Sieve or Shield? High Tech Firms and Entrepreneurs and the Impacts of COVID 19 on North American Border Regions

This study examines the role of international borders in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to unprecedented national decisions to close borders in order to contain the domestic contagion. The idea that borders act as shields conflicts with the needs of cross-border regions, as they rely on networks straddling the borders for goods and services’ provisions. This paper explores different approaches at individual, local, and regional policy levels used to counterbalance such impacts. As evidenced by North American border closures to most non-citizens seeking entry (shield effects), it is important to understand how professionals, firms, and their networks exercised various forms of agency (sieve effects) to negotiate the border and its policies during this most unusual time. Drawing from a comparative study between two North American border regions distinguished for their thriving innovative business ecosystems – Cascadia (Seattle-Vancouver) along the Canada-U.S. border and Calibaja (San Diego-Tijuana) along the Mexico-U.S. border – we seek to understand how COVID-19 measures have influenced cross-border economies through unprecedented responses to crisis management.