The Borders Issue in the Global South: A Comparative Study between Latin America, Africa and the Arab World

Abstract

This article proposes a comparative analysis of how the borders of Latin America, the Arab World and Africa were – and still are – built, legitimized and contested. Based on a constructivist perspective, which understands that not only state sovereignty, but also state borders, are socially constructed, the text seeks to demonstrate that even if the countries located in the three regions are recognized as sovereign entities in the current international system, the processes that led to the definition and establishment of their borders responded to different logics and had differentiated dynamics. In methodological terms, the comparative method supported by the hermeneutic approach was adopted. The study concludes that Latin American borders were built at a historical moment when the system was more permissive for territorial acquisition through war. The African continent, on the other hand, had its colonial borders maintained by the new independent nations, as these were fundamental to both avoid conflicts and to guarantee its international recognition. Finally, in the Arab world, contesting borders meant erasing the artificial borders that divided the imagined Arab nation