Ocean Governance (Beyond) Borders

This Open Access book “Ocean Governance (Beyond) Borders” is concerned with the persistence of bordering in ocean space, and the possibilities that might arise if we think beyond borders for modes of oceanic management, engaging the ocean’s fluid physicality and the mobile human and more-than-human life entangled with it. At a moment where ocean governance is a pressing topic amongst academics, policy makers, governments and non- governmental agencies alike, this book takes on one of the most overlooked but central devices underscoring many modes of oceanic management: the border.

Uniquely combining contemporary border scholarship with cutting edge ocean governance research this book tackles themes ranging from biodiversity conservation and asylum regulations to shipping management measures, tourism, and the growing blue economy. This edited volume hence explores varied bordering practices, whilst also addressing the ‘common-senseness’ with which bordering is deployed at sea, questioning – and problematising – its function and efficacy. Throughout 12 carefully curated chapters, authors ask: What borders are present in the seas and oceans, where and why? In doing this the book offers readers a simple provocation: Do we need borders? And can we govern differently?

Kimberley Peters leads a research group in Marine Governance at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a collaboration between the University of Oldenburg and Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany. Within this interdisciplinary centre Kim uses spatial frames for understanding how watery spaces are organised and managed, and takes a critical approach to interrogating operations of power at sea.

Jennifer Turner is the leader of the Crime and Carcerality Research Group at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Trained as a geographer, Jennifer’s work is concerned with infrastructures of containment and bordering practice. Her most recent work interrogates seas and oceans as ‘carceral spaces’.