Current Research Projects

The 21^st Century Borders grant is a seven-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. The research program builds off the work of the previous Borders in Globalization SSHRC Partnership Grant (2013-2020) which sought to understand the changing nature of borders through six thematic areas in order to document how state-centred and territorially-fixated research limits our understanding of borders. 21^st Century Borders builds off the work done in the first grant with the goal of exploring and advancing the required epistemological shift from a state- centric and territorial logic to nodal and mobile logics that focus on both the internal and external forces that challenge the territorial integrity of states. While the first grant revealed the limitations of state-centred and territorially bound understanding of borders, this grant seeks to understand how we, as academics and policymakers, can move beyond that model.

We do this by focusing on three interrelated themes:

• Pillar 1: Looking inside of states at how Indigenous awareness and resurgences, along with increasingly prevalent politics of nationhood and nationalism, affect, fragment, and re-draft intergovernmental relations.
• Pillar 2: Examining the relationship between bordering processes and states’ territoriality, with particular attention paid to examining trade flows and human mobility – both within a states’ international boundaries and across international and transnational legal and regulatory regimes.
• Comparing how the politics in both the above-mentioned cases affect the geopolitics of borders across global regimes.

Quality data on trip-purpose, origin-destination patterns, and traveler demographics is an important part of transportation system planning – explaining reasons for changes in demand, identifying emerging needs for reallocation of resources and targeted investments, and revealing opportunities for system optimization from operational and policy changes. A 2025-26 passenger survey will not only provide more current data, but it will maintain a valuable time series – passenger surveys are conducted roughly every five years, and the last survey was completed in 2019.

In addition to the standardized metrics gathered from every survey, specific topics are of particular interest in this 2025 effort, including:

• Changes in volume: since COVID border travel restrictions were lifted, cross-border vehicle volume in the region is still about 70 percent of Pre-COVID levels. Agencies and border communities want to understand how cross-border travel habits and trip-making patterns have changed and what factors may indicate about whether changes are likely short-term or longer-lasting.
• Border wait time system usage: A design for a new binational border wait time system has been completed, and the implementation of the project is in planning. To provide valuable information into this project, the passenger survey will include questions about how drivers use the current wait-time information systems and details regarding access to information and decision-making.
• Electric vehicles: Interested regional stakeholders want to conduct an observational recording of the percentage of electric vehicles in the regional, cross-border vehicle population (as well as estimated vehicle ages of all vehicles, make, model).

Whatcom County’s location adjacent to the Canadian border and the lower mainland of British Columbia creates a unique cross-border relationship that influences many aspects of our economy. Our region is home to one of the busiest gateways for cross-border travel along the entire 5,500 mile Canada – US border, shaping trends in tourism, business ownership, and even real estate. These trends, however, are influenced not only by local conditions but also by broader binational developments, such as Covid-19 and more recently by geopolitical tensions between Canada and the United States. Given the critical importance of the Canadian relationship to the vitality of multiple sectors of Whatcom County’s economy, understanding these relationships and their vulnerability to disruptions is a key factor in supporting our region’s economic resilience. 

The Whatcom County Border Community Working Group was recently formed to gather data about the economic impact of Canadian visitors and business investment in Whatcom County and is a collaboration between WWU programs and the broader community. The group includes WWU’s Small Business Development Center, the Border Policy Research Institute (BPRI), and the Center for Economic and Business Research in partnership with external local stakeholders. Drawing from a range of expertise, this coalition will collect and monitor a variety of economic indicator data to share with the public.