Class 17 - Borders and Migration

Checking in

Let’s check in first!

Welcome back!

In this session, we’re moving into a new theme: that of migration. Human beings are restless, we move around. Sometimes we do this because we have to for our safety and security. Sometimes we do this for curiosity, or because moving feels good.

This is a topic that is really close to all of you. Some of you are migrants across borders. Some have migrated to safety within borders. And some may be thinking about future migrations. So this theme is something that is deeply linked with your own experience.

I, too, am a migrant. I have not moved because of threats to my well-being. But I have moved in part for economic reasons. It would be much harder to survive on a Parami salary in the UK, where the cost of living is increasingly high (it would work out about ½ the salary for the equivalent UK job).

And as we all know, migration brings with it all kinds of problems. Here is a non-exhaustive list

• bureaucracy — do you have the right to stay where you are?
• housing — where are you to live?
• livelihood — how can you make a living?
• isolation — can you find a community to support you?
• care and support for those you leave behind — how do you manage the responsibilities and networks of care you have that cross between your different contexts?
• risk — there are all kinds of risks to being somewhere that is unfamiliar to you (these risks will differ according to how you are seen politically and socially within your new context)
• language and culture — you may have to deal with new languages and cultures

Writing Exercise

I’m going to get you to do some writing to start. Write for 10 minutes on the topic of My Migrations. You can interpret this however you like.

Breakout groups

We’ll share some thoughts in groups. I am going to put you into groups, and I’m going to ask you to do two things. The first is to share your writing, if you want to. And, when everyone who wants to share has done so, the second is to answer these questions.

1. Do you regard yourself as a migrant?
2. What migrant journeys have you been on?
3. What have the biggest challenges, if any, been?
4. What have the benefits, if any, been?
5. To what extent was your migration chosen, and to what extent was it compelled by external forces?

Discussion

We’ll have time to talk about this before the break.

Break

Discussing Susan Banki

Now we’ll talk about the paper by Susan Banki.

1. What struck you as interesting or compelling about the paper?
2. How did it reflect your own experience?
3. What is her definition of “porosity”, and why might it be useful for understanding borders and migration?
4. In crossing borders, Banki talks about several factors: physical terrain, state actors and social networks. What is your experience of these three in your own border-crossings, or the border-crossings of those close to you?
5. Finally, in the light of this, do you think that borders keep us safe, or do you think they expose us to significant risks?

We’ll discuss again afterwards.

Homework

The question that we must then raise is this: why do borders exist at all? For our next class, we are going to read the introduction to Reece Jones’s book, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (Verso 2016).