The Making and Unmaking of Borders

A Psycho-social reading of crossing borders

We live in a world of borders. Territorial, political, juridical and economic borders of all kinds quite literally define every aspect of life in the 21st century. (Nail 2016)

Introduction

This short essay explores how borders are increasingly important in today’s world. Individual and social anxieties are rising in response to borders being ‘made and unmade’ at a phenomenal pace in the past few years. The phrase ‘crossing borders’ unleashes a chain of associations and meanings in society today. When we think of crossing borders, national boundaries, immigrants and passport controls may immediately come to mind. Walls, fences, security barriers and checkpoints are all associated with borders, yet many other borders exist that we have to negotiate crossing multiple times each day.

As borders become unstable and fluid, individuals can become anxious and threatened. The unmaking of borders and the dismantling and loosening of border regimes remove obstacles and create radical new possibilities and opportunities for some, whilst threatening others. The making of new borders and the tightening of border regimes creates hardship and marginalisation for some and a feeling of security for others.

Borders and movement

A border controls flows of movement (Nail 2016). A border can act as a barrier, returning a flow of movement back on itself, or as a filter that allows some things to pass and others not. A border may also be a boundary or an edge, it can be man-made such as the Berlin wall; or naturally occur in the environment, such as the Himalayan mountains bordering between India and China.

Borders are not only material manifestations, they are also found across the virtual world, some open source spaces minimise borders, other virtual spaces maximise borders. Borders monitor the movement between physical and virtual spaces, controlling the flow of accessibility to the virtual world via passwords for example.

Borders also occur within us and between us. Emotions, affects and thoughts flow and are inhibited by the internal borders within each of us, and between us. Borders are an intra-psychic phenomenon, our conscious and unconscious borderlands. For example in Freudian structural psychoanalytic terms, our Super-ego negotiates the borderland between Ego seeking the reality principle, and the ID seeking instant and instinctual gratification.

Borders operate in an inter-personal, relational and social way too. Where individuals and groups open or close access to others, in a variety of ways.

Borders …determine the extent to which we are included, or excluded, from membership in groups […] the “us” and the “here” being located inside the border while the “other” and the “there” is everything beyond the border (Newman Citation2006, 172)

Photo by Aleksandra Boguslawska on Unsplash

Border regimes within us

In my work as a coach, therapist and consultant, I am constantly crossing the borderlands between the conscious and unconscious worlds. When exploring a client’s unconscious, psychoanalysis teaches us that something important is at stake when the client’s defence mechanisms kick in, and they offer resistance. These psychoanalytic concepts ‘defences and resistance’ echo military language, for example, when a force encounters an enemy’s border, they too meet defences and resistance. This mirroring of language reveals how closely our internal borders relate to external borders. Our internal worlds impact and shape the external world and vice versa.

“I saw that beautiful barbed wire going up,” (President Trump 3rd November 2018). U.S. President Donald Trump and his followers export their internal fearful mindsets, that see ‘the other’ as a dangerous invader, through their rally cries and Trump’s promise to ‘build the wall’. Interestingly, the other chant at Trump’s election rallies of, ‘lock her up’ (referencing Hillary Clinton) is also about walls and borders - in this case the security walls of a prison. The demand to build walls and lock people up, signifies the internal desire for punitive security borders to be inflicted on the ‘bad other’, so the self can feel safe and secure, at both physical and at emotional-identity levels. Populist politicians are great advocates of borders, and utilise them to create the idea of ‘the people’ those who belong, and the bad other, those who should be outside the border.

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Psychoanalysis teaches us that when we create a ‘bad other’ in our minds, it usually represents a split-off part of ourselves, an unwanted aspect of ourselves that we cannot consciously tolerate, so we evacuate the bad or disliked part of ourselves and project it onto others. We create internal ‘security’ borders, behind which our repressed anxieties and dormant fears lie. As in most borders however they are never 100% secure, and leaks occur in the flows of movement that the border tries to stop. In this case, our unconscious life seeps into our consciousness, often in displaced ways. Making new borders and re-enforcing existing border regimes, are simplified solutions politicians use to mobilise popular support, claiming it will protect the ‘good us’ from the ‘bad them’. The Brexit cry of ‘take back control’ is such an example. Taking back control means to many the re-making of a lost border to prevent the free flow of people.

Nigel Farage Brexit poster leave campaign 2016

Libidinal Borders

The conscious and unconscious borders within us, and the relational borders between us, constantly regulate our libidinal flows. Our emotions and affects, our drive and psychic energy are regulated by the border regimes within us, between us and external to us.

Internal mindsets produce external realities. Internal anxieties and fears produce nationalist politicians, external walls, scapegoats and repressive laws. This also happens in reverse. Our internal worlds are shaped by external realities. When physical borders impose themselves on us each day, for example the Berlin wall during communism, or the Israeli security wall or apartheid wall (depending on which side you live on), or the gated communities of Johannesburg where high walls, razor wire and security guards dominate the landscape, an unconscious internalisation process takes place. We internalise the walls and border regimes and they create normative mindsets that limit and shape how we live. We internalise restrictive border walls, creating defensive and fearful mindsets. In the workplace today there has been a rise in the talk of creating psychological safety, and one has to ask, why this and why now? We live in times where everything around us is deemed unsafe, risky. We eat food that is cancerous, we sit on the beach and worry about skin cancer, we fear the air we breathe, our workplaces are toxic….. in a landscape of fear, defensive borders will be erected to create safe psychological spaces.

Luxurious Prisons

Interestingly when the powerful build border walls to defend themselves against an undesirable other, the wall impacts both sides. The gated community in a city acts as a defence against the poor, but it also encloses the rich in a (luxurious) prison, and both sides internalise the impact of this. A border controls both the flow in and out. Whilst walking in Johannesburg’s wealthy districts I experienced the dystopian future that is becoming normal in other cities. High walls, razor wire, security gates, security guards and nobody walking or cycling, just people locked in their houses and cars. What mindsets and cultures are internalised when we live with border regimes that are so pervasive, defensive and also aesthetically destructive?

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

Digital Border Regimes

This internalisation of border regimes also occurs in our encounters within the virtual and financial world. In recent years we find ourselves constantly crossing virtual borders, signing in and using security passwords. Each time we shop, buy something online, or visit a website we cross a border, each with its own way to control and restrict the flow of movement. We internalise the experience of being constantly monitored by these digital border regimes, checking we are human and not robots, and expelling us from places beyond our reach. These new online border regimes are a dominant feature of our daily existence, and we can internalise a sense of the world being a place of borders.

The constant boundary crossing, the warnings of dangerous viruses and cyber-attacks and the fears of being shut out, discriminated against, and the frustration at not being able to cross the border, create new anxieties, frustrations and even rage in the digital age. Yet the paradox is that the internet promised a new egalitarianism that erased elite borders opening up new possibilities and making connections that were once impossible. Corporate giants however now create new borders to control access and worse still, those who cross the borders into their lands (Facebook for example) become surveillance fodder for the corporate machine.

Techno-utopians still dream of new radical democracies, and open societies modeled on open-source technology and new possibilities of the commons. Knowledge and information is now freely accessible at the click of a mouse, that was once only available to elites and required difficult border crossings.

We live in times where huge new potential exists and vast open spaces appear as so many borders have been dismantled and loosened in this digital era, whilst at the same time more borders exist than we could have possibly imagined in the past.

Shifting Borders

This is an age when as Nail (2016) says; borders are being made at unprecedented rates.

Despite the celebration of globalisation and the increasing necessity of global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. In the last twenty years, but particularly since 9/11, hundreds of new borders have emerged around the world: miles of new razor-wire fences, tons of new concrete security walls, numerous offshore detention centres, biometric passport databases, and security check points of all kinds in schools, airports and long various roadways across the world (Nail 2016:1)

Yet borders are both being made and unmade, at an unprecedented rate. This relationship between the making and unmaking of borders is symbiotic, with each force impacting the other. As borders are unmade, new anxieties are unleashed that create a drive to make more borders. As borders are being made, activists strive to open up new spaces and loosen border regimes.

Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

Three examples reveal how contemporary borders are being made and unmade.

1.     Trade borders

Globalisation, neo-liberal free trade, mass air travel and the EU’s four freedoms of movement (finance, people, goods and services) are examples of a radical unmaking of borders in recent times. Neo-liberal capitalism offered a vision, at least on the surface, of open-trade and free-markets, (although many would claim that elites created hidden borders under this rhetoric of freedom excluding many from accessing a share of the wealth that was created). There is currently a counter-revolution against these globalising forces to create new borders that protect national trade, and the movement of labour (e.g. Brexit and economic nationalism elsewhere).

2.     The Digital Age

The digital age unmakes borders in ways we couldn’t imagine in the last decade, unleashing new possibilities, huge opportunities and also unforeseen consequences. As discussed earlier there is also a rapid proliferation of borders in the virtual world. Microsoft is a good example of a company that managed to exploit the virtual world of border-making to create vast profits. Through the licensing of their software (word, excel etc) and creating restrictive borders that prevented open use, they created their vast business empire.

3.     Identity Borders

Another unmaking of borders comes about through a radical changing of legal and emotional identity borders. Same-sex marriage and transgender rights are examples of the unmaking of border regimes both legal and cultural, which defined identity norms for decades. The unmaking of these borders is hugely liberating for many and threatens the identity of others. The speed of this change is phenomenal. For example in Ireland, a conservative Catholic country until recent years, recently voted in a gay Taoiseach (Prime minster) and held a referendum that allowed same-sex marriage. These changing border-regimes are part of what some call ‘culture wars’ taking place in the USA and the West. Some fighting for more borders, some for less borders. Interestingly, those who fight for fewer borders for immigrants and to open societie’s borders for marginalised people to gain rights (such as transgender rights) are seen by others to be imposing new authoritarian border regimes that restrict free speech and thinking (Western 2015). Borders are not straightforward, they are complex and enmeshed in power relations.

Our individual and collective identities are at stake when border regimes change, for better or for worse.

Conclusion

Crossing borders in the recent past was probably less confusing and demanding. Institutions, social norms and rituals, made borders more rigid and prior to the digital revolution and hyper-globalisation borders were more stable. Perhaps there were fewer borders, the commons of the past for example before the enclosures created free spaces that are rare today.

Borders today are prolific, and at the same time, they are being questioned. In the past, they were never fixed but were often more stable and less fluid than in today’s disruptive world. We live in confusing times where more borders are appearing all of the time, and where many borders are disappearing or becoming more porous.

In today’s world, we have to negotiate and accommodate fast-changing border regimes, which requires sensitivity and maturity. It also requires us to reflect on how these border regimes impact our intimate lives as well as our political and social lives.

References

Nail T. (2016) Theory of the border. Oxford University Press

Western S. (2015) Political Correctness and Political In-correctness A psychoanalytic study of new authoritarians: