Separation or Permeability

Each and every empirical analysis of statehood, sovereignty, and territorial delimitation disrupts and contradicts conventional understanding of states as clearly demarcated geopolitical entities. Historically, concept of dynastic sovereign rule over a territory emerged after carnage of first European or Thirty Years' War of 1618-48. In it, one third of central European population perished, and nobilities and rulers sorely missed revenues of these once productive and taxpaying subjects. In peace of 1648-49, their delegates established so-called Westphalian state system that still exists at beginning of 21st century: To prevent another European war, rulers held sovereignty over their territory, borders were meant to be inviolable, neighbouring rulers were not to interfere with internal affairs of other states.However, these self-contained polities, in an economic and sociological perspective, were part of larger spaces. In first place, their mercantilist policies attempted to attract economically active subjects from other states, while politics of intolerance expelled men and women of unwanted variants of Christian religious creeds and practices: borders were permeable for migrants. Secondly, Enlightenment thought and age of revolution changed location of sovereignty to the without, however, deleting previous connection between sovereignty and territory: political theory became inconsistent. Thirdly, Europe's ruling nobility, whether intermarrying or fighting, was transeuropean, and dismembered or expanded territorial states to suit their interests. Finally, political thought, as well as culture and language of educated, were also transeuropean. French was means of communication among intellectuals, German among artisans, Latin among Roman Catholic clerics. Political entities and cultural spaces expanded and contracted like an accordion depending on power relations and hegemonies of thought and culture.1Notwithstanding these inconsistencies, concept of bordered, territorial, culturally homogenized nation-states became ruling paradigm in 19th-centuty Europe and, with colonial and imperial expansion, took hold in white settler colonies that became United States, Canada, and Australia. After 1870s, when Germany and Italy had unified, and ideologies of national-genetic or bloodline-belonging been vested with allegedly scientific character, borders became less permeable. Passports were introduced, interdynastic relations became inter-national or, perhaps more correctly, inter-state relations.2 The concept of bordered nationstates was, in mid-20th-century period of decolonization, also imposed on states emerging from European powers' former empires.A perspective from the people, individual men and women as well as families that lived in constructs of state and nation, would have questioned paradigm of self-contained monocultural polities as empirically unsound.3 Throughout 19th century, belonging was local and regional rather than national or statewide. The national languages were spoken by educated, while common people expressed themselves in dialects often not mutually comprehensible. Furthermore, between 1815 and 1930s some 55 million men and women left European states to which, by racializing corollary of late 19th-century thought, they were said to be genetically tied-to conduct their lives in other societies-states-nations, mainly in North and South America. Far larger numbers migrated within and between European states.4Based on many issues raised by dichotomy between political theory and everyday life-projects, we argue that states were historically less bordered and self-contained than public opinion and scholarly nation-state approach have since assumed. We will address, first, permeability of borders in period of mass migration at turn to 20th century, taking as examples migrants born in some region of Europe, China, or elsewhere who selected Canada as a destination. …

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