Heterogeneity, Borders and Thresholds

Abstract

Do transnational mobile professionals live in a borderless world? How do they make sense of heterogeneity that they experience during their travel? These questions are central to this paper which investigates the ‘invisible’ boundaries in the world that is dominated by global networks of infrastructure and in which nation-state borders lose their relevance to individuals. On the basis of interviews with mobile professionals the paper discusses the condition of borderlessness that they claim to experience as well as their strategies of managing the difference and asks how they distinguish between ‘here’ and ‘there’ and ‘us’ and ‘them’. The paper focuses on their mundane activities to show that their discontinuity marks boundaries between particular spaces.