Abstract

This chapter presents Ohmae’s economistic visions and claims that borders should be open for migrants in the name of freedom of movement, human rights, and economic competitiveness. It explores various perspectives on a ’world without borders’ starting from Ohmae’s economistic thinking and cosmopolitan idealism and then moving onto radical alternatives. The 1990s witnessed a major renaissance in border studies, which had remained rather static since World War II. The 1990s also witnessed the rise of the ’borderless world’ thesis that reverberated with the intensifying flows of finance capital, goods, and cultural influences. The chapter outlines the relations between territory, borders and moral concerns, and looks at the arguments behind the ’borderless world’ thesis as well as its current significance. ’Borderless world’ was also a conceptual novelty, echoing the collapse of the Cold War geopolitical order and the search for a new one.