8 Things I learned from studying border imperialism (Part I)

U.S. Passport on a Wooden Board by @jeremydorrough

This concept of border imperialism is especially important today as Trump builds the narrative that “building a wall keeps our country safe.”

Little did I know how border imperialism colludes with other systems of oppression (like racism, patriarchy, the prison industrial complex, empire, and capitalism); yet, offers a path to building effective grassroots movements that fight for liberation of migrants and people of color.

Here are 8 lessons I learned about border imperialism from Undoing Border Imperialism by Harsha Walia.

1. When people of color cross the border, they get punished despite being forced to come here. The act of crossing the border is regarded as a criminal act. They are not guilty of anything but migrating to survive after their land and resources are dispossessed by capitalism. But they are blamed as law-breakers for crossing the border and punished with pretrial detention without access to legal services. The detainment experience is harmful — no one tells you anything, how long you will be there, and you are not making money.
2. Border imperialism uses the concept of the border to legitimize oppression. The border is constructed to draw lines between “insiders” and “outsiders.” It is through border imperialism that distinctions are made between who is deserving or undeserving of citizenship. The border also serves the function of legitimating who is deserving of resources (eg. food, employment, healthcare, and access to social services).
3. Border imperialism criminalizes immigrants and people of color based on their identity. Criminalization reinforces the idea that a person can be “illegal” whereas others are “legitimate citizens.” Today being a citizen means to be white. People of color are more highly surveilled and criminalized. Because people are denied access to social services because they’re migrants and people of color, these policies create racism because it legitimizes treating certain folks based on their identity as deserving of less resources. Due to these reasons, border policies are inherently racist.
4. Border imperialism perpetuates gendered power relations. Additionally the US project of “securing the borders” can be seen as a masculinist project. This project comes with imagery of innocent citizens being invaded by dirty criminals who come to invade the pristine country and take away resources. This discourse plays into patriarchal narratives. Furthermore, incarceration rates increased over 800% for black women in the past 5 years (from 2013) and 800% for all women in the past 30 years.
5. Border imperialism creates displacement through the harmful effects of globalization. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated corn subsidies for Mexican corn while keeping US subsidies in place, leading to 15 million Mexican farmers losing their home and 1.5 million migrating to the US to do low-wage farm work to survive. Products (such as corn) can cross borders easily, but people cannot. When they are further criminalized and denied access to citizenship, they can be made to work for the lowest wages and increase profits for corporations.
6. An elite diaspora erases the necessary existence of the “Deport-spora.” The deport-spora is every migrant who crossed the border through irregular means and is therefore denied access to social services. They are the folks who grow our food, who take care of our kids, and do all the hard physical labor that no one wants to do. But the elite middle and ruling class diaspora casts a idealized multicultural nation that doesn’t need to address the needs of these people.
7. Because of the need to appear “authentic” or white to get access to resources, no one lives authentically. ”The elaborate productions of civility and capital… construct a world of fakes… in efforts to tighten borders and fix authenticity… little trace or truth of origin [remains]” (“Imposters” by Tara Atluri in Undoing Border Imperialism). Immigrants are often forced into these roles as a means of survival, like working at a call center with a well-honed Midwestern accent despite that not being your place of birth. Other folks, not doing so well because of oppression, must respond with a similar fake politeness to be taken seriously.
8. Undoing border imperialism: a place for coalition building. Indigenous folks have seen how their struggle coincides with recent migrants who, although they may be complicit as settlers, also face dispossession (loss of land and resources) and displacement (being forced to cross the border). Similarly, migrant justice work intersects with racism and patriarchy. By fighting for liberation for all, coalitions of different groups and priorities can unite to say no to the logic of denying access to resources based on identity, place of birth, or some other factor.

I wrote this short post based on our discussions at Rad Chinese, which you can listen to here.