SUMMARY
Border has become a multiple political concept in the post-Cold War period than it has been before. Political processes like the European integration, globalization and increased networking of trade, business and people have challenged traditional thinking of state borders. At the same time the borders have been re-securitized and used for othering and defining national identities. The Ukrainian Crisis has returned geopolitical vocabulary to the every-day debates and the refugee crisis challenges core principles of the EU and Schengen region. This paper introduces a theoretical framework based on conceptual history that can be applied on studying how borders have been defined and used in the political language. Through conceptual history, a relation between academic, political and public discourses of borders can be traced and identified. This can help to understand multiplicity of state borders and especially how, and why they are powerful tools for driving certain political agendas. The paper contributes to theoretical discussion on how to understand borders and bordering in contemporary political language. Also the paper notes that ‘border’ itself has been less studied in comparison to other key concepts of the post-Cold War politics.