Introduction: Constructing a Cross Border Cascadia Region

Abstract

For the last 20 years the scholarship on borders has shifted from a narrow geographical perspective where borders were conceptualized as boundary lines drafted on maps and containers of polities, states, and sovereignties that were mutually recognized by international treaties, to complex geographical spaces, where borders result from political and policy mechanisms where people (agents) and institutions, policies and cultures and economic flows (structures) re-invent borderland, border-regions and border-zones, and ultimately the boundary line itself. Collectively, the research covered in this special issue suggests several avenues for future collaboration: on Cascadia-based research and on cross-border regional comparisons.