As borderlands, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are situated between the East and the West: their Eastern borders are now the borders of the European Union and NATO. The shifting frontier with Russia or the Soviet Union has historically been a collective experience for these countries. At the current historic moment, the border is tense and partially closed due to Russian aggression, the war in Ukraine, and the security discourse related to fears about immigration instrumentalised by Russia.
We are seeking articles for the book that is intended for the Palgrave Macmillan 'Performance and Migration' book series. This anthology will examine performances related to the borderland experiences and borders inside of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from World War I to the present day. We suggest using the concepts of borderlands and borders as analytical frameworks for examining performances about migration and mobility.
Contributors may analyse performances that highlight the significance and meaning of the Russian border to the people and communities who inhabit these borderlands and evaluate how these performances explore themes of voluntary or forced migration, exile, immigration, or national migration. This also extends to the exploration of how performances have represented the experiences of Holocaust survivors, asylum seekers, refugees, nomadic people who have had to flee their homes, people who have left their countries for love or work, or people who have been colonised. Furthermore, we encourage contributors to gauge audience reception.
Borderlands are places where state control meets migrant acts of resistance. Borderlands can also be conceptualised as lived experiences of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic encounters created by state-controlled boundaries. The same concept can also be applied at a national level, as borders tend to create local tensions, as well as to specific spaces within nation states: spaces such as immigration detention centres or prison camps.
Borders and border crossings are not limited to the geographic: borders can also be ideological, political, spiritual, social, racial, ethnic, or linguistic. Borders are limiting and differentiating, yet they can also be productive through their impact on people’s lives and mobility. Borders are agents and they have an important role in building identities and creating boundaries between “us” and “them”. National borders are also paramount in forming concepts of “immigrants” and “citizens”. Furthermore, borderlands are defined by how they inhabit bodily experiences and how borders are spatially created and controlled; that is, how borders are embodied as a variety of emotions and attitudes, such as fear, violence, control, expectations, and ethnic hierarchies. In addition, the lived experience in borderlands may be characterised by a difficulty or inability to fully identify with a specific state or nation.
The borderland approach to examining Finnish and Baltic borderlands as sites of multicultural and multilingual encounters and exchanges is especially resonant in the context of today’s global migration question. It reminds us that the region has always contained a variety of migratory patterns. It also challenges (extremist) nationalist interpretations, such as “one people, one land”, and questions theatrical narratives defined by nation states.
We welcome articles that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
Experiences of integration, resisting assimilation, and the question of belonging.
How state interventions and their impact on people’s lives are performed. How is resistance performed.
How embodiment and other non-verbal modes of expression are utilised; how encounters between cultures and languages, as well as their enmeshment, are embodied and performed.
How borderlands impact identity and community at the intersection of different languages and cultures.
How an immigrant’s language and culture are transformed into the language and culture of the new country.
The immigrant’s position as an active subject, versus the immigrant experience as a narrative object. How this choice impacts dramatic interpretation, reception, and the ethics of storytelling.
How boundaries between us and them, between national and regional identities, and between dominant viewpoints and counternarratives form.
How colonialism and its strategies have been reflected in dramaturgy and aesthetics.
How borderland audiences have been divided, homogenised, or multiplied.
How memories, traditions, and history are performed and upheld as forms of resistance or cultural memory.
The role of nostalgia, for example in creating a symbolic connection with the country of origin, as well as assisting in assimilation and community-building.
Trauma as an interpretative framework for performances that touch upon the violence associated with immigration, colonialism, war, and the Holocaust, and issues such as sexual abuse, racism, or everyday discrimination. How trauma can inform performance, and what effect this has on trauma survivors and the audience.
Proposals for submissions are requested by 10th April and should take the form of a 300–500-word abstract including a 50-word short bio. If you wish to submit an abstract or would like further information, please contact the editorial team and copy all members:
Pirkko Koski: pirkko.koski@helsinki.fi
Marja Silde: marjasilde@gmail.com
Katri Tanskanen: katri.m.tanskanen@helsinki.fi
References:
Brambilla, Chiara (2015) ‘Exploring the critical potential of the borderscapes concept’, Geopolitics, 20(1): 14-34.
Fassin, Didier (2011) ‘Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times’, The Annual Review of Anthropology, 40:213-46.
Ana Visan& Alison Mountz (2025) Conceptualizing the Borderlands: A Geographical Reclamation, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 40:6, 1441-1461, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2025.2475807.