This article examines the Kashmir dispute by using the border – the ambivalent spatiality created by the Line of Control (LoC) – as a method to analyse the borderland. Through the adoption of a borderland perspective, it explores the way in which various sites in the divided territories are affected by territorialization processes related to transformations of the state space. By looking at how people there refer to the disputed context of Kashmir, the article highlights forms in which people are being bordered and the conditions of political life in these territories. The Kashmir borderland thus emerges as a distinct political space and belonging becomes a conceptual tool with which to contextualize the cultural, social and spatial perceptions and experiences of individuals or groups about that space in contrast to objective political forms of membership. The focus on belonging unveils senses of loss, displacement and marginalization but also emerging forms of dissent against state making processes