THE 12 TYPES OF BORDERS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The main types of borders are land, political, air, sea, natural, artificial, cultural, ideological, and artificial. The border is an artificial real or imaginary line that separates countries, states, provinces, counties or cities and is under the control of a state body.

Borders are not static, but change over time due to wars, annexations, invasions, secession of territories and the creation of states. For example, the border between East and West Germany was removed with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Mexico-USA border

Despite this definition, it is worth mentioning that the concept is strongly debated and the academic community does not have a unified position on it. For some scientists, the boundary and the boundary are used interchangeably.

Others maintain that the limit is the imaginary dividing line while the border is the geographical strip between territories. Either way, it is important to be clear that both concepts are human invention.

With globalization, the concept of border has been rethought in response to the new social, cultural, political, economic and sociological situations that are emerging.

In any case, the border is part of the territory, an essential component of the nation-state in which it exercises its sovereignty.

The integration blocs are organizations and mechanisms of border integration as in the case of the European Union.

Classification of borders

The division of borders is as diverse as the number of people dedicated to studying them. Each one makes the division obeying a specific point of view.

1- Land border

They are borders that separate one nation from another but making use of visible elements characteristic of natural borders such as mountains or lakes; and artificial elements used in political borders such as signs, bridges or notices.

2- Political border

Usually defined as the borders built and imposed on or around a geographical territory to differentiate between the areas of governance or the strategies of political control (McColl, 2005, p. 109). They divide counties, towns, cities, departments, states, provinces, and countries.

These borders not only divide territories but also cultures, languages, ethnic groups and natural resources (McColl, 2005, p. 110).

Due to the divisive nature of borders, the notion of “us” is inevitably formed where we develop a sense of belonging and security and the opposite notion, “they”, which evoke a sense of exclusion.

These borders are very changing as a result of the territorial change suffered by the States and their disputes on the subject.

They are generally marked with signs or markers that indicate the boundary between them. These are the borders that we see on the political maps of the countries.

We can point out as an example the territory of Palestine and Israel that formally began their dispute in 1945 and since then their borders have changed notoriously in a short time.

3- Air border

It is the airspace or portion of the atmosphere that belongs to a country and is regulated by the State.

This portion of the atmosphere includes the geostationary orbit that countries have on the equator, a position in which the rotation of satellites is optimal.

4- Maritime border

It corresponds to the portion of sea or ocean that a State has; which means that the sovereignty of the State does not end on the coast but extends up to 200 miles into the sea.

The territorial sea is the area adjacent to the territory that goes from the coast to 12 miles at sea. Immediately afterwards comes the Contiguous Zone with another 12 miles and finally comes the Exclusive Economic Zone that goes from mile 25 to mile 200 where the 200 miles of state control end and international waters begin that are free of jurisdiction and are of common heritage.

The 200 miles to which coastal countries are entitled are an invaluable source of biological and mineral resources as well as a gateway for commercial and cultural exchange.

5- Natural border

They are those given by nature such as mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes, jungles, seas, oceans, depressions, etc. They were the first to establish themselves due to the physiographic facility they offer. They can separate but it can also unite because it sustains the region.

An example of natural border separation can be the Rio Grande or Rio Grande that originates in the United States, crossing its states of New Mexico, Colorado and part of Texas, separating them from the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Another case is that of the Pyrenees mountains that separate France from Spain.

6- Living borders

They are those with great dynamism in the economic-social exchange. The border between the United States and Canada is highly active due to the good conditions of the communication routes, access to health and school care points, as well as strong commercial exchange between these nations.

7- Dead or empty border

It has little or little effective economic and social exchange. This situation is due to natural or political-economic factors.

Natural causes such as deserts, moorlands, very dense forests or low populations slow down socio-economic interactions and very little can be done about it. The Sahara desert is a dead border between the northern countries of Africa and the sub-Saharan countries.

The political-economic causes are caused by the absence of state or government action plans that energize these areas and promote their development.

Developing countries share to a greater or lesser extent this characteristic in which the borders are less developed socially and economically, border control is not strong enough, which is why problems such as smuggling and illegal migration arise.

8- Artificial border

Artificial borders are borders invented by man that do not always coincide with natural borders.

9- Cultural border

It is a type of intangible border in which the territorial division does not always correspond to the cultural affinities between the groups settled in the area, which produces tensions and disputes between the tribal groups.

Today there are many cases of this situation such as the Kurds, an Indo-European people scattered between Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Something similar occurs in Africa, where in a single country there are more than 4 rival tribal groups who want autonomy.

Although these borders are intangible, the struggles between them produce real effects such as violence and political instability.

10- Ideological borders

They are the intangible borders that divide countries by difference in the ideology of the political, economic and / or social system. Conflicts with tangible effects arise from ideological or cultural borders.

A first case was that of the communist countries that shared the ideas of the USSR and the western countries aligned with the capitalist system of the United States during the Cold War.

The second case occurred after the Cold War, when the USSR disintegrated and the Balkan countries that made it up entered into a dispute over the political, cultural and ideological borders that previously held them together.

Finally there is Korea, which before 1945 was a single nation but due to the ideological borders that emerged, North and South Korea were politically divided later.

11- Continental border

Those that delimit the State within the continental context (Sociedad Geográfica de Colombia, 2017).

12- Extracontinental border

Are those islands, islets or keys outside the territorial area (including the maritime space of 200 nautical miles) such as the case of the British Virgin Islands, Monserrat and Anguilla that belong to the United Kingdom; the Virgin Islands and Hawaii that belong to the United States; o Sint Maarten and Guadeloupe that belong to France.

They generally belong to countries with a history of imperial expansion during the 18th and 19th centuries such as England, France and the Netherlands.

References

1. Encyclopedia. (11 of 7 of 2017). Boundaries. Retrieved from Encyclopedia.com: encyclopedia.com
2. McColl, R. (2005). boundaries, political. In R. McColl, Encyclopedia of World Geography (pp. 109-110). New York: Facts On File.
3. Mercado Celis, A., & Gutiérrez Romero, E. (2004). Borders in North America. Multidisciplinary Studies,. Mexico DF: National Autonomous University of Mexico.
4. National Geographic. (11 of 7 of 2017). Border. Retrieved from National Geographic: nationalgeographic.org
5. Ossorio, M. (11 of 7 of 2017). Border. Obtained from United Nations Office at Geneva. Division of Conference Management: conf.unog.ch
6. Geographical Society of Colombia. (12 of 7 of 2017). Historical background of the borders. Obtained from the Geographical Society of Colombia, Academy of Geographical Sciences.: sogeocol.edu.co
7. Geographical Society of Colombia. (11 of 7 of 2017). Classes of borders. Obtained from the Geographical Society of Colombia, Academy of Geographical Sciences.: sogeocol.edu.co.