I don’t get it. I understand that we have borders as a way to have different sets of laws and separate different governments from each other. But why are people so obsessed with making the borders keep people out, or restrict what can come in, tax goods moving between them, etc.
Borders aren’t real. At least not physically. If I cross state lines I don’t see a literal giant black line dividing, say, North Dakota from South Dakota. In fact I wouldn’t know there was a difference if not for the sign saying “Welcome to South Dakota”
For some reason humans can’t conceive of a world where we all live on the same chunk of land and we somehow have to separate each other.
Shouldn’t humans have a basic right to live where they have the best chance of survival? It seems like borders are just an excuse to exploit people along arbitrary lines by making up more rules to control humans who were born in the “wrong place”.
I must be missing something. All of this effort around nations and patriotism over “I live here so I’m better than you” or “those humans suck because they live on THAT chunk of land instead of this one”… we’re all the same species and yet we collectively seek out ways to divide ourselves and place people far away “beneath” us. All for some lines on a map.
Thanks for reading my Monday rant.
Racism.
That’s it. It’s just about racially segregating different nations into white and not white.
Well also there’s the material base of restricting the movement of labor while allowing the free flow of capital across borders, allowing for certain populations to be superexploited in their home countries and for the imperial core to vacuum up skilled labor while keeping the supply of so-called “unskilled” labor high in exploited countries etc. etc.
But for the average person it’s just racism.
As I was walkin’ I saw a sign there. And, that sign said “No trespassing”. But, on the other side it didn’t say nothing. Now, that side was made for you and me.
The transition from kingdoms to empires to nation-states created a whole lot of borders that don’t make sense even with the fucked up logic that supposedly liberal democratic nation-states use to describe themselves. Like why is Belgium even a country, what’s tying them together? And their border with the Netherlands has a bunch of stupid little enclaves and exclaves because some dukes or earls or whatever got drunk and traded them back and forth in a card game or something like 400 years ago.
Geopolitical power comes mainly from 3 things, resources, technology, and controlling your “excess” (i.e. the people that do the “worst” work) population. Historically borders have been an effective means to more-or-less control all 3.
Controlling your own borders is really childs play, controlling other people’s borders is where the fun really starts. Sykes-Picot for example ensured that the Middle East would fight over resources (water, arable land) and who the “excess” population should be by drawing borders in creative ways preventing the reformation of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat.
You’re hitting on a deep point: that it’s not merely that freedom of movement that is hampered by borders, but that it creates completely bizarre and artificial geographical social complexity that has no bearing on the real, actual activities and cultural fabric of the people who cross those borders. Many of you live next to a border: reflect on how in adds complexity and inefficiency to your lives for no particular reason. Particularly egregious are political borders that run along rivers - the people of these regions are usually united by the river, but then the border creates nonsensical division (Kansas City comes to mind as a city united by rivers, and then fucked with by borders).
I feel you, though.
Because corporations operating in different jurisdictions exploit labor and resources in the jurisdiction they operate in, and have a vested interest in upholding a global division of humanity that facilitates higher rates of exploitation in the Global South.
For nation building creating borders and myths about a coherent one nation within clear borders has been essential for states of all kinds during modernization. In Finland for example the area that is now called Finland was a loosely defined area of land with various peoples, cultures and languages. To start hegemonizing all these into some seemingly homogenous whole that can be rallied to fight wars or propagandized againts some dangerous Others, you need to draw a border thay defines the Other and those who belong.
Similar borders exist between most things, marginalized groups within a culture exist behind an internal border, but there is always a privileged center that is defined by what is outside it.
This is imo one reason why conservatives so hate postmodern open definitions of things, when you cannot draw a clear line in the sand between your (typically supremacist) side of a border and borders become loosely defined, the systems themselves reveal their constructed nature.
Capitalism itself could not function in its neoliberal global form without borders and they are essential to imperialism. Not to mention how they are used in dividing the working class and pitting workers against each other.
For common people, we’re all still very tribal. Those people over there suck and I don’t want them to do okay. That’s it. People get off on feeling like they’re part of the group, and the out-group is being defeated.
Highly recommend Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.
The securitization and militarization of borders functions as a valve to control the flow of labour and capital. By destabilizing the economies of the Global South, the North is able to secure capital flow into their countries, while limiting capital flow out. At the same time, the militarization of the border creates a tiered system of labour that fixes labourers into the destablized economies of the South, where they can be hyperexploited, while also ensuring the precarity of migrants in the North to serve as a domestic force of hyperexploitable labour.
Basically, by controlling who is allowed to move where, capital can ensure desperate labourers are available to work for a pittance in special economic zones, while also having a ready supply of domestic labour that is reliant on their visas (or fear of deportation through undocumented status) to suppress wages in the core.
Borders have had other meanings in the past (though still mostly economic), but this is by far the main point of modern nation-state border securitization. An argument can be made about jurisdictional limits being important (and they are, because it allows for differing rules and regulations and creating different tiers of labour based on citizenship), but if that was what mattered most the actual militarization and securitization of the border wouldn’t really help with that.
It’s all for trade/labor arbitrage. Borders are invisible for capitalists and bourgeois, and only restrict labor as required.
The only legitimate use for borders I can see is to control invasive species and all jokes aside, no, human beings don’t count in that regard.
