Violent borders

This edition of MTb mainly concerns the consequences of violence and conflicts, and how to deal with these as medical professionals. The causes of violence are outside the medical scope and mostly political. However, working in conflict situations or with migrants often raises fundamental questions about people’s rights, history, politics etc. Why does this happen? Why do so many people die at border areas? That is the question Jones deals with in his book Violent Borders: highly relevant for everyone working with or interested in migrant issues.

From the start, the aim of this book is clear – to investigate why the state has always seemed to be the enemy of people who move around and to show that the hardening of borders is the source of violence, not a response to it. These are rather strong statements, which made me curious as to whether and how the author would convince his readers.

Jones starts his book by describing the situation at the European borders (‘the most dangerous border crossing in the world’ with the highest number of deaths in the past decade) and how EU border policy led to increasing numbers of deaths. Next, he describes the history and militarization of the border between the United States and Mexico, illustrated by the shooting of a young Mexican boy by US border police. Similar examples and descriptions are given for the borders of Israel, India, Bangladesh and Australia, making it clear that violent borders are a global issue.

In the next chapters, Jones digs deeper into the background of this problem. He shows how, since early history, borders have been used to restrict movements of the poor, with a short exception when Europe’s poor migrated to the US in the early 1900s. One chapter deals with questions of ownership and protection of land. Starting in the 17th century, with the rise of cartography, and during colonial times, more and more land became enclosed instead of being common land. Today, most land, as well as one third of the ocean surface is claimed by states. This allows them to use the land’s resources and to limit people’s movement. Most of these borders are only a few decades old.

The next chapter views the issue from an economic perspective – the ambiguity of free trade agreements in combination with limited freedom of movement of people. In this postmodern economy, multinational corporations outsource their labour to countries with a cheap workforce and loose regulations on environment, taxes and working conditions. At the same time these workers cannot escape their situation due to limited migration.

Every chapter starts with an illustrative story. This helps the reader since the book is not an easy read due to the many historical details. But the underlying theme is clear: borders create and maintain structural inequality, unavoidably leading to violence and casualties. Although it’s a convincing argument, there seems no way back. But then the author compares this border inequality to other systems like apartheid and slavery. A world without these systems was unthinkable at the time, but looking back we are ashamed of their existence. Will future generations look back in a similar way at our deeply unequal system, which keeps people trapped inside man-made borders? Jones actually ends with some suggestions on how things could change, so I warmly recommend reading the whole story.

WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE CONTINUE TO DIE AT THE EDGES OF MODERN, CIVILIZED, AND DEMOCRATIC STATES?

Violent Borders, Reece Jones, 224 pages
Verso Books, October 2016
ISBN: 9781784784713
Price: € 19.60