POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics People and Borders Lecture October 27, 2005.

POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics

People and Borders LectureOctober 27, 2005

People and Borders

• In this chapter, the authors main focus is on what we call “borders”

• Most of us take borders for granted (in the same way we take national identity) for granted. That is, we simply assume that the existence of borders is natural and certainly “real,” although we may also recognize that borders are far from permanent.

People and Borders

• The “DMZ”: The border separating North and South Korea. Image on the left shows a guarded fence signifying the border; image on the right show a satellite image of the same area. Where’s the border?

People and Borders

• If a border somehow disappears from one place, it always reappears in another place. Of this, we have no doubt.

• The authors don’t disagree either; however, in their chapter, they want us to think more carefully and seriously about borders. To do so, requires that we begin with some basic questions …

People and Borders

• Why are there so many borders?

• Who draws them? How did they come about in the first place?

• Why are they in the places where they are?

• Can they be changed?

• What happens when they do change?

People and Borders

• Let’s go through some of these questions, beginning with the first: Why are there so many borders? (Discuss)

People and Borders

Why are there so many borders?• One clear reason: borders are fundamental to an

ordered and disciplined social life. They are central to the maintenance of social institutions and the consent we give to them.

• Borders are also play an essential role in shaping our identities; in this sense, borders create a sense of “sameness,” which is necessary for allowing us to differentiate ourselves from others.

People and Borders

Why are there so many borders?• But a sense of sameness carries with it some negative

implications …

• Most important, the sense of sameness implies that those who exist outside our borders are not only different, but potentially dangerous. Outsiders, almost by definition, cannot be trusted.

• Thus borders not only create divisions, but they create the potential for conflict and violence. This doesn’t happen only on an international level, but at a local level as well: there are borders dividing cities, for examples, and borders within cities; even neighborhoods may be sub-divided by borders.

People and Borders

• Next question: Who draws borders? How did they come about in the first place?

• To answer this question, the authors discuss the “genealogy of borders.”

• The most basic definition of genealogy: the study of one's ancestry.

People and Borders

Who draws borders? How did they come about in the first place?

• They note that, long ago, borders most likely reflected divisions among kin groups—that is, groups related by blood ties and marriage

• In these early periods, borders may have been quite fluid and ambiguous, but over time, as the world started getting more crowded relative to available land, the borders solidified.

• As more time passed, borders took on even stronger meaning: they came to signify a more institutionalized system of rule and power.

People and Borders


• During this formative period, borders were not necessarily difficult to cross; ordinary people could move with relative ease from one territory to another.

• Not surprisingly, this began to change, too: the authors point to a couple of reasons for this …

People and Borders


• First, until the late 19th century, most counties were overwhelmingly rural, which meant that populations were generally dispersed. As many countries began to industrialize, however, people were pushed off the land and forced to migrate to cities. Conditions in most cities, however, were deplorable, and this gave rise to discontent and movements for change. Thus, rulers became concerned about who was living in the cities they governed.

People and Borders


• Second, as societies became more complex, there was a growing need for states to know more about the people who lived within the territory they controlled. This meant that they needed to exert more control over who was coming into the country.

People and Borders


• Third, this was a period of mass migration, where hundreds of thousands, and even millions of people began to move from one territory to another (due to war, famine, and oppression). Such mass movements virtually compelled states to enact tighter control of their borders. Thus, by the early 19th century, most states had installed rigorous immigration controls that carefully controlled and regulated the movement of ordinary citizens across borders.

People and Borders


• Since the early 1900s, the trend toward tighter and tighter regulation of borders has generally increased, but not in a perfectly clear cut fashion

• That is, control of borders remains tight with regard to the movement of people (although the authors don’t seem to agree), but has been considerably loosened with regard to the flow of goods, capital, culture and ideas.

People and Borders


• The loosening of borders, it is important to note, is due in part to the process of “globalization.”

• Some argue that globalization is forcing borders to loosen regardless of what states want, while others argue that states are playing a key role in the loosening of borders. This is an important question that we will come back to later.

People and Borders


• Another trend that needs to be highlighted is the reverse of the first: that is, while national borders seem to be losing their power to contain and exclude, new borders are being drawn everywhere, which create ever new forms of containment and exclusion.

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• Most of these new borders, however, have little to do with states per se, but instead are “lines in the mind.”

People and Borders


• By “lines in the mind,” the authors are referring to the borders of racial, ethnic, religious, cultural or political identities--in other words, identity-based groups.

People and Borders


• It is also important to understand that borders serve, more and more, to separate classes of people rather than nationalities. Borders mean one thing to the rich and quite another to the poor.

People and Borders


• Back to the questions: Who draws borders? How did they come about in the first place?

• The short answers are: The rich and powerful generally draw the borders, and borders came about, in large part, to protect the interests and power of the rich.

People and Borders

• Next question: Why are they (borders) in the places where they are?

• We have already addressed this question to some extent, but the authors provide another discussion that helps to understand, from a different perspective, why border are in the places they are.

People and Borders

Why are they (borders) in the places where they are?

• The borders inside: As the authors note, not all borders keep people apart; many keep them together. Moreover, not all borders are meant to divide one space from other, “outside” spaces, but instead are meant to be internal.

• The purpose of these “internal borders,” however, is not necessarily different from external borders; for they are meant keep the rulers in power, while limiting the ability of the ruled to exercise power.

People and Borders


• This was certainly the strategy used by colonial states. To be sure, some of the most important--or obvious--borders drawn were external. That is, those that separated one African “state” from another. The maps on the following slide give a clear indication of how Africa was “carved up” and divided according to the power and interests of the imperialist countries of Europe …

People and Borders


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• But external borders were only part of the picture. Generally, the first thing the European powers did in their occupied territory was to create internal borders designed to separate one group of “natives” from another group of “natives.” These borders were typically invisible, as they depended on defining an “identity” rather than a place.

People and Borders


• The authors use the example of Rwanda to illustrate this point.

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• Another example of an internal border is the border between the “public” and the “private.”

• Nowadays in liberal democracies, the public sphere is considered to be the realm of politics—the place where the government has a legitimate role to play, and where questions of political power are supposed to reside (and be confined).

• The private sphere on the other hand, is restricted to the realm of the family and the economy.

People and Borders


• Is this a reasonable distinction to make? (Discuss)

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• The authors explain it this way, “In today’s liberal societies the border between public and private serves a very political function. It prevents politics from becoming too active and populist be justifying the privatization of decisions about matters affecting society that elites prefer to decide by themselves. If everyone were entitled to participate in making political decisions about the market, capitalism as we know it would be impossible because each of us would demand that our individual interests be served.”

People and Borders


• The authors’ point should be clear: There’s nothing particularly “natural” – or, rather more accurately, apolitical—about the border between the private and public realms. It is meant to ensure that those who “rule” society continue to rule society, preferably without question.

People and Borders


• The authors extend their analysis with discussion of borders in even more unlikely places, as in the borders between bodies.

• What do they mean by this? What is a border between bodies?

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• The way to answer is through examples: the authors argue that the distinctions we make between boys and girls, men and women, fathers and mothers, friends and strangers, blacks and whites, Christians and Muslims, are all examples of borders between bodies.

• As with geographic borders, there is nothing particularly “natural” about these types of borders.

People and Borders


• Consider the example of race: Even today, many of us consider race to be an important distinction between human beings, but what is true today, was even truer in the not too distant past.

• The authors argue that “race” is a socially constructed concept; that is, there is no biological justification for racial “borders.” This isn’t to say that there aren’t some physical characteristics that distinguish different peoples, but these biological distinctions are relatively unimportant.

• This then raises the question: Why did these distinctions arise in the first place and, even more importantly, why do they persist?

People and Borders


• The answer is fairly clear: they arose and persist because they serve a clear political function: they justify even legitimize inequality, exploitation, and oppression.

• Consider the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) …

People and Borders


• Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

• Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.

• Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

To read the rest of poem go to: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/kipling.html

People and Borders


• To sum up discussion so far: Borders are a product of power. They are a way to create power, to maintain power, and to accumulate even more power.

People and Borders


• This leads to the last set of questions the authors posed: Can borders be changed? and What happens when they do change? (Discuss)

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Can borders be changed? and What happens when they do change?

• The short answer is “yes.” Because borders are “social constructions,” because they are “imagined,” they are not immune to change, regardless of how strong and timeless they may appear to be.

People and Borders


• Indeed, as the authors argue, “the very distinctions that borders are meant to establish and reinforce are also sources and sites of contradiction. Borders are produced and maintained by power, but they are always blurring and dissolving because of how power tries to maintain them and how the less powerful try to evade them.”

People and Borders


• To see this, the authors focus on the concept of the borderland, which is the space that straddles borders. In these borderlands are opportunities for change.

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• Consider the borderland of the American Southwest. It comprises an area that less than 200 years ago was part of Mexico. Within this region, both English and Spanish are spoken, and the population is decidedly “mixed.”

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• This borderland continues to exist and will likely continue to exist for as long as we can imagine, and as long as it exists it challenges the belief that national governments—even the most powerful one on earth—is capable of exercising complete control.

• Even more, the longer it exists, the more this control is undermined.

People and Borders


• Think how the Latino population of the United States is growing—more than 10 percent today, and projected to increase even more dramatically over the coming decades. And with numbers, as the authors put it, “comes recognition, as with wealth comes power. The border is dissolving.”

People and Borders


• Of course, this doesn’t mean that efforts are not made to reconstruct the border, and this is especially the case since 9-11. But, here, it is important to remember that there are multiple and often competing borders, which make such efforts at reconstruction largely futile.

• One of the most important competing borders is the one between the public and the private. After all, people who cross national borders to find work are relying on the border between the private and the public: if the market is supposed to be free from state interference, then workers should be free to cross national borders at will, shouldn’t they? This is the dilemma, to a large extent, that the US government—and many other governments—face.

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• When borders change, the implications are not always clear – there are many people, however, who believe change is dangerous. And certainly, change can lead to a reordering of society that privileges some while hurting others

• But, this is precisely why it is important to understand and appreciate the role that borders play in our lives—one thing we need to understand is that borders are, practically by their nature, fluid and impermanent. Change happens. The key, therefore, is to not just passively wait for change to happen, but to play an active role in shaping the direction and dynamic of these changes.

POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics People and Borders Lecture October 27, 2005.

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Transcript of POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics People and Borders Lecture October 27, 2005.