Borders became a major preoccupation of the long, tortuous Brexit negotiations beginning six years ago. Once the preserve of a small band of eccentric borders studies academics, Brexit filled the air with border talk, focused mainly on the island of Ireland.
Brexit threatened to re-establish a hard, securitised border on the island, a border that had been effectively softened and rendered imperceptible for two decades. During the negotiations process the UK Government appeared to concede that a hard Irish border was unacceptable. Since rebordering on the island appeared to be rejected an Irish Sea Border emerged as the negotiated alternative.

However, the recalcitrance of the UK Government on the Northern Ireland Protocol attached to the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement (of October 2019) – which delivered the ‘Irish Sea Border’ – gives rise a multitude of bordering possibilities including the return of a hard Irish border or the creation of a Celtic Sea Border between the Island of Ireland and mainland Europe.

The end of this bordering dance may well be borderlessness on the island of Ireland and a ‘united Ireland’.