Borders

This article was compiled from a keynote lecture delivered at the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architecture 2021 Conference, on 6 May 2021. Thank you to the conference organizers for inviting me to speak today. Since I received the invitation last December (2020), I have been hoping for a travel…

Once upon a time, there was a man named Stephane who decided to take his family on a road trip. They were hungry, so they stopped at Harvey’s near Gananoque, Ontario, a famous fast-food restaurant known for its mouthwatering burgers and fries. …

Question from the Internet: “Would a world without borders and nations be better?” Yes and no. Most people started to understand and even feel how much we evolved into a single, globally integrated, and interdependent world. …

Serbia — a change in migration route as people increasingly try to reach the EU via Bosnia and Croatia, not Hungary // Lipa Camp in Bosnia — a Greek-style CCAC funded by the EU // Austria strengthens border controls for a further six months, leading to condemnation from the EU Commission // Testimony about detention conditions in Libya // Report from Green MEP Tineke Strik about the reality of Meloni’s migration policies in Lampedusa & many more reads, including Fragenstadt’s investigation into the ICMPD

I migrated to Brownsville, Texas from St. Louis, Missouri in 1982. — Brownsville, El Paso, and other border cities have been in the news lately because of the expiration of Title 42, the Covid 19 immigration policy enacted by the Trump administration. I came to the Rio Grande Valley from the Midwest with a campaign run by the local school district: Like…

Boundaries are mental projections, human conventions that separate the inseparable. Borders don’t exist. We have stained the Earth with the ink of geographical maps. Words that sound empty, colours that divide rather than unite. We were born within these borders. We can live by breaking them down, even for those who do not contemplate this freedom. We must cleanse the Earth of this ink, of this useless blabbering.

‘They’ want to keep them all out and the ‘others’ want to let them all in — From space, you might not be able to notice it but more humans are on the move right now than at any time since World War II. Most countries in the world are dealing with “moving humans” and most countries are trying to figure out where to put them and…

Understanding Title 42 and its Impact on the US-Mexico Border Title 42, a public health decree implemented during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, requires migrants who reach the US-Mexico border to be summarily returned to Mexico, depriving them of their chance to seek asylum. This move has been highly criticized for violating their rights. Despite its temporary status, Title…

Water can be life-giving, cleansing, and pure. And water can be powerful — too much water can be overwhelming and destructive. Water can seep through cracks and corrode. And just like water itself can be dangerous to people’s lives, so can water metaphors, especially when used to describe immigration. As…