Flint notes that a focus on boundaries (the line in the sand) may work to perpetuate conflict as boundaries definitively establish what is/isn’t part of a state’s territory and who is/isn’t a member of its citizenship. Thus, he shifts our focus to an approach that may be more productive: a focus on borders and borderlands as trans-boundary spaces of interaction. A focus on these spaces (versus a line) might open the opportunity for mutual control, use of resources, and joint economic activity along borders/borderland regions.
Of course, in order to establish a peaceful collaboration along borders, political goodwill among the parties is fundamental.
Flint (2016, p. 159-160) points to five conditions that are necessary to facilitate a peaceful trans-boundary interaction:
Likewise there are five key processes that shape a borderland (Flint, 2016, p. 160-161):
Geopolitics of identity, integral to the establishment of a trans-boundary borderland, challenge the importance of the hyphen in nation-state. These borderlands highlight a geography of cultural groups that do not lie neatly within state boundaries, but often spill over territorial lines—woven together across the globe in networks of migration and cultural associations that intersect state boundaries.