12.10 - Theory Class
The Magic of Borders
- Borders happen at airports, visa systems, and embassies, they happen within the space of a passport, they determine where people can go. Bordering happens not in one specific space.
- Khosravi “accidental professor” as a migrant, writes from this perspective, bodies that don’t pass through the borders quickly: people who have to wait, the legalized mobile bodies
- Keshavarz writes about passports, and borders, the history and how it is part of the larger border regime. He writes from the DESIGN perspective. The database the customs booth etc.
- In some countries if you are born in the country you are a citizen, in others it's not. In some situations it is just a social distinction.
- Citizenship/Othering different experiences with the same passports
- allochtoon and autochtoon in NL means 3rd generations or lower.
- In NL they brought migrants to work and then go home, but in the 80s they were allowed to bring their families, caused racist conflict. Guest to Citizenship status.
- Allowing racism to be legal, acceptable and law. They can hide behind laws.
- “Borders turn neighbors to enemies. A short distance becomes far.” How? Checkpoints, waiting for visas, Mozambique, S.A. or Palestine and Jordan (time)
- Line on a map is abstract, so is the gate. Borders can be the sea, the mountain or a literal wall. It deems people to be illegal which makes the border include cells and interrogation rooms.
- There is a lot of effort in making it invisible how much control people are under in these spaces.
- Berlin conference, the slicing of Africa.
- Sudan, caused civil wars for locking two groups of people with opposite ways of living together
- “People don’t understand the world without Borders”- amazing quote
- When did Europe get borders → Treaty of Westphalia around 1600
- Prior of colonization, there were Arab words that meant broad zones, where people could and did switch affiliations when it worked for them. People weren't linked through nationality.
- When did borders become something to protect so strictly?
- Nationality linked to identity? You have to be identified to move outside your country?
- Biodata which is a countries collection not yours anymore.
- Freedom of movement for people within EU, at the same time it meant the border AROUND the EU is more strict, Frontex https://www.frontex.europa.eu
- Seeing photoshop as a forgery program, Amir Heidari, a migration facilitator
- Crossing borders illegally means that the person coming in does not have residence rights
- The migration facilitator taking advantage of people is not always the case
- Choice in migration conversation, the lie of choice or the lack thereof
- People who smuggle people out of Communist East Germany to West Germany were seen as heroes, when those who smuggle people from poor countries are seen as criminals who take advantage of their own people. - Book “Illegal Traveler”