Borders are metaphorical and material constructs that define and divide. They are an attempt to delineate a limit, a finite line beyond which lies an ‘other’, an unknowable other premised on difference. A border signifies a break between two entities – or an uncrossable line of separation and division; a geographical border will separate two or more cities, nations, or groups. At the moment when Modernity produced rigid definitions, classifications, and schisms, the interrelationality of life – indeed the definition of the world – shifted. The significance of this is to have radically altered social life.

Epistemologies born of this time still play themselves out on the bodies of various peoples who ‘cross borders’. In this paper we want to focus particularly on two groups: ‘women educators of colour’ and ‘refugees’ in Australia. With these two groups we exemplify how borders of definition are not impermeable but fluid and constantly renegotiated. The reality of cross-border lived experiences however is invisibilised both at a public imaginary level and a common sense level. Indeed the possibility of crossing borders provokes the greatest tension, even fear, and these fears are enacted through public policy. This paper will explore all of these issues to suggest that it is in the acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of our lived realities wherein lies the greatest potential for interrupting the totalising impulse of Modernity’s borders.

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Keywords

• Borders
• Border-crossers
• Multiple Identities
• Heterogeneity
• Modernity

(30 min. Conference Paper, English)