Deeper Histories of Immigration - #3 Borders

My third letter in this series is about borders – and it’s been hard to write. Not because borders don’t have a history, but because they’re so fluid and full of contradictory meanings and practices.

So, I thought I’d very briefly show how broad and plural the meanings of borders can be.

The basic reason for this plurality: borders are contingent social constructions 🏗 and they change as the purposes and capabilities of actors change.

There’s nothing “natural” about them (though they do piggy back off natural topography, like ⛰ , 🏝 , and 🌊 ).

Today’s notion of a political border gained in importance with the emergence of the concept of territorial state sovereignty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

That’s when border came to mean cartographic lines agreed to divide, above all politically, one state from another, one state’s subjects/citizens from each other, granting states exclusive right to admit and expel aliens 🛂

But today, the most noteworthy element is the different meanings the concept of border holds – well beyond what dictionary definitions can contain.

Here are 3️⃣ examples of how borders aren’t just "lines on a map” but rather a range of bounded practices and process steered by political purposes:

1️⃣ The US “100-mile zone.” As far in as 100 miles from the southern border, US Border Patrol can conduct internal checkpoints, stop, question, search, and detain individuals, just like at border crossing point or along the international border line. These operations are highly secretive.

❗ Here, the concept of the border is widened internally. And so is the securitization regime directed at controlling “illegals.”

2️⃣ Offshore or extra-territorial centers for asylum seekers. The Nauru and Manus Island detention centers that were run by Australia come to mind. As do the various attempts by European countries to set up offshore asylum processing centers.

❗ Here, the concept of the border is widened externally in order to entirely circumvent the possibility of receiving territorial asylum.

3️⃣ Demilitarized zones. Some countries where conflict is a standing possibility aren’t separated by lines, but by wider buffer zones, e.g., the Korean Demilitarized Zone and the Green Line on Cyprus.

Such zones are no man’s land, often protected on both sides with barbed wire and armed guards. No personnel is allowed to enter. Because humans retreat from them entirely, the ecosystems tend to thrive and rebound.

➡ We can’t think of borders in simplistic, naturalistic, and unitary terms. We have to examine them as parts of broader but bounded historical, political, social, cultural, economic, and geographic processes.