Hi there!
This is a little different than most of the notes I throw in my journal section. But I’ve recently done a semester’s worth of academic writing, ultimately to improve my style and technical skill. So I figured there was no harm in sharing one of the essays I wrote this semester at UvA, just as a time capsule of sorts. I’m not quite happy with all aspects of the essay, and there are things here I hope to flesh out more one day. But this was my favorite essay from the semester. If nothing else, it made me think about borders and migration in a whole new way. The assignment asked me to explain what borders ‘make’ and ‘do,’ based on the book Illegal Traveler: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders by Shahram Khosravi. Please enjoy, or don’t. It’s your life.
Borders are meaningful constructs which inform the way we as people view the nation-states that are in many cases the bases for personal and collective identities. These borders have been naturalized into our very conceptions of land by their superimposition on rivers, mountains and deserts which physically separate geographical areas. While the mountains do not care if a person lives on one side or the other, the modern nation-state system depends on the distinction of what is ‘home,’ and what is outside. Here I will lean on the work of Shahram Khosravi and Nicolas De Genova to argue that borders which create a ‘self’ simultaneously create an ‘other.’ I make the case that while this delineation does grant many a formalized notion of ‘home’ and links them to a political body, the process ‘others’ anyone from outside the lines and leaves undocumented people without the basic rights gained through such a political belonging. This process is not simple and has several dimensions, from the ways border crossers are criminalized and borderlands ritualized, to the ways migrants are exploited financially, to the invisible process by which undocumented migrants are made to carry the weight of the border itself. Khosravi’s 2010 auto-ethnography, ‘Illegal’ Traveller, details his experience of the dynamics of Eurasian and Middle Eastern borders, while De Genova’s Annual Review article “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life” is a summation of scholarship concerning undocumented migration up to the 2000s. They both lend theoretical support to the idea that the creation of borders in turn creates criminals for nations to defend themselves against. And while nations defend themselves against the crime they created, they alienate people who wish to move freely, not to mention those in danger who are forced to migrate.
Recent discourses around migrants, refugees, and travelers have made clear the discomfort and defensiveness of major nation-states toward infiltration by refugees and undocumented persons. The defensiveness is most evident in the way the liminal spaces between nations are regulated. But why are borders policed so heavily? According to Shahram Khosravi, the illegalization by nation-states of undocumented crossing has made anyone who needs to cross into a criminal. He references Catherine Dauvergne: “Redefining a social issue as a crime, and categorizing an affected group as criminals, is a political strategy to legitimate further intervention into matters not previously regarded as criminal” (Dauvergne 2008, cited in Khosravi 2010, 21). In fact, some of the men Khosravi met while detained at the border of Iran and Afghanistan were Baluchi tribesmen, who at one time crossed the border freely but now do so in violation of the nation-state system (Khosravi 2010, 17). In short, the border makes criminals. In the defense against violators, systems have been put in place to regulate who enters and exits the country, and not all migrants are treated equally in the process. The first line of defense is at the borders. Border cities used to be the primary checkpoints in some places, but as tactful travelers began traversing rugged mountains and vast deserts to find passage, governments started to station border agents strategically along more remote stretches. (Khosravi 2010) When border transgressors are found out, they are usually detained and later deported. Unless, like 500 human beings a year between Mexico and the United States, or 700 along European borders (Khosravi 2010, 28), they never make it to the other side. As Khosravi puts it, “Sacrificing border transgressors is part of the worship of the nation-state and acknowledgement of its sovereignty” (Khosravi 2010, 29). When secure borders require sacrifices, border crossing becomes a ritual. Migrants prepare themselves to cross over from the pre-liminal (their country of origin) to the post-liminal (their destination) via the liminal (the borderlands). Ritual performances are thus expected from all parties. The border crossers are expected either to act like they’re just travelling, or act like a refugee seeking asylum, even if the migration is not necessarily forced. Khosravi talks about the necessity to “translate one’s life story into Eurocentric juridical language and to…wear dirty clothes and…look ‘sad’ and ‘profound’” (Khosravi 2010, 33). But these are not the only border performances. Patrol agents, bus drivers, airport agents, and lodging administrators are just some of the figures who play specific roles are poised to earn bribes from smugglers along the way. Not to mention much darker ritual acts, whereby many women expect to be beaten and/or raped for passage. Once migrants reach their destination, it is nearly impossible to relax. They are expected to be always on their best behavior, or risk arrest and deportation.
As I mentioned briefly, not all migrants are treated equally in their quest to start a new chapter. This is because borders create their own economy, and not all migrants are of equal economic value to this system. In many cases, the need for cheap labor power means more young men are allowed passage. (Khosravi 2010, 27) Many women and children do not find a way through, because their labor cannot be exploited as such. De Genova asserts that “Undocumented migrations are, indeed, preeminently labor migrations,” and notes that the U.S. Border Patrol actually operated under the umbrella of the Department of Labor from its creation in 1925 until 1940 (Burawoy 1976, Bustamante 1972, 1976, 1978, Castells 1975, Chavez 1992a, Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001, Kearney 1998, and Rouse 1995a,b cited in De Genova 2001, 422). While discussing this capitalist use of migrant labor power, De Genova also points out that in the U.S., while laws may provide a ‘neutral framework’ for accepting and rejecting migrants, they are often applied unevenly, accounting for inequalities between demographics (De Genova 2002, 424). Because the legality is murky and a lot goes unsaid, the public perception may be that a certain population’s lack of success in the American economy is to their discredit. To speak to the stereotype that “Mexicans are good workers,” for example, this perception is probably perpetuated by the U.S.’s tendency to look the other way at the border when able-bodied men come in from Mexico, knowing that they will work for cheap and not complain, or otherwise risk being deported (ibid.). Border economies are at play around the world, with individuals and state agencies who rely on the profitability of criminalizing clandestine travel. Officers sometimes make enough to pay rent through the bribes they receive; Khosravi’s taxi was pulled over at the Karachi airport by police officers who collected 500 rupees from the undocumented migrants and sent them on their way. (Khosravi 2010, 19, 31) While illegal migrants are not necessarily welcome in their destination countries, states tend to use hopeful asylum seekers’ dreams and/or desperation against them. Even in their new ‘homes,’ many migrants are exploited and spread thin financially.
Borders do not only affect their transgressors financially. They create symbolic divisions as well, which can be more enduring and discouraging. On one hand, borders were created to say where is ‘here’ or what is ‘home,’ and there are many people who benefit emblematically between those lines. A sense of pride and belonging is bestowed upon the people who fit the geography, and between the ‘color bars’ (Balibar 2002 cited in Khosravi 2010, 98). Etienne Balibar gave an example of ‘color bars’ in an interview: “When you are in the US, and you apply for a job, sometimes you have to fill out a form. It’s officially for equality and anti-discriminatory policy, but you have to cross boxes: Caucasian, African American, or Hispanic. What are these? What they wanted to include were three forms of discrimination” (Balibar, 2019). This is an issue with the creation of an ‘other’. Seemingly benign questions on a survey can subliminally influence the perception of someone, when often knowing their color is not necessary at all. Khosravi likewise imparts the experience of ‘inclusive exclusion’: “Undesirable people are not expelled by the border, they are forced to be border” (Khosravi 2010, 99). When people are made to feel neither included nor excluded, their life is lived in a constant liminality.
This hesitation to extend perceived ‘outsiders’ the symbolic belonging of the nation is a consequence of borders. Balibar talks in the same interview about the legacy of colonialism being visible today in the way racial hierarchies that were once enforced, legislated, and widely projected are now residual feelings of superiority and deservedness (Balibar 2019). There are still people in every country who see themselves as more (or tragically, less) deserving of a certain set of rights and principles which apply to a constantly morphing population on any arbitrary swath of land. As Khosravi put it after his Afghan informant living in Iran thanked him as the host, “The immigrant as a guest is a metaphor, but people have forgotten that it is a metaphor” (Rosello 2001 cited in Khosravi 2010, 93).
In conclusion, borders are complex mechanisms of human design, put in place to support a desire to categorize. Borders do not only delineate land and embody political entities. They create clandestine economies, confine sets of rights and principles to certain areas and people, and function to reinforce the invisible legacy of colonialism and slavery through complex legal and economic exploitations of anyone deemed ‘other.’ Frankly, it looks to me like there are people who hate the ‘other’ because they struggle to relax the mental hierarchy by which they perceive themselves as above, and so conceptualizing others’ equality functionally lowers their own self-perceived status. Borders, as an extension of this, feel like an immature and insecure justification for reducing ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ to ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ by drawing an arbitrary line in the sand. Theoretically speaking, these are problems associated with viewing the world dualistically, and if we are to reduce border-related death and trauma around the world, we must do so by thinking dialectically, thawing out the concepts of ‘us’ and ‘them’ until they melt back into one.