Systemic Shock and Bordering: Comparative Analysis of the Vulnerability and Resilience of Cross-Border Governance in Europe and North America

The comparative analysis of border regions in the context of systemic shock-induced processes of centralization and rebordering facilitates the understanding contemporary borders’ specificities and commonalities. The COVID-19 pandemic afforded border scholars unique quasi-experimental conditions for such analysis since governments of most countries worldwide implemented analogous policies and measures to reduce the spread and impact of the pandemic. In particular, measures restricting cross-border mobility disrupted the daily life routines and practices of border people and, more generally, the stability of border regions through different forms and degrees of rebordering. Hence, the pandemic put regional capacities and governance structures to the test to deal with uncertainty and risk and incited reactions from regional actors concerned with restoring stability and normalcy. Using the concept of resilience as an analytical lens, this paper examines the responses of local actors in the Spain-Portugal and U.S.-Mexico border regions to systemic shock and the contribution of these responses to cross-border regional resilience.