From National Borders to Embedded Borderings: One Angle into the Question of Territory and Space in a Global Age

There have been many epochs when territories were subject to multiple systems of rule.1 The current condition we see developing with globalization is probably by far the more common one, while the more exceptional period is the one that saw the strengthening of the national state. In this context, digitization can be seen as enabling a new type of cross-border process that can bypass interstate borders and constitute its own specific bordered spaces. The actors in these new types of transversally bordered spaces range from small, resource-poor organizations and individuals to powerful private financial trading networks (notably the so-called ‘dark pools’). Further, we see the formation of novel kinds of internal borderings that can bring particular types of advantages to at least some actors and institutions. Elsewhere I have theorized these as holes in the tissue of national sovereign territory; again, digital technologies have enabled this development, but it is not necessarily a completely new condition: one might think of the distinctive jurisdiction of international churches as having some of the same features (Sassen 2008, chapters 8 and 9).