Materialising the International: Reifying India-Pakistan Relations in Infrastructures at the Attari-Wagah Border Crossing Point

States shape international relations through rules and regulations, but also through investments (or the lack thereof) in infrastructures. Border fences, security scanners, roads and trade facilitation centres can provide insights into relations between states. They are projections of the social relations that go into producing these physical spaces, and often subject to contestation. They shape everyday practices and are constitutive of the international, though much of the literature on international relations has relegated the study of its material aspects to the background. Countering this trend and contributing to a broadening body of literature on the ‘material turn’ in IR, this paper explores the relationship between physical and social spaces in international relations. It does so through the analysis of positions taken by security and economic actors on infrastructure developments at the Attari-Wagah border crossing point connecting the two Punjabs with India, Pakistan, South and Central Asia. It draws on nine months of ethnographically informed fieldwork conducted in India and Pakistan between 2015 and 2017, which revealed how the positions taken on India-Pakistan relations materialised in infrastructures along the border dividing these two neighbours. This infrastructure in turn shaped everyday practices of border guards, custom officials, traders, truck drivers and labourers, for whom this border and border crossing point is an important source of livelihood.