Geographia Polonica (2026) vol. 99, iss. 3

Abstract

International law institutionalises a presumption of navigational openness, yet contemporary maritime geopolitics repeatedly produces situations in which sea-space becomes de facto constrained, filtered, or temporarily “closed.” This article conceptualises this gap as a problem of maritime rebordering: the activation of multi-actor mechanisms that reconfigure the practical openness of maritime borders despite formal passage regimes. Building on processual border theory (bordering–debordering–rebordering) and recent work on oceanic bordering and governance, the paper develops a mechanism-based model explaining how rebordering is produced through coercive-security practices, regulatory–juridical gating, risk–market pricing, information–surveillance regimes, and material–infrastructural/environmental constraints, while treating irregular migration, piracy, and other non-state violence as recurrent activation drivers that mobilise these mechanisms. The model is operationalised through four diagnostic case studies: Hormuz, Gibraltar, the Babal-Mandeb–Suez corridor, and the Danish Straits/Kiel Canal, analysed via a common matrix. The paper contributes a transferable typology and a flowchart of “rebordering activation logic” that clarifies why maritime borders are increasingly experienced as selectively permeable infrastructures of power – open to some flows, filtered or closed to others – under conditions of geopolitical volatility, securitisation, and environmental disruption.

Keywords: maritime borders, rebordering, chokepoints, straits, geopolitics, selective permeability, maritime security, irregular migration, non-state violence, maritime domain awareness, risk pricing

Denis Cerić [d.ceric@twarda.pan.pl], Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warsaw: Poland
Marek Więckowski [marekw@twarda.pan.pl], Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warsaw: Poland; Institute of Geography Slovak Academy of Sciences Štefánikova 49, 814 73 Bratislava: Slovakia