Abstract
This paper explores the complex and often contradictory ways in which state borders, and by extension territorial sovereignty, have become repoliticized over the past decade. In the 1990s, it was commonplace to describe globalization as auguring a new post-Westphalian world, one in which the nation-state and territorial forms of state sovereignty were disappearing. Both critics of and advocates for globalization made claims to a new “borderless world” and “de-territorialization”—though from very different political vantage points. Yet territorial borders did not become uniformly less salient in the new world orders that emerged under neoliberalism, and in many cases, the securitization of international borders became more acute. Moreover, particularly post 9-11, states often deepened enforcement measures at their international boundary lines and “border regimes” have become critical to the expanding securitization of the nation-state and the capital interest of elites. Antiborder activists circa Seattle and beyond have played a central role in critiquing, politicizing, and drawing our attention to the border as a site of expanding state power, the logics of capital and the kinds of enclosures that continue to structure deep inequalities across the globe.
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Notes
It is well to remember, however, that Seattle was indeed a “battle,” and that activists would face not only increased repression in “the streets,” but also at border entry points as well as airports during similar and subsequent protests. In this sense, across borders has always been, perhaps at heart, a political manifesto.
Although an etymology of the phrase and its associations with twentieth century political activism is beyond the scope of this paper, the notion of cross-border activism certainly has many pre-Seattle usages (e.g., Doctors without Borders formed in 1971 and Reporters without Borders formed in 1985). Additionally, many disparate groups have appropriated this term since the 1999: for example, there are now Podcasters across Borders, MBAs without Borders, Pathologists without Borders, and Vets beyond Borders, to name a few.
The US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (2008) Fact Book, for example, lists 180 land and/or maritime border disputes among the world’s 194 independent states and 70 dependencies.
On 15 December, for example, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Act was passed in the US Congress, calling for 698 miles (1,123 km) of mandatory fencing along the US’s southern border. Following this in October 2006 was The Secure Fence Act, authorizing partial funding for the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the border. In addition to these two Acts, the most significant legislation affecting border policy has been the USA-PATRIOT Act of October 2001, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of November 2001; the Homeland Security Act of November 2002, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of December 2004; and Operation Jump Start: National Guard Deployed to the Border of May 2006.
The US REAL ID Act, for example, passed in May 2005, gave the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the discretionary power to waive all requirements for environmental and cultural assessments in the face of security concerns. In September 2005, then DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff took advantage of this legislation and waived—‘in their entirety’—the environmental restrictions contained in several US laws in order to build triple fencing through the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve outside of San Diego.
Added to this are 8.4 million refugees, 23.7 million internally displaced people and ~11 million stateless people in many countries across the globe. See http://www.gcim.org/attachements/GCIM%20Report%20Chapter%20One.pdf.
See The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Over-Raided, Under Siege: 2008. http://www.nnirr.org/resources/docs/UnderSiege_web.pdf; also Chacón and Davis 2006.
See, for example, the Europe based No Border Network (http://www.noborder.org/), the Canadian-based No One Is Illegal (http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/), the Tucson, U.S.–based Border Action Network (http://www.borderaction.org).
As the florescence of “Minutemen” civil patrols in the United States indicates, political activism at international boundaries is not exclusive to left-leaning groups (see, for example, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps 2009). Like their counterparts in European nations, anti-immigrant grassroots groups have also proliferated at international borders and have consistently linked migrants to crime, terrorism and most recently the spread of diseases (the latter especially salient in light of the recent swine flu epidemic).
Border scholars, however would argue that the focus on the destitute and most vulnerable in spaces of flows, however, once enjoined to questions about territorial state sovereignty, always takes us to particular borders and particular forms of territorial enclosure.
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Cunningham, H. Mobilities and enclosures after Seattle: politicizing borders in a “Borderless” world. Dialect Anthropol 33, 143–156 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-009-9110-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-009-9110-0