On the natural border: A bio‐geo‐political reading

Abstract

Abstract This article engages in a critical analysis of the concept of the natural border. It highlights its inherently biopolitical nature by exploring how it intersects with biology, history and geography. In the last decades, critical border studies have deeply questioned the naturality of borders. As a consequence, the concept could sound today as nothing more than the relict of late nineteenth‐century positivist and descriptive physical geography. However, discourses on natural borders are not as dusty as one may think: the idea of the natural border has been consistently exploited as part of new right‐wing populist narratives, all the more so in a political scenario in which the reclaiming of territorial sovereignty has become a main pillar of populist discourse. While critical approaches have developed a biopolitical perspective on bordering processes, we argue that the ontology of the natural border needs to be further investigated. By tuning into the debate on Friedrich Ratzel and the biopolitical nature of his work, we investigate early twentieth‐century border theories developed by Italian geographers. Ultimately, through the under‐researched case of Italian geographical thought, the paper demonstrates how natural borders are conceived, and how they work, as a biopolitical dispositif.

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