A border is more than a territorial demarcation. It is a product of power, and it grows, changes, and moves as that power demands. Nations internalize borders; people do too, sometimes by choice, but more often against their will. Scholar and activist Harsha Walia elaborates on the exploitative architecture of borders:
From ICE agents kidnapping people in their homes to the apartheid wall on Palestinian homelands, the border is not a static line on a map. The border is best understood as an elastic regime that extends and thickens across space and time. It reproduces a racial colonial social order, fortifies gated communities against the rest, deflates labour power, treats land as a possession and is the structural basis for all repressive immigration policies. An egalitarian future demands the abolition of the border as well as the abolition of the conditions that give rise to the border. A borderless world is a world against all bordering regimes, centring our right to be housed and stay in those homes, to move in search of safety and to return to our lands.
More picks about borders
A Theology of Smuggling
“In the early 1980s, in Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their collaboration galvanized the Sanctuary Movement.”
The H-2A Visa Trap
“She was sold the American dream with a farmworker visa. Shewound up in a nightmare.”
Death in Nogales
“An unarmed Mexican migrant was shot dead on an Arizona ranch. The response revealed widespread support for violence at the border.”
