Encounters in Borderlands: Intersections of Life and Technology at Frankfurt Airport

Focusing on a global hub of aviation, Frankfurt airport, this paper examines the ways in which life, technology, and ecology intersect in airport operation. In order to understand how airport practices constantly negotiate the borders with local environments or even produce new ones, we draw on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “borderlands.” Extending it from human to non-human inhabitants and passengers of airports opens up for novel possibilities to apprehend the affective dimension in the life-technology intersections at airports. In this sense, the airport is a site of multiple borderlands, producing intersections that include material and imaginative, sometimes violent, boundary drawing. We understand these intersections as historical and contemporary configurations that highlight the production of different hybrid ecologies.

Susanne Bauer (University of Oslo), Nils Güttler (ETH Zurich) and Martina Schlünder (MPIWG/University of Oslo) are historians of science and STS scholars, working collectively on the environmental history of Frankfurt airport.