A border is more than a territorial demarcation. It is a product of power, and it grows, changes, and moves as that power demands. Nations internalize borders; people do too, sometimes by choice, but more often against their will. Scholar and activist Harsha Walia elaborates on the exploitative architecture of borders:
From ICE agents kidnapping people in their homes to the apartheid wall on Palestinian homelands, the border is not a static line on a map. The border is best understood as an elastic regime that extends and thickens across space and time. It reproduces a racial colonial social order, fortifies gated communities against the rest, deflates labour power, treats land as a possession and is the structural basis for all repressive immigration policies. An egalitarian futu…
A border is more than a territorial demarcation. It is a product of power, and it grows, changes, and moves as that power demands. Nations internalize borders; people do too, sometimes by choice, but more often against their will. Scholar and activist Harsha Walia elaborates on the exploitative architecture of borders:
From ICE agents kidnapping people in their homes to the apartheid wall on Palestinian homelands, the border is not a static line on a map. The border is best understood as an elastic regime that extends and thickens across space and time. It reproduces a racial colonial social order, fortifies gated communities against the rest, deflates labour power, treats land as a possession and is the structural basis for all repressive immigration policies. An egalitarian future demands the abolition of the border as well as the abolition of the conditions that give rise to the border. A borderless world is a world against all bordering regimes, centring our right to be housed and stay in those homes, to move in search of safety and to return to our lands.
More picks about borders
The H-2A Visa Trap
Max Blau and Zaydee Sanchez | ProPublica | September 13, 2025 | 5,149 words
“She was sold the American dream with a farmworker visa. Shewound up in a nightmare.”
Death in Nogales
S.C. Cornell | The New York Review of Books | November 16, 2024 | 4,107 words
“An unarmed Mexican migrant was shot dead on an Arizona ranch. The response revealed widespread support for violence at the border.”
The Balkans’ Alternative Postal System: An Ad-Hoc Courier’s Tale
Ilir Gashi | The Guardian & Kosovo 2.0| July 13, 2023 | 4,061 words
“Across this fractured region, informal networks rule. So if you need to send something, ask someone who’s already going that way.”