Many would argue that the map- maker's drawing of geographic boundaries is artificial and does not always correspond with reality, or gives a distorted picture of geographic difference. For example, we commonly regard the UK to be a highly prosperous country, and might think of Eastern European countries like Romania as economically polar opposites. This view is based on privileging the national borders that exist between countries. But when we draw a different set of boundaries, the story changes – comparing across the continent of Europe at a smaller geographic scale, we see that many parts of the UK (especially north- east England, Wales and Cornwall) have economic output levels similar to the average levels within what we would regard as the least prosperous countries of the European Union (EU). This underlines the arbitrary and dubious way we carve up the geography of the world, and the stories this foregrounds and those it obscures. It raises questions about how we draw geographic boundaries and makes the study of the borders within even more crucial.

But when it comes to the borders within nation- states, this question of drawing the boundaries does not go away and, if anything, becomes even more complicated. First, there are questions about what and where these borders actually are. Unlike national borders that demarcate countries, the borders within are debatable, ambiguous and hidden – that's because they are often dependent upon individual and subjective perceptions that are not recorded on mapping systems.