The infrastructural side effects of geopolitics: Fortuitous Socio-biological Modifications to three European borders

Borderlands are often presented as political landscapes characterized by fixed infrastructures that help to regulate who comes in or out of a country. In this brief essay, however, we put the focus on the triangle of (geo)politics, nature, and infrastructure by exploring what kind of socio-biological entanglements are generated along three newly established borders. These entanglements will help us understand certain aspects of how temporal regimes and socio-material arrangements are embedded in border areas. We provide snapshots of roads at the Georgian–Abkhazian borderland, the mobile frontier fences between Georgia and South Ossetia, and both vernacular and official bordering practices at the water reservoir along the Estonian–Russian border. None of these frontiers existed prior to 1991. In all three cases (situated at the periphery of Europe), geopolitical changes are perceived as disturbances marking a much longer formation time.