Crossing Borders

Over the past two months I have been visiting communities that are providing support to people who are facing difficulties because of their immigration status. Most of the time this has meant sheltering people from being located or detained by the federal police, and at other times this has meant providing material assistance to people who might need support in terms of resources or finances because of situations directly related to their immigration status. Some communities have been very open about their actions whilst others have decided to avoid publicity and go about their work quietly. Some communities engage directly with politics on either a local or national level, but other groups have decided to move away from traditional political involvement. Likewise, some people who are facing persecution, criminalisation, or deportation have decided to be ‘out’ about their immigration status to call attention to the issue, whilst others have decided they would prefer to keep to themselves. On one hand, there is an argument that being visible means being able to offer a platform on which change can be built. This has meant that some communities decide to come forward with their difficulties and attempt to gain visibility in the hope that being ‘out’ might mean better opportunities to receive assistance or further the cause. On the other hand, some communities prefer to remain less visible about their situation because they feel that being noticed is very much related to being targeted and being put in a position of unsafety. They might also question whether visibility has any realistic benefits beyond rhetoric. Similar situations play out across communities that have a history of persecution – in LGBT+ circles there remains a huge debate over the idea of being ‘out’ about one’s sexuality or gender identity. Some people argue that being visible is a way to instigate social change and promote pride, but others might feel uncomfortable sharing something that might attract negative attention. There is no one ‘right’ answer to these questions, and it is important to recognise that intersecting contexts, personal decisions, and beliefs characterise and inform the decisions that surround visibility in any circumstance. On the topic of political engagement, it needs to be recognised that being involved in traditional democratic processes is exhausting, overwhelming, and at times entirely dangerous for certain groups. There is a presumptuous and privileged idea that changing the world is as simple as walking to the polling station and casting a vote, when the very attempt to participate can bring all manner of difficulties. This does not mean that people who choose to participate are any better than those who decide not to, or who might be unable to participate altogether. Whilst crossing borders is important, it is a decision that people must be able to make freely and as a reflection of their position in life and their personal experiences. Any movement which focuses on preaching a single ‘right’ way of being risks alienating and excluding huge numbers of people. By Simon Fern Image: JMW Turner, Bell Rock Lighthouse

I’m sitting in the Crossing Borders’ empty office on a foggy November morning, thinking about what to write the next blog post about. My mind is blank, the bleary greyness is seemingly all-consuming, I’ve exhausted all my ideas. Then I go to put some music on. I remember that around this time last year I began to listen to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. I can’t bring myself to listen to actually Christmas music as I did grow up in a fairly Jewish environment and Christmas music just doesn’t do the same thing for me as it might for my fellow Christians. The Nutcracker, however, represents a universal, secular, bridge to cheerful holiday music. Perfect for this bleak November Morning. I begin to play the composition titled ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. It starts slow, with a faint dinging of bells that creeps louder and louder at the music begins to take off. I’m suddenly reminded of something as the bells resonate louder, I remember the choreography that is synonymous with those dings. I was a dancer. I was serious about it and I almost wanted to go professional for a while. In a ballet class nearly 6 or 7 years ago, around Christmas time, my ballet teacher taught us a variation from the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy just for fun. We were preparing for our own production of the Nutcracker, I was cast as a flower in ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ and a snowflake in ‘Waltz of the Snowflakes’. But just for fun, our teacher taught us the choreography to the solo number that would be performed by whoever was cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy. The thing about ballet is that it really is much more complex than people seem to think. I think people are generally aware that a ballerina’s feet are compromised for the beauty of the spectacle, bleeding blisters and calluses are an everyday occurrence. But it is more than the physical features of a dancer that need to be hardened. Ballet represents a crossing of mental borders. It will change you if you work hard enough. It teaches you discipline, control, balance, perseverance, how to take criticism, to let your actions speak for themselves (be humble; there’s always room for improvement), that hard work should be embraced with a smile (dealing with pain makes you stronger), and that no individual is greater than the team. I carry these lessons with me, even as I am no longer dancing. I still remember the graceful piqué (see the photo above with the green tutu) that one does as the opening move to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, just as I still remember that the feeling of sore muscles the day after a tough practice was a good thing, as it meant you were getting stronger. These lessons were slowly drilled into my head and all of the heads of my fellow students, making us more mature, reflective, and conscious of our actions both in and outside the dance studio. These lessons allowed us to cross the border from adolescence to adulthood with both strength and grace. By Maya Schwartz

Exhaustion, stiff muscles, stuffy air, too many people, bumbling bags, harsh fluorescent lighting, and lines. So many lines. These elements are not necessarily unexpected when partaking on a transatlantic flight, but they certainly don’t make the process of getting through customs and border control easier. In Fort Lauderdale, we were taken off the plane and placed directly into shuttle buses. The airport is huge, apparently too large to let us disembark directly to the immigration area. So, we are shuttled to that section. Every person accounted for, cramped onto these busses, surrounded by tall sand-colored walls that promote a superficial sense of welcoming with engraved smiling lizards and sea turtles, which supposedly represent Florida. In Helsinki, I was told, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. This was in reference to me being in the wrong line. I looked steadily at the two options. ‘EU Passport Holders’ here, and ‘All Passports’ there. I was traveling to the US, and I was concerned that if I showed my EU passport, then they’d wonder where my visa to the US was, and if I showed my US passport then they would wonder where my entry stamp into the EU was. Typically, I go in the shortest line and explain my situation to the officer, but there were no lines here, so I had to choose. I chose wrong, apparently. The Finnish customs agent looked at the American passport I handed to him, then glanced over to the matte red book in my hand. He turned to me and told me to do as the Romans do. As I was still in the EU, I didn’t even need to show my American passport until I had crossed that border. He let me through after nonchalantly flipping through my Danish passport, barely even glancing at its contents. He essentially encouraged me to use my dual citizenship to its fullest extent, embracing the utter privilege I had access to. In New York, we were separated. I was traveling with a friend, a non-US citizen. I wanted to wait in the same line as her, but that apparently was not allowed. I was instructed to head over to the US citizens line, which was in fact much shorter and easier than the other line. But the fact remains that we couldn’t wait together. Breezing through customs and border control is a privilege. It’s often not even available to those who hold the right passport in their given destination. But when the right conditions align: short lines, straightforward facilities, well-designed airport layout, often only those with the right passport can access that privilege. In the age of increased commodification and the globalization of experiences, it is passports that grant you access to free movement and the privilege of feeling welcomed in a place you do not call home. Passports are the new nobility. They serve as determinants of access; one is born into a role which identifies where they can go and what places they can enjoy. It is a new world order constituted of borders. By Maya Schwartz

I still have a picture of myself from my first year in school, seated in small chairs in front of my desk, surrounded by other kids who may or may not know each other. At this time most of my surroundings were new and different to what I had been used to. At that time, being short in size made the whole world seem taller, bigger and at times huge. That is the reason why it felt both exciting and scary at the same time. Between those differences, you need time and space so as to organize your thoughts and feelings about the world around you. This help came from the books given to you in your first year of school. One of the books that made a huge impression on me at that time was a book of geography. In this book, there were a couple of pictures from the country that I come from and many others from the rest of the world. Now, it may sound obvious because speaking of the whole world you immediately have a picture of the world map in your mind, however, I am wondering if you have ever thought about your really first impression of it. Have you? From my personal perspective, it took some time before I realised and understood that the whole world did not purely exist of where I was growing but rather, it is somewhere much further than my daily life. The world map in the geography book helped me realise that the world around me had a specific scheme and within its borders, there were different countries with different names, cultures, languages and colours. I learned how to recognise the difference in each of the countries from the locations that were marked and from the lines that lay in between. In other words, these lines are called borders and they stand as a reminder of my space in the world and the space in the world for others. When you work with children, you know that their imagination can run faster than the sunlight and that they are capable of creating new things out of nothing. My story is not far from that. I took these lines I saw on the map for granted and I built real walls and wire netting, so as to make sure that this is my country and at some point it will be someone else’s. That’s how I interpret this information. All of this makes it more than obvious that at this point I had never left my own country before. So, when my family arranged our first trip abroad by car, one of my expectations was to face the borders I saw on these maps and to pass through some kind of wall. Fortunately, this never happened. However, it took me a while to realise that was not a joke. Many years later, having crossed literal and metaphorical borders I am still thinking about how real this image I used to have in my head was. Of course, not in terms of the real walls between the countries but the walls we have set around ourselves. How many borders have you set around yourself? Have you ever tried to face them? And what do they look like? Are they as tall as you are? And if we assume they have a voice, what would they say when you faced them? Don’t search for walls in between countries, because hopefully you won’t find them. The question is, if you really dare to look at the walls you have set around yourself and understand that you are the land that maybe someone is trying to cross, and you yourself have built these walls. Sometimes it is the case that they have been built so high no one can reach you. I hope at some point you realise that most of these walls are useless, and then you take the hammer by your side and you start to break them down. There is a whole world out there, and I hope you won’t miss it. And, if you are interested in passing the Geography test – one tip I can give you is that breaking a wall is not always enough, you need to build bridges as well! By Julia Rakogianni Edited by Rose Nickolds

“When they said ‘never again’ after the holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?” – Apollon Kabahizi The pursuit of science! In search of prosperity, progress, and competing with the newly emerging global market, European powers sent explorers to discover all corners of the earth; desperate to strive for new assets which would make them more attractive than their neighbors. Europe was fresh from an intellectual breakthrough. The Renaissance was the genesis of new ways of seeing the world, towards a more human-oriented existence. This was followed by the enlightenment, which allowed for the pursuit of science to be seen as noble and progressive, breaking away from the reign of religion. However, this pursuit of knowledge was malignant, leading to unfathomable implications that would have an impact on a global scale throughout modern time. The aftermath of such explorative ambitions led to imperialism and colonialism. Take, for instance, the case study of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. It is no secret that in the 1990s, an organized plan to remove the Tutsi population from Rwanda was executed by an elite few in the Hutu majority government. The horrors of this traumatic experience are still felt in Rwandan society today. When walking around Kigali on a typical day, one can’t help but notice that the general population is overwhelmingly young. Once you realize why that is, one’s understanding of this thriving, jubilant, and welcoming society becomes more complex. What most people don’t realize is that the Hutu and Tutsi ‘ethnic groups’ were, in fact, the product of superficial categorical constructions that led to objectivation and ‘otherness’. The categories were initially socio-economic constructions enforced by colonizers (Germany first, followed by Belgium). The Catholic Church also influenced the education system; they taught these constructed categories in school, thus perpetuating an ideology of superiority by praising Hutu over Tutsi peoples. This, alongside propaganda from the state, led to the widespread dehumanisation over time. It can be said that these taught divisions are direct obstacles to peace for so long. It can also be said that because of European nations striving for greatness and yearning to claim new lands for their own, that in the pursuit of science, they have resulted in oppressing an entire group of people to the point where their very existence was deemed irreverent. By Maya Schwartz Image: Rwandan flag, creative commons.

Often when talking about migration people will raise the question of integration, and perhaps make claims that a group is ‘not fitting in’. This is often based on a model of ‘unilinear assimilation’, where at one end of the scale is the outsider and at the other end is the perfect citizen. When you set up a scale to measure how well a person fits into your ideal vision of society you are effectively arranging a threshold for who can be considered a valued human being. Across history this scale has had different markers attached to it, and different ideas about the extent to which a person can move across this scale. An essentialist approach might be to argue that someone’s birth determines the extent to which they can move around this scale. This is built on the idea that our qualities are unchangeable and determined by universal truths or typologies. This essentialist approach is easiest to understand in the context of racial segregation, where different regimes have determined that someone’s body must have certain features to be considered a legitimate citizen. One example of this is the ‘Brown Paper Bag Test’, a cruel but widespread way of determining someone’s position in society based on whether their skin was lighter than a paper bag. Failing the test would mean being excluded from schools, social clubs, and all sorts of opportunities. Today we see parallels in how certain politicians argue that “people with Muslim heritage can never fit in to our society” or that first generation immigrants will never be “true Danes”. Another approach to this scale suggests that people can be elevated through the scale by receiving education, cultural knowledge, and other forms of ‘enlightenment’. This approach has a worrying history in Western society because of its relationship with forms of colonialism and genocide. In the United States, Canada, and Australia there was a long history of taking children with indigenous, First Nations, Native, or Aboriginal heritage and attempting to ‘civilise’ them by kidnapping them from their families, isolating them from their cultural heritage, and imposing ‘enlightened’ Western values through education, punishment, and even attempting to ‘fix’ their bodies through skin-bleaching and dress codes. There has always been a strong link between regimes which promote assimilation and active attempts to control, stigmatise, or erase culture. Many modern-day citizenship tests still carry this philosophical heritage. It is very rare that when people discuss integration they talk making an environment more inclusive, instead they tend to attach all the blame to the person that needs to be ‘fixed’ or ‘corrected’ to a set of nonsense criteria. We can promote inclusivity through social initiatives that develop dialogue or providing spaces where we can celebrate differences. There should never be pressure put on an individual to abandon their identity and heritage if they are going to be accepted in a space. Instead of talking about integration (in the sense of assimilation), we should talk about being a welcoming space that acknowledges and supports differences and attempts to build bridges rather than homogenise. By Simon Fern Image: Hennessy/Creative Commons

I love that Maya wrote in her article: “to have more than one passport didn’t make you half this and half that, rather, it made you more American.” People often ask me where I am from. When I was little, I was constantly confronted with this question from peers and teachers: “where are you from?”. The Answer that most put them at ease was: I am from the Philippines”, as this confirmed their suspicions of my complexion and dark hair and they relaxed in their confirmation biases. As I grew up and my language skills greatly improved, more and more people have added the comment: “but you are more Danish. You speak fluent Danish. You think like a Dane. You are not as Asian as those Asians that you surround yourself with”. To that, I say that I am more. I am Filipino and Danish and from the Global South and European. I reject none. I embrace all. I am fully all of those because I strive towards excellence to understand and contain all of these sensibilities and positionalities. I don’t adhere to only one positionality; I have the linguistic and cultural fluency to switch to whatever suits the context. It sounds braggadocios, but just in case there is not an afterlife, why is it not okay to strive for excellence in this life? Our proficiency in language becomes one of the indicators of our national identity. In life, we should strive for the highest excellence in the three languages we speak. Fluency is not enough; understanding is more profound and rewarding. We shape how people interact with us through our command of the language. Words can have mental conditions on their use, not captured by a simple Google translation. An innate understanding of words shapes our ideas of emotions, principles, the perspective of time, subliminal confirmation biases and overt/covert power relations. For example, Tagalog requires you to engage in conversation with implicit language learning. Implicit language learning requires a higher acquisition of unconscious knowledge. This type of communication means that the speaker must simultaneously convey and understand the structural relations of a more complex subliminal syntax of the language, not what is being explicitly expressed. Grudges will be held for a long time if you do not understand the subtext of the conversation. Danish is more explicit. You say what you mean, and things are not generally taken personally. It should be understood within a flat organisational structure. Power relations are low and autonomy is high. If people say that you are an idiot, don’t take it seriously. Life moves on, even if you do not. My point is that these skills and sensibilities require adequate proficiency if you only pursue it halfheartedly. Nor is it okay to devalue one’s efforts to become and strive to be more, by calling them “half” or ignoring the many colour palettes that they paint their own identities with. To only pick one – that’s immensely boring to ignore the feast of your colours, and just take one slice of stale bread because it is the closest one. Richness in life is about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience that you have collected up to now to help you dive into the things that you did not know. To nibble, taste or devour the delicacies of what makes you and makes the human being in front of you. It is an ongoing and delightful challenge to become more, a more wholesome human being with a richer understanding of life and its many raw and tender nuances. The richest person in the graveyard is not the one with the biggest bank account, it is the person who became fully themselves. By Julliette E. Lloren You can read Maya’s original article here: [Part One] [Part Two] Image: Julliette

I view speaking Danish as a massive border that I have crossed. Although I carry a Danish passport, have a mom whose mother tongue is Danish, and have a deep personal affection towards Denmark itself, I never felt like I truly belonged here until I could communicate with fluency and ease in Danish. Perhaps for some this may seem unjustified. The easy answer to my quandary is to simply ignore other people’s perceptions and focus on oneself. This is easier said than done, and when you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and something to prove, that can seem like a Sisyphean task. The notions of ease and comfort are quintessential to everyday life. The boringly monotonous routine that one follows when living in their ‘home’ country is taken for granted when language is not an issue. For a perfectionist like myself, it was not enough to be able to order a coffee or ask where the restroom was in Danish. As long as I could still feel the gears churning when attempting a conversation, I simply did not feel Danish. In essence, language and identity are thoroughly intertwined. To me, this means that language can be the key to truly having a Danish identity. However, it is significant to acknowledge that identity is a deeply personal issue. Identity is a construct, it is fluid, and my perceptions of my identity and what constitutes my own Danish-ness are not meant to be used as a universal template for others undergoing similar experiences in Denmark. Once I was actually able to understand a whole night’s worth of conversation at a dinner party, or able to go on a date and only speak Danish, it was like something just clicked, and I’d crossed a milestone in the vast wall that was the Danish language. I’d opened up a whole new world of opportunities for myself. I could read the posters at my university, I could understand passers-by, I could listen to the Queen’s speech at New Years (albeit the Danish sense of humour still slips under my radar occasionally). In my own way, I’d truly crossed a border. By Maya Schwartz You can read part one [here] Image: Yeowatzup/Flickr

Part One I’ve repeated the following anecdote countless times, as people are often confused when I tell them I have a Danish passport, yet they can hear an accent in my Danish: I grew up with a Danish mom and an American dad in South Florida. I was bilingual and perfectly fluent in both Danish and English. But when I was around 5 years old and started school, I was confused as to why no one besides my mom could speak this seemingly strange, guttural language. Over time I started to respond only in English when she would speak Danish to me. Eventually, she gave up, and we began to speak English on a daily basis, to the point where I forgot Danish and all its strange vowel sounds. This meant that when I moved to Denmark three years ago, I needed to relearn everything, from pronunciation to syntax and grammar. As a happy-go-lucky, pig-tailed little girl growing up in American suburbia, I never once doubted my identity as an American. It was incredibly common to have a parent that spoke another language. America is a melting pot. That’s what those who embrace diversity proudly proclaim about the US. To have more than one passport didn’t make you half this and half that, rather, it made you more American. I never explored my connection to Denmark on more than a superficial level by referring to my Danish summer trips every now and then. When I was in 9th grade my human geography teacher asked me to count to 10 in Danish so the other students could hear the similarities between the two Germanic languages. I remember feeling quite normal because I wasn’t the only one with roots in another country. I’ve never felt like I needed to explore my Danish-ness as another part of my identity because I was simply American. Then came the big move. Moving to the country that I’d only ever visited while on vacation proved to be utterly eye-opening. It challenged my perspective on big things like social welfare and how to run a government system, as well as the small things like sorting trash and what kind of groceries I buy. I felt instantly at home with my ‘progressive’ (by US-standards) values and through seeing my Danish family regularly. I loved every aspect of my new Danish life. For the first time, I truly wanted to feel Danish. I identify largely with Danish politics and the way Danes live their lives. I wanted people to look at me and be associated with Denmark as well as the US. I was ready to embrace being Danish as a part of my new, expanding identity. After the excitement of moving to a new place wore off, however, I began to adjust to the normalities of everyday life. The mediocrity of ordinary routines began to set in, and I started to notice not just how I felt about my surroundings, but how my surrounding were perceiving me. The absolute biggest obstacle I faced, by far, towards feeling welcomed by Danish society as a whole, was the Danish language. By Maya Schwartz Image: Cytis/pixabay

Borders are maintained and reinforced by the penalties which they entail, and the consequent fear they inspire in our personal and collective imaginations. Sometimes these penalties and fears are appropriate and help to maintain barriers which protect us from harm. At other times, these penalties and fears are disproportionate and are ideologically motivated. When talking about borders, it’s important to be aware of some key terms and ideas. In this article we introduce and define the ideas of security theatre, securatization, and privatisation which are big topics in ongoing discussions about borders and migration. Security theatre is the process through which organisations promote things that give the appearance of protection without producing measurable outcomes. This might involve disproportionately arming border officials by giving them automatic weapons when it is unlikely that they will have any violent interactions. Some people argue that a lot of the safety checks in airports are a form a security theatre, confiscating your nail scissors is silly when you could buy other dangerous items like glass bottles in the duty-free area just beyond the security stop. Security theatre is potentially, and ironically, a danger because it means that instead of spending money on things that keep us safe we have instead paid for processes which have no measurable benefit. Securitisation refers to how the state frames issues as threats to our safety. An example of this might be xenophobic politicians suggesting that women who wear veils are a threat to security. These politicians are using the language of safety to hide their prejudice. Another example is governments discussing terrorism as a massive threat to the public, when something like heart-disease, lung cancer, or domestic violence is far more likely to result in someone’s death – governments can then justify disproportionate spending on military budgets, or passing laws which restrict our civil liberties. Privatisation is the process of transferring a public service to a privately run industry. Maintaining borders, and security in general, is a profitable industry. Large companies exist to profit from managing and reinforcing borders. It is important to understand that these groups have an interest in promoting an agenda which increases government spending on security. You may notice employees of these private security firms acting as though they are equivalent to police officer or government official when they are most like not. When you are going through a border, look at who is profiting from running that border. This article is part of a series which will try to introduce and explain important ideas about how to talk about and understand borders of all kinds. Being able to name and illustrate these issues is a vital step towards deconstructing and challenging them. By Simon Fern Image: Nerthus/pixbay