The Implications of the Estonian E-Residency Project on Statehood and Territoriality Liis Peets Charles University Prague 2017 Faculty of Social Sciences; Political Studies Programme; Geopolitical Studies Curriculum Academic Supervisor Mgr. Martin Riegl, Ph.D. Abstract In 2014 Estonia became the first country in the world to launch an e-residency project. It is advertised as opening the country's digital borders to the world. This allows for anyone anywhere to apply for an e-resident status and thus gain access to certain parts of the Estonian e-governance platform allowing almost complete location independence when it comes to creating and running a limited company. The e-residency card also gives the holder a secure state guaranteed digital identity. The program has sparked a lot of international interest on both governmental levels in various states as well as in the media. One can find an abundance of claims and expectations regarding what the e-residency project is and what it could be. Many authors in the media claim that the program could quite likely change the meaning of concepts such as citizenship, residency, borders, territoriality and sovereignty. There are also claims that the whole meaning of statehood is under threat and the behavioral logic of countries in fundamentally changing. The paper...

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The thesis is a detailed descriptive survey of the society of the Anglo-Scottish borders in the second half of the fifteenth century. The survey is divided into three sections, the first providing a background to border society, the second examining the structure of that society, and the third describing how the society was governed. As an introduction to the study of border society, the geography and economy of the frontier region are briefly described; a short survey of border towns is attempted; and the role of the Church in border society is examined, although this is mainly confined to a description of the ecclesiastical institutions in the area. In analysing the structure of border society in the later fifteenth century a division is made between, on the one hand, the levels of society, and, on the other, the interconnections which bound the border population together. The lower ranks of border society, both urban and rural, are examined in as uuch detail as is permitted by the scarcity of surviving evidence. The leading families on each side of the frontier are described and their role in border society is examined. Interconnections within border society are investigated from three aspects: the bond of kinship; connections and ties of dependency among leading border families; and relationships across the frontier. The topic of kinship bonds raises the question of the origin of border surnames, and an attempt is made to contribute to this controversy by examining the state of development of the surnames by the mid-fifteenth century. Connections between leading border families are examined under the categories of land-holding relationships, connections formed through marriage, and bonds based on employment or the more formal contracts of retainer manrent. Interconnections, so far as they existed, between English and Scottish borderers are described as a conclusion to the survey of the ways in which border society was knit together. The final section of the thesis is concerned with the government of border society. As a means of introduction, the background of the political relations between the kingdoms of England and Scotland is established by a detailed analysis of events during the half-century. Following this survey of how the two countries alternated between truce and open war during the period, an analysis is made or the terms of the truces signed between 1455 and 1502. This examination of truce terms, which were mainly concerned with frontier control, leads on to a survey of the operation of law-enforcement on the borders. The machine of law-enforcement, involving the imposition of both the international frontier law control and the national laws of the respective countries is described, and standards of efficiency among judicial officers are touched upon. Aspects of law-enforcement on the borders which are of particular interest are subsequently exanined, and both the general character and the causes of border lawlessness are discussed. In the examination of law-enforcement machinery the function of officials are described, but as a conclusion to the survey of law and order on the borders the holders of the various offices are investigated. In the conclusion to the thesis a brief generalised description is attempted of the characteristics of border people and their society in the later fifteenth century.

Interpersonal conflict poses a serious threat to social justice activism. In the context of multi-racial solidarity activism in southern Arizona, conflicts are often born of the challenges accompanying differentials in social privilege due to differences in race and ethnicity relative to white supremacist settler colonialism. We can see these tensions topologically through the very different relationships white, Latin@, Chican@, and indigenous activists have to on-going processes of white supremacy. This dissertation explores the factors contributing to successes and failures of multi-racial activist ventures in the context of the Arizona/Sonora borderlands, particularly the challenges of negotiating social difference among communities of activists. Arizona occupies a contentious position with regard to securitization practices on the US/Mexico border. Social justice activists come to southern Arizona to involve themselves in humanitarian aid projects that address human rights issues emerging from border securitization processes. Over time, many of these activists connect with other social justice work in southern Arizona, leading to the existence of particularly rich and dedicated networks of activists in Tucson, southern Arizona’s largest city. Subsequently, we see the development of a diverse array of activist ventures deliberately orienting themselves around racial justice. This dissertation examines the paradox of becoming anti-racist for white activists, through which white activists work to address problematic aspects of their socialization as white subjects within the hierarchy of white supremacist society, a process that must co-exist with the knowledge that one cannot ‘unwhiten’ oneself. Tucson has a rich history of social justice activism that contributes to a particularly diverse activist landscape. Since the early 2000s, the primary concern of grassroots political activism in the city has been migrant justice and opposition to the militarization of the US/Mexico border. In the aftermath of Arizona’s notorious 2010 racial profiling legislation, SB 1070, The Protection Network Action Fund (ProNet) was founded as a collaboration between undocumented migrant activists and white allies, with the express goal of fundraising to support migrant led activism in Tucson. Much of ProNet’s success is rooted in the long-term relationship building between migrant activists and white allies, and intentional commitments to bridging gaps between the humanitarian aid and migrant justice communities. Members of ProNet challenge the spatial dynamics of activist networks Tucson, connecting Latin@ and Chican@ activist communities in and surrounding Spanish speaking South Tucson with activists in parts of the city where the effects of the militarized border are less present, and where residents are predominantly white.

This thesis presents research into the history and contemporary context of brass bands in the Scottish Borders. It discusses how the survival of the brass bands in the Scottish Borders can be accounted for over the last 150 years, in particular with regard to the continuity of their interaction with the community which has enabled them to overcome cultural, social and demographic changes. The textile industry which provided a stimulus for the formation of the brass bands in the nineteenth century has largely disappeared, but the traditional role of the bands has been carried forward to the present day. Previous study of the social and cultural history of the brass band movement has concentrated on the history of brass banding in the North of England. Although research into the history of brass bands has been carried out in other areas of Britain such as the South of England this is the first in-depth study of these bands in a region of Scotland. This research follows previous studies of amateur music-making in specific locations by studying in detail the brass bands that exist in seven towns and one village of the Scottish Borders where the bands can date their formation to the mid-nineteenth century. Historical and archival research has provided most of the data relating to the first hundred years, including the use of individual band archives, local newspaper archives and museum records. Ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation, have provided the data for more recent times. Details of brass band repertoires have been extracted from various sources including musical examples taken from individual band libraries. A central research finding is the strong relationship of the brass bands with their local communities, particularly the support given to the bands by local people and the way in which the bands support their communities by providing music for civic and community events. The close relationship of the brass bands with their local communities has been fundamental in providing the means by which the bands have been sustained over time. There is a strong Scottish Borders identity that links the towns, especially through family ties, and this is also found in a musical repertoire with songs that are specifically connected to the region and to individual towns. By playing this music for civic and community events, especially at the time for the Common Ridings which are annual events unique to the Scottish Borders, the brass bands have provided a service to the community which has ensured their survival.

Cette thèse traite la question des frontières terrestres du Liban selon les règles et la jurisprudence du droit international public. Elle retrace la composition du bloc territorial libanais en se référent aux archives des Etats mandataires au Levant, la France et l’Angleterre, pour comprendre le choix et la répartition entre les Etats des frontières actuelles. Cette étude passe ensuite à analyser la spécificité juridique de chaque tronçon de la frontière libanaise et à étudier les règles de droit international qui lui sont applicables. En effet, la frontière libanaise n’est pas homogène dans son étendue, elle se découpe en plusieurs secteurs représentant chacun une spécificité juridique propre. Ainsi, la frontière au Sud et au Nord et une partie de la frontière Est, sont régit par des conventions de frontières établies par le mandat français, alors que le reste de la frontière Est, est régit par l’application de la règle de l’uti possidetis juris. L’étude s’arrête également sur les secteurs litigieux de la frontière entre le Liban et Israël dans le secteur du Sud d’un coté, et le Liban et la Syrie dans le secteur Est de la frontière d’un autre coté. Elle avance également une nouvelle approche pour le règlement du litige des Hameaux de Chebaa entre ces trois pays frontaliers avec l’intervention des Nations Unies. / This thesis addresses the issue of the Lebanese boundaries in accordance with the rules and jurisprudence of international law. It retraces the composition of the Lebanese territorial block referring to the mandatory archives of the States in the Levant, France and England, to understand the selection and allocation among the present boundaries between the States. The study goes on to analyze the legal specificity of each section of the Lebanese border and to study the rules of international law applicable to it. Indeed, the Lebanese border is not homogeneous in its scope; it is divided into several sectors each representing a specific legal entity. Thus, the Southern and Northern borders and part of the Eastern border, are governed by boundaries conventions established by the French mandate, while the rest of the eastern border, is governed by the application of the uti possidetis juris rule. The study also stops on the disputed sectors from the areas between Lebanon and Israel in the South from one side, and Lebanon and Syria in the eastern border on the other side. It also suggests a new approach of the Chebaa’s Farms dispute between these three neighboring countries with the United Nations’ intervention.

Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This dissertation explores the intersection of gender, violence, and dispossession among Burmese migrants living in precarious circumstances in Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. In this space, particularly in the town of Mae Sot and surrounding areas, migrants are targets of multiple overlapping technologies of governance, including the Thai state, multinational garment export processing facilities, plantation-style agricultural firms, international humanitarian NGOs, and transnational social and political networks. Through a multi-modal qualitative approach relying on collaborative action research and key informant interviews, I consider how this complex web of discursive and relational power simultaneously renders migrants invisible subjects of global supply chains and yet hyper-visible targets of humanitarian assistance and intervention. Invisible because actors associated with state or market forces performatively enforce upon migrant bodies the violent notion that they are deportable, reiterating the boundaries of sovereignty at each encounter. And visible because as migrants struggle to make ends meet working long hours for illegally low wages, NGOs spotlight their social problems and offer solutions that promote individual biowelfare but not wider transformative change. Despite what appear to be opposing forces, both forms of power contribute to the production of gendered border subjects that are healthy workers; ethical and self-reliant yet docile. Migrants interpret and negotiate these overlapping systems, exerting agency as they rely on their own social and political networks to establish mechanisms of order that are shaped by but not necessarily subordinate to the disciplinary regimes of factories and farms, the juridical frameworks of the state, or the biopolitical gaze of NGOs. This dissertation finds that within these mechanisms, gender becomes a key discursive metaphor both to make sense of the widespread violence of displacement and to maintain collective order. Migrants' own gendered performances of discipline are themselves a product of border precarity and forge pathways of limited agency through which migrants seek to navigate the everyday conditions of that precarity. Throughout, this dissertation reflexively examines its own collaborative action research approach as well as humanitarian intervention on the border to identify ways that both are complicit in gendered border subjectivation. Gender in this analysis manifests itself as a set of discursive resources that NGO staff and migrants make use of as they seek to effect change--albeit in ways that tend to leave unchallenged the larger structural conditions of violence and neoliberal sovereignty that undergird and require the formation of a docile and disposable border population. Thus, in one sense, this dissertation is about how migrants survive in a violent context of dispossession, but it is also just as much about the generative qualities of violent life, the spaces in which agency challenges precarity, and the ways in which performatively reproduced gendered hierarchies are at the center of both precarity and resistance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Simei Maria de Souza Torres.pdf: 27204405 bytes, checksum: d36751629cf5e7e3f052fefbe98140d2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The materialization of the land with defining monuments of the limits of a territory passed to be made from century XVIII. Until then, the limits of the territories were frequently inexact and the States had its jurisdictions until where the respective governments had capacity to exert its sovereignty. In such a way, Treated to Madrid (1750) and the Santo Ildefonso (1777) they had been important intentions carried through in this direction. Waked up for Spain and Portugal, the Crowns in America aimed at to establish the official limits of both, a time that, initiated the process of overseas expansion and the occupation of the American continent, to determine the ownership of territories became basic question. This work analyzes the process of landmarks of the borders between the Portuguese and Spanish possessions in America, more specifically in the Amazônia, deriving of Tratado Preliminar de Limites na América meridional entre S. M. F. a senhora D. Maria I, Rainha de Portugal, e S. M. C. o senhor D. Carlos III, Rei de Hespanha, signed in 1º of October of 1777. Amongst the three stages that constitute the establishment of a border politics - definition, delimitation and landmark - we privilege the study of third: the landmark. Basically physical phase and technique, in which the demarcating agents look for to interpret and to apply in the land the intentions of the negotiators/delimiters. In this direction, the stage of landmarks of the border leaves the sphere of the abstractions diplomatical politics, subtilities and graphical representations to confrot itself with the daily reality of the field works. In the Amazônia, this was the moment of the confrontation between the conceived one and the possible one, in which the theoretical premises of the agreement had not found resonance practical in loco / A materialização do terreno com monumentos definidores dos limites de um território passou a ser feita a partir do século XVIII. Até então, os limites das possessões eram com freqüência imprecisos e os Estados tinham suas jurisdições até onde os respectivos governos tinham capacidade de exercer sua soberania. Desta forma, os Tratados de Madri (1750) e Santo Ildefonso (1777) foram importantes intentos realizados neste sentido. Acordados por Espanha e Portugal, visavam estabelecer os limites oficiais de ambas as Coroas na América, uma vez que, iniciado o processo de expansão ultramarina e a ocupação do continente americano, determinar a posse de domínios tornou-se questão fundamental. Este trabalho analisa o processo de demarcações das fronteiras entre os domínios portugueses e espanhóis na América, mais especificamente na Amazônia, oriundo do Tratado Preliminar de Limites na América meridional entre S. M. F. a senhora D. Maria I, Rainha de Portugal, e S. M. C. o senhor D. Carlos III, Rei de Hespanha, assinado em 1º de outubro de 1777. Dentre as três etapas que constituem o estabelecimento de uma fronteira política definição, delimitação e demarcação privilegiamos o estudo da terceira: a demarcação. Fase fundamentalmente física e técnica, na qual os agentes demarcadores procuram interpretar e aplicar no terreno as intenções dos negociadores/delimitadores. Neste sentido, a etapa de demarcações da fronteira deixa a esfera das abstrações políticas, sutilezas diplomáticas e representações gráficas para defrontar-se com a realidade cotidiana dos trabalhos de campo. Na Amazônia, este foi o momento do confronto entre o concebido e o possível, no qual as premissas teóricas do acordo não encontraram ressonância prática in loco

Towards a Just Landscape is a multi-part project about the 49th Parallel, the 20-foot swath of clear-cut that divides the US from Canada along its International Boundary, as it physically marks the landscape between the Lake of the Woods and the Northern Rockies. More specifically, it is a project about the portion of the border swath that runs through the center of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, dividing in two an area of land reserved to commemorate international peace and good will between two nations. Comprised of three artist's books, these works each address the political and ecological consequences of the border clearing on their surrounding landscape in their own unique way, and together seek to reimagine the way we interact with border regions.

<p>A central theme in Pauline Melville’s novel, The Ventriloquist’s Tale, is the question of endogamy and exogamy, with the opposing alternatives embodied in Melville’s characters. This theme has received much attention in the critical commentaries generated by the novel, with a prevailing number of critics claiming that Melville proposes endogamy as the only option for indigenous communities to remain intact. However, such an argument overlooks the significant fact that Melville’s characters are always already the offspring of exogamous encounters, through which a multiplicity of boundaries have been permeated. Furthermore, the spatial motifs developed in the novel can be seen to undermine commonly accepted delimitations of supposedly homogenous groups, the nation-state constituting the prime example, and this in turn profoundly alters the notion of mixing. Consequently, contending that Melville even enters a debate on endogamy and exogamy stems from a predisposition to see the world in other terms than those Melville sets out in her novel. The nature of boundaries and borders in Melville’s fictitious world are therefore explored using Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities as a framework. This examination shows that the novel undermines the notion of the nation-state as a homogenous entity and reveals a global structure that dictates and drives interaction on a global scale. Consequently, instead of a debate on exogamy, we see in the novel an exploration and dismantling of notions of borders, boundaries and barriers between individuals and groups of people.</p>