'Rebordering' in Kashmir: negotiation of spaces and statehood in contested border regions

Antía Mato Bouzas

Building on research in Phase 1 (2011 - 2014) highlighting the permeability of border conditions in relation to the negotiation of state borders between Pakistan and India in the Kashmir region, the second Phase of this Project will investigate in greater depth the significance and extent of re-bordering in Kashmiri border regions. This relates especially to attempts by local actors to influence the border regime. Proceeding from specific cases in which the negotiation of greater spatial and social mobility was successful, the extent will be interrogated to which local actions influence and change the role of the state and the understanding of statehood such that ‘multiterritorialities’ with different forms of state access and accessibility result, allowing for a “‘scalar’ reading of the changing nature of statehood” (Moisio/Paasi 2013, Brown 2010). The research also intends to contribute to the debates on statehood in conflictual and dynamic border regions that is characterized by the contradictory but interrelated influences of globalization and a large number of competing forms of localization. This differentiation of statehood considering different parameters and scales will contribute directly to the continued conceptual development of the 'Crossroads Perspective'.