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Quote :Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish between us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A Borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residual of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.
Political borders are imaginary lines on a map that separate one place from another, one group of people from another. They separate "us" from "them."
A Borderland is an emotional or psychological state that is a consequence of a political border. People whose lives are divided by a political border (their family's over there, and they're over here, for example) are forced to live in a Borderland emotional and psychological state. Because their lives are split between borders, they're considered to be—and they feel like—outsiders. They don't quite fit anywhere.