Boundary work and the (un)making of global cooperation: mapping the terrain

Abstract While borders are on the rise in both political practice and academic research, more mundane practices of boundary work continue to make, remake and unmake transnational knowledges, spaces and identities. In this special section, we argue that global politics unfolds through boundary work, an understudied but highly effective set of ordering practices that shape the conditions for and dynamics of global (non-)cooperation. We leverage recent innovations in the study of boundary work in other fields to transcend the conventional portrayal of boundaries as instruments of exclusion and competition. Instead, we equally attend to their potential to facilitate inclusion and cooperation between otherwise differently positioned actors. Building on this conceptual foundation, the contributions to this collection offer novel, empirically grounded insights into diverse types of boundary work (competitive, collaborative and configurational) across several important transnational domains and institutional sites. These insights will be of particular relevance to practitioners of global politics, who regularly confront boundaries. Overall, we encourage scholars of International Relations to pay more attention to the constitutive effects and dynamics of boundary work in global politics.