For some scholars and commentators, the era of globalisation represented a new border-less age. However, the continuing legacy of colonial expansion through contemporary forms of imperialism and mass movement of migrants and refugees, has ensured that, in today's globalised world, the relevance of the border is growing, not declining. Indeed, the question of the border seems more urgent than ever. It is this urgency that has driven us to pause, here, on the idea and problem of 'the border'. We argue that borders are a 'fact' of social life and that the border represents the social and material manifestation of the political and ethical problems of the relationship between the universal and the particular. This relationship is an irresolvable but necessary tension for the pursuit of justice, which we suggest sociological and education work must confront and attend to.