Big data

Beyond physical borders, “invisible borders” limit interaction between specific groups of people. These “social borders” are historically and socially constructed and result from a wide range of factors such as cultural differences, absence of connecting infrastructure, or even rivalry and prejudice. Insights into such borders can help us understand the social, civic, and commercial interactions that do or do not exist, in contemporary nations. As studying the phenomena that lead to these borders is highly complex, simply defining and mapping these borders is a first step towards better governance, planning and other policy. Newly available digital records of human interaction coupled with geographic information have great potential to uncover ‘social borders’ and are therefore providing a whole new array of empirical observations for the study of this topic.