9th week: Borders

 



I have several friends who don't believe in borders. They say that the world is for all: we should travel freely. In my case, I think is a good dream for travelers, and I also understand and take international borders, as a reality. Every country is like a house, and the people of that house say who enters and who doesn't. The thing for me is that this issue is more complicated than that. Maybe if it wasn't for artificial borders, discrimination still could exist.


Borders are very complicated. As the author Nail (2015: p. 2) mentioned: "What remains problematic about border theory is that it is not strictly a territorial, political, juridical, or economic phenomenon but equally an aterritorial, apolitical, nonlegal, and noneconomic phenomenon at the same time". Borders are not only the line that divides countries but also what is in between and more. The most complicated thing is what happens outside and inside the border. Nail continued, "a border seems to be something created not only by the societies that divide them within and from one another but also something that is required for the very existence of society itself as “a delimited social field” in the first place. In this sense, the border is both constitutive of and constituted by society." (p. 4). That said, borders are something that is also projected as collective thinking between cultures. Even inside a country, there are borders. Inside a city, there are borders. Inside our house, we build borders. Borders are limits.


Returning to the borders between countries, there are issues not only about the natural resources but also the economic and social issues that the border brings. To go through a border means hope but also danger and money. That big hope of having a better life, or just a vacation, can make a person live a terrible experience or lose their freedom or their life. In the world, there are several known borders known for the terrible things that happen around them: El Hueco, between USA and Mexico; Hellas hell in the Mediterranean Sea between Africa and Europe, Turkey and Russia, North Korea and South Korea and many more. Some are by land, some by sea, and don't forget the air borders. So humans, are interested in making limits and declaring land and resources as their own. Making territories accessible for some. Even the moon, has already been in consideration. To protect it from being claimed as a territory of any country it exists the  Outer Space Treaty (UNOOSA, 1966) which established:

  • The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;
  • Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
  • Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

Etc.


Coming back to Earth, societies have this need to claim a territory as their own; so "borders are the key to understanding networked connectivity as well as questions of identity, belonging, political conflict, and societal transformation" (Neil, 2015: p. 5). Just the question of identity is an issue that affects everything else. We want to be identified not only legally by a particular color passport but also by some culture. Some cultures are 'better' than others, at least to be presented at the world. Having a nationality also brings prejudice and this turns into social/political treatment, life opportunities, and more. Is not only an issue of traveling anywhere as my friends say, but it is also what you carry when you are identified from someplace between these borders and outside of them. Also, is about the problems of life opportunities in the world. That's why the border cannot be understood in terms of physical territory alone. It is also "to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them" (Anzaldúa, 1987). 


Bibliography

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/la frontera. na, 1987.

Nail, Thomas. Theory of the Border. Oxford University Press, 2016. 

UNNOSA, 1966. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies Link: https://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf

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