Conflating Imagination, Identity, and Affinity in the Social Construction of Borderlands Culture Between Canada and the United States

Americans and Canadians are reevaluating and reinventing the borderlines and borderlands that both divide and link two nation-states and many cultures and regions. The social construction of borderlands culture now conflates imagination, identity and affinity. Reimagination of the border is led inordinately by fear, and the powerful forces of securitization and militarization by the United States. Identity now requires verification at the border according to national standards where numerous hybrid, transient, and traditional forms are not acknowledged or tolerated. Borderlands, once an amorphous and extensive construct of affinity, are now emerging as scaled-down, managed corridors and gateways where “top down” visions for national security and identity fail to align with “bottom up” regional, community, and cross-border organizational reimagination of how the border works. Borderlands culture is challenged in the twenty-first century as Americans and Canadians attempt to reinvent the border between them yet risk the loss of the borderland integration that assures continuity and sustainability in a rapidly evolving global reconstruction of space and place.