place that provokes thinking about borders differently; thinking aboutan assemblage of place, and what the place (and its boundaries) mean for children.

Millei, Zsuzsa, and Ken Cliff. “The Preschool Bathroom: Making ‘Problem Bodies’ and the Limit of the DisciplinaryRegime over Children.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 35.2 (2014): 244–262.

An important contribution by Australian scholars that studies the space of the bathroom in the preschool: the power andagency of children and staff, convergent with the demarcated territories and crossing of spatial boundaries, and the bodilyexperiences and problem bodies. A Foucauldian study in the child’s voice and participation, this is an important exemplarof borders and boundaries within institutions.

Moss, Dorothy. “Memory, Space and Time: Researching Children’s Lives.” Childhood 17.4 (2010): 530–544.

Focused on the space, time, and social memory of childhood, this research engages with everyday lives of children andconnections across the boundaries of present and past, across children, families, communities, and nations; and differentplaces of childhoods. Moss argues that giving attention to the temporal and spatial complexity of childhood reveals some


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less visible formative connections in their everyday lives.

Tam Cho, Wendy K., and Erinn P. Nicley. “Geographic Proximity versus Institutions Evaluating Borders as RealPolitical Boundaries.” American Politics Research 36.6 (2008): 803–823.

Tam Cho and Nicley argue for the connections between political phenomena and geographic proximity, and examine howinstitutions such as state borders mediate and condition the effects of geographic proximity. They argue that thegeographic landscape has interesting facets beyond proximity and distance, and argue that it is a product of politicalrelationships that intersect in particular places.

Childhood, Borders, and Education

Childhood and borders are intertwined and connected with education. This section addresses some of these connections,where borders manifest through different processes of educational experiences, surveillance, resistance, and theassessment and production of childhoods. Education is a place where boundaries and borders are determined by powerrelations, and where teaching and learning often has a rhizomatic character. The space and place of borders aredelineated not only by the physical spaces of schooling institutions, but also by the borders of transitions from oneinstitution to another, and relationships within them. Smith and Barker 2000 deals with the concerns of the outside-of-school spaces, and theorizes the borderlines within the institution, to explore how children make sense of theseexperiences. Hartley, et al. 2012 analyzes and demonstrates the importance of crossings of borders within and betweeneducational institutions. The authors scrutinize and present transitions as an essential part of what it means to be a child inthe educational discourse. Taylor 2013 is a highly original work that rethinks relationships between childhood and nature.The concepts of “innocence” and “nature” are problematized in relation to complex child-nature entanglements andrelationships. Taylor extrapolates human and more-than-human relationships and constructs, and further analyzes howcollective inquiry is important in ontological and epistemological thinking about common worlds. Tesar 2014 on powerrelations through philosophies of education breaks down some established barriers in education. Using examples ofchildren’s literature in countries, spaces, and ideologies that appear on the surface to be radically different, the authoruncovers ideological spaces and breaks down binaries in relation to thinking about childhood, borders, and education.Tobin, et al. 2013 is focused on immigrant childhoods and transitions, and borders they encounter. The authors’examination of beliefs and perspectives, involving mostly teachers and parents, highlights different beliefs andexpectations, and serves as an important study into immigrants crossing cultural, political, and educational borders.Sansom 2011 brings the notions of “movement” and “place/space” to the early childhood setting, exploring further bordersin relation to movement. Arndt 2012 uses an exploration of the foreigner in education to present communities—both realand imagined—as relational encounters. The author works with boundaries in community as acts of responsible, ethical,and even spiritual engagement as possible responses to immigrant otherness in early childhood education. These areall-important boundaries and borders in and relating to educational settings, forming children’s experiences, and formingtheir childhoods.

Arndt, Sonja. “Crossing Thresholds: Imagining Community and Immigrant Otherness in Early ChildhoodEducation.” Pacific-Asian Education 24.2 (2012): 23–34.

This paper analyzes conceptualizations of community in relation to immigrant others’ boundary crossing. Through a lens ofwhat it means to be a foreigner, crossing multiple cultural, geographic, and educational boundaries, it explicates theimportance of reconceptualizing diverse notions of community. The paper argues for an approach to community as acommitted relational encounter, not only with the other, but also—through the other—with all of humanity.

Hartley, Carol, Pat Rogers, Jemma Smith, Sally Peters, and Margaret Carr. Crossing the Border: A CommunityNegotiates the Transition from Early Childhood to Primary School. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER, 2012.


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In this tiny book the researchers and teachers problematize what it means to transition from early childhood education toschool in the sense of children crossing borders and multiple boundaries. Overcoming the barriers and building andmaintaining connections between the two settings is both theoretical and practical. It is a performance of how the wholecommunity can negotiate this transition.

Sansom, Adrienne N. Movement and Dance in Young Children’s Lives: Crossing the Divide. New York: PeterLang, 2011.

Through the embodiment of dance and movement in early childhood education, and on honoring the body, the explorationof place and space where children’s bodies perform the crossings is theorized. This book addresses the importance ofchildren’s bodies and crossings of divides they encounter in their everyday experiences. This book is opening uppossibilities for rethinking borders of space/place from the perspective of child’s movement/dance.

Smith, Fiona, and John Barker. “Contested Spaces: Children’s Experiences of Out of School Care in England andWales.” Childhood 7.3 (2000): 315–333.

This interesting article explores the complexity of the social space of the out-of-school clubs in contemporary England andWales, and analyzes the way children construct and contest the meanings they attach to their after-school environments.These places/spaces with clearly delineated borders are the sites of dominance and resistance, and, as argued, areconstructed as negotiable, fluid, and temporary.

Taylor, Affrica. Reconfiguring the Natures of Childhood. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013.

In this book the ideas of borders, crossings, and education merge as Taylor outlines a paradigmatic shift. She argues formessy, implicated, situated, and entangled childhoods as she navigates through ideas and constructions of childhoods. Inher work, the border between childhood and nature is reconfigured and reconceptualized. An excellent interdisciplinarybook with an impact on education and on the construction of childhoods.

Tesar, Marek. “My Feelings: Power, Politics and Childhood Subjectivities.” Special Issue: Philosophy andPedagogy of Early Childhood. Educational Philosophy and Theory 46.8 (2014): 860–872.

This article focuses on different aspects of borders and boundaries in diverse ideological settings of countries, times, andspaces. Through exploring the production of children’s literature in different contexts, it shows how childhoods areproduced and constructed, demonstrates notions of power in place, and how children’s literature is a discourse that is notneutral, but rather produces political childhood subjectivities.

Tobin, Joseph J., Angela E. Arzubiaga, and Jennifer Keys Adair. Children Crossing Borders: Immigrant Parentand Teacher Perspectives on Preschool for Children of Immigrants. New York: Russell Sage, 2013.

Focused on the notion of immigrant children and their inclusion in the social setting of the early years preschool, this bookargues the complexities of the experiences of children crossing borders and their relationship with institutions. Focused onthe beliefs of the immigrant parents, this book outlines theories, experiences, and practices of immigrant childhoods.

Culture, Identity, and Refugees in Global Contexts

The argument for global contexts of notions about culture, identity, and refugees is extrapolated from the premise that bothchildren and adults carry their border experiences with them everywhere, and at all times. The borders are managed and


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contested, crossed and occupied, acknowledged and resisted often at the very same time. Hart 2002, while consideringthe lives of children and young people in the border spaces of Jordan, identifies discourses of identity, embedded in thepractices of nationalism, and argues that children and their childhoods are considered as active agents, shaped by widerpolitical and economic forces and cultural politics, and within the bordered space of the refugee camp. Habashi 2011,research from the same region, argues for religion as resistance and for intergenerational research. This formation ofidentity provides an opportunity for solidarity around the world as well as resistance to a globalized hegemony. Bejarano2010 researches the border between the United States and Mexico, and makes an argument for the histories ofborderlands as sites of surveillance, fear, and hope, and of the stripping of human and children’s rights. Boundaries arepushed and challenged defiantly by youth with organic knowledge, their border rootedness, and resistance. Swanson2010 gives an overview of Canadian Aboriginals and how they cope with gendered, racialized, and youth identities. Theytraverse the boundaries between the United States and Canada, which are examined, crossed, and broken down on thebasis of revolutionary imaginings. Jukarainen 2003, research from the borders of Finland, is focused on national identitiesand sees identity as making strong political statements. Howard and Gill 2001, research from Australia, uses children’svoice with respect to how children see themselves as global citizens. The authors argue that children may be beginning toadopt new forms of national identity, forms that involve an easy slippage between the global and the local, the national andthe international. Holloway and Valentine 2000, a fascinating study of the United Kingdom and New Zealand, argues forchildren’s imaginative geographies of others and of other places and spaces through the way children cross boundaries tomake assumptions about sameness and difference. Brettell 2008 deals with borders, borderlands, and border spaces andthe way race and ethnicity construct and become border building, boundary making, and border space-filling events asthey unite and divide. These global tensions and considerations of childhoods and borders, through the ideas aboutnation, identity, and stories of refugees become another piece of the mosaic to the story of childhood and borders.

Bejarano, Cynthia. “Border Rootedness as Transformative Resistance: Youth Overcoming Violence andInspection in a US–Mexico Border Region.” Children’s Geographies 8.4 (2010): 391–399.

This article addresses the concerns of Mexican immigrants and their children’s “border citizenship” as they negotiatespace, post-secondary education, national citizenships, and immigration status, including the transgressive aspects oftheir transnational and transitional identities. Working with/alongside/under the surveillance and racism of borders, theylearn and employ strategies of transformative resistance. Great research of young people managing their cross-borderlived experiences.

Brettell, Caroline, ed. Constructing Borders/Crossing Boundaries: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration. Lanham, MD:Lexington Books, 2008.

In this edited book the focus is set on constructing and deconstructing, and subsequent crossing, of borders andboundaries. Focused on the Unites States and its diverse population, borderlands and border spaces are analyzed as thefluid construction of racial and ethnic identities. The place/space of production of these identities vary, as do the bordersand border spaces within which they are produced.

Habashi, Janette. “Children’s Agency and Islam: Unexpected Paths to Solidarity.” Children’s Geographies 9.2(2011): 129–144.

This article presents an ethnographic study that analyzes the experiences of Palestinian children’s agency through religionand of religion as resistance. Resisting globalized hegemony through children’s agency is embedded in the movementswithin and constitution of national identity, which differs in intergenerational approaches to these constructs. Theproductive nature of children/childhood with respect to interactions in the local/global discourse is imperative.

Hart, Jason. “Children and Nationalism in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Jordan.” Childhood 9.1 (2002): 35–47.


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Set in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, this article analyzes the engagement of children with the notion ofnationalism. Children engage with different visions about themselves and their childhoods, and this article analyzes theway they experience these discourses. This is an excellent article, operating within specific spatial and historical contexts.

Holloway, Sarah L., and Gill Valentine. “Corked Hats and Coronation Street: British and New Zealand Children’sImaginative Geographies of the Other.” Childhood 7.3 (2000): 335–357.

This article explores childhood and national identity by considering voices of British and New Zealand childhoods.Focused on the imaginative geographies of each other, this research works with stereotypical images in an unexpectedway, and presents ideas and notions of resistance that should be considered. The importance of using technologies isdemonstrated and highlighted in this research.

Howard, Sue, and Judith Gill. “‘It’s Like We’re a Normal Way and Everyone Else is Different’: Australian Children’sConstructions of Citizenship and National Identity.” Educational Studies 27.1 (2001): 87–103.

An excellent Australian study that problematizes children’s voice. It is concerned with notions such as “thinking globally”and “citizens of the world.” The national identity of “what it means to be Australian” and “what it means to be globalcitizens” in the world with a new set of borders and a new borderlessness can be extrapolated to other children and youngpeople living in different countries.

Jukarainen, Pirjo. “Definitely Not Yet the End of Nations: Northern Borderlands Youth in Defence of NationalIdentities.” Young 11.3 (2003): 217–234.

This article addresses a spatial analysis of young people’s relationships with borders and borderlands. Focused onnorthern European Finnish borders, borderlands, and border spaces, this paper studies forms of nationalist practices thatare encountered in young people. The author argues that young people should be treated as active agents instead ofpassive “consumers” of national identity.

Swanson, Kate. “‘For Every Border, There Is Also a Bridge’: Overturning Borders in Young Aboriginal Peoples’Lives.” Children’s Geographies 8.4 (2010): 429–436.

Swanson’s work with Canadian Aboriginals focuses on young people, border spaces, and revolutions that she carefullyexplores and analyzes in this article. She analyzes both physical and metaphorical borders, boundaries, and borderspaces of children and young people. Through exploring young people’s lives and their revolutionary imaginations, shelistens and works with these notions of revolutionary youth.

Autobiographies of Childhoods and Borders

Children’s voices are essential to the study of childhoods and borders. Children’s experiences, voices, and agencyvalidate them as the witnesses of the borders in their lives. They add to theoretical and philosophical thought, highlightedin the entries in Culture, Identity, and Refugees in Global Contexts, and ground it in powerful life stories. Frank 2002represents the well-known story of oppression and the Holocaust, of a child sent to die because she was Jewish. AnneFrank’s encounters are poignant yet telling of the child’s perception of war and hiding, and of the child’s thinking andunderstandings of war times. Similarly, Zlata’s Diary (Filipovic 1995), written almost fifty years later, tells of hiding andethnic conflict, and challenges what is and what is not considered as childhood. These day-to-day childhood stories ofchildren, where their voice is louder than that of the adults, recount childhood experiences more powerfully than historybooks or documentaries. Dreby 2010, a personal story as well as voices of children crossing borders, analyzes for


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example the emotional aspect of separation as one of the consequences of migration and crossing borders. Thecomplexity of such experiences, for those who crossed the borders and for those who are left behind, is excellentlyanalyzed and worked. The personal essays in Troncoso 2011 focus on crossing the border from Mexico to the UnitedStates, and engage with what it means to be a stranger and foreigner while maintaining connections with the land beyondthe border. At the center is the concern of bridging the past with the present. Different borders yet again are presented inthe works Tesar 2013 and Sis 2007. Both deal with the complexities of childhoods and borders in CommunistCzechoslovakia. Tesar uses his childhood experiences to provide an alternative reading of magazines for preschoolchildren and the ideal image that they presented of the child that lives close to the border. He argues that magazinesproduced political subjectivities and told how to be, behave, act, and think in such a border space. Sis provides a readingfor children about his childhood, with illustrations and stories of conformity and resistance. Working with his memory, Sisreconstructs the experiences of a child living on the border and dreaming of difference. Finally, Pilkington 1996 presents apowerful family genealogical story of girls travelling from a foreign place in Australia to back home. Children crossingborders, like in Pilkington’s Australian narrative, are powerful adaptations and complex stories that are geographical,sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and very much educational in nature.

Dreby, Joanna. Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2010.

Dreby’s book provides an interesting contribution to scholarship on immigration and children, mostly through the voices ofchildren and childhoods that are divided by the United States and Mexico border. Children left behind, children crossingborders, and children living on the other side of the border provide very strong stories. They are explored through powerfulnarratives intertwined with the author’s personal experiences.

Filipovic, Zlata. Zlata’s Diary. Translated by Christina Pribichevich-Zoric. London: Penguin, 1995.

Zlata’s Diary is a powerful story of a child who just started the fifth grade during the war in Yugoslavia. Located in Sarajevoin the early 1990s, in a city under siege, Zlata’s comments and vision of her childhood are powerful manifestations of achild’s perspective on childhood. A gripping and powerful account of childhood, war, death, and life consumed by bordersand borderlands.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated by Susan Massotty and edited by Otto H. Frank and MiriamPressler. London: Puffin, 2002.

Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most famous embodiments of a story of a child who crossed borders, andrepresents a seminal encounter of what it means to live childhood as a refugee in fear and in hiding. This new version intoEnglish is superior to the old one, as translated by Susan Massotty.

Pilkington, Doris. Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1996.

This is a powerful story about children crossing borders and running back home across the hostile Australian outback, in atime when the so-called half-castes were removed from their mothers for the purpose of education. Pilkington’s narrativeabout her mother’s childhood, of travelling with two other girls on foot through danger and back to their family and home, isan important story of a child’s voice and agency.

Sis, Peter. The Wall: Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Sis presents a powerful story and illustration of the life of a child in Communist Czechoslovakia. Working with dreams andlandscapes, the experiences of the child and the child’s voice are emphasized. An excellent book for children about what it


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means to be a child, written with autobiographical authority. Serves simultaneously as a history of the person and of thecountry.

Tesar, Marek. “Socialist Memoirs: The Production of Political Childhood Subjectivities.” Globalisation, Societiesand Education 11.2 (2013): 223–238.

This article analyzes the author’s experiences of children and childhood in the production of a socialist magazine forkindergarten children. Tesar was one of these children. The notion of power and children behind the border of the IronCurtain are used to analyze the production of childhood subjectivities through the stories and images presented tochildren. It refers to the notion of a childhood underground, where alternative borders are crossed and dealt with.

Troncoso, Sergio. Crossing Borders: Personal Essays. Houston, TX: Arte Publico, 2011.

Troncoso’s personal stories and narratives are powerful attempts to overcome borders on the Texas–Mexico border.Experiences of what it means to be an outsider, foreigner, and the other in a country makes for powerful reading, asreflected in his childhood world. In this narrative the story of home and ideas that shape the person through the experienceof border crossing are analyzed through the separation of an individual from the family.

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Childhood and Borders

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