Questioning the role of borders

Opinion

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This article was published 14/02/2017 (2828 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Over the past year, the importance of political borders to national identity has become evident in Canada. Part of this is because of growing anti-immigration sentiment that has come through dominant American media messages, which also dominate Canada’s airwaves.

But Canada, which is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, has had its share of popular fear about immigration as well. For example, former prime minister Stephen Harper made the distinction between “old stock” Canadians and the “other” ones and also connected clothing worn by some immigrants to “barbaric cultural practices” that “have no place in Canadian society.”

Fear of foreign infiltration has surfaced again as reports circulate about migrants from the United States walking across the Canadian border to Emerson.

I think most Manitobans are sympathetic, but there has been a vocal opposition to providing sanctuary to these people and it has mirrored concerns heard in the U.S. regarding the Mexican border.

The notion these issues concern culture and nationality, however, is an illusion. The key question concerns the true purpose of borders, which are actually tools used by corporate elites to maintain their privileged position in the global hierarchy.

One can articulate three central functions of political borders in this regard. The first is to control the spread and extent of labour laws and worker protection. Because of political borders, people working only kilometres apart can have drastically different wages and work under very different conditions even when producing the same kind of product. It’s not hard to imagine how transnational corporations can capitalize on this.

When we accept the existence of borders, we are legitimizing disparity in worker rights. We tend to believe since they are different countries, it is natural they would have different laws.

Without political borders, such disparity would raise questions about universal worker rights (rather than, say, Canadian worker rights).

This function of borders therefore allows employers to pay lower wages and save costs on workplace safety while nevertheless having wealthy consumers in a nearby country who are unlikely to question such practices.

The second function of borders is to control the physical movement of the labourers themselves. Labour is a critical resource for corporate elites, who seek to increase the supply of workers to the point where they have little bargaining power.

The problem is, if different places have different worker rights, labourers are likely to move to the places with better protections. This would erode the economic value of unequal worker rights. Therefore, borders provide the means to prevent worker migration.

This task is made easier by our tendency to brand people based on their proper location using concepts such as citizenship.

If someone moves away from their branded location to share in better human rights, we can deport them to ensure they play their prescribed role in the global economic system, thereby supporting the current distribution of global power.

The third purpose of borders is to divide the world’s population ideologically. This is where national identity and patriotism is critical. Particularly in wealthier countries, we are trained from birth to hold a sense of superiority based on where we were born.

This is where, for example, professional sports are employed — because they teach us to see ourselves as being in conflict with other “inferior” geographic regions.

It’s easy to see the parallels between flag-waving on the one hand and wearing team colours on the other.

Our sense of nationality is very important because it means we will defend the use of borders even though they are specifically designed to control us.

Popular defense of Canada’s border is evident in public discussion and online comments about the people arriving at Emerson.

For the elites themselves, borders are not so constraining. This is what “free” trade agreements are for.

Such agreements allow producers to take advantage of lower wages while maintaining the ability to ship their products to wealthier consumers without interference from the borders that make the low wages possible.

Free trade agreements further solidify this arrangement by including conditions requiring less powerful countries to loosen their labour regulations and reduce wages.

Our general popular support for market activity ensures we do not rise up with patriotic resistance when foreign companies open branches in Canada or buy Canadian companies. When borders function as elites intend, patriotic resistance is reserved for families that walk into Canada with few possessions.

The migration of people and their families across Canada’s borders is not a question of whether “Canadians” should care for “others” and the solutions are not limited to improving border enforcement and immigration policy.

This is a question of whether average people will continue to buy into the interests of corporate elites and allow ourselves to be divided in the first place.

Curt Pankratz is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Winnipeg.