"This book disputes the idea that borders are a natural part of the human world and that migration is driven primarily by traffickers and smugglers. Instead, the existence of the border itself produces the violence that surrounds it. The border creates the economic and jurisdictional discontinuities that have come to be seen as its hallmarks, providing an impetus for the movement of people, goods, drugs, and weapon across it. The hardening of the border through new security practices is the source of the violence, not a response to it."

This book is necessary reading if you care even marginally about the increasingly desperate issue of violence that happens at borders. It's a well-researched, historically situated book that manages to do a lot in just 180 pages. Reece Jones is very careful to talk about the current epidemic happening at the borders as something that is the continuation and intensification of nationalism and the desire for the privileged to protect their wealth. When it comes to the movement of capital, of products especially of wealthier states, borders are pried open for their benefit even against the protest of locals. But when it comes to people, to labourers in search of better lives, and those fleeing violent conditions, borders are increasingly solid, hostile and even deadly.

"This is a collective, structural violence that deprives the poor of access to wealth and opportunities through the enclosure of resources and the bordering of states."

If people were to be able to move to seek a better life, who would be around to labour for $1.50 per hour in Bangladesh? The violence that happens at borders then is not a result of migrants or refugees, but by the increasing militarization and funding to its enforcement that allow for more punitive actions to be taken against migrants that had not existed before. There have been more deaths at borders in our current times than at any other time.

It was interesting to read parts where Reece historically traces how our relationship to land changes because of how borders got more and more prominent. The demarcation of borders even out at sea so that countries can have access to the oil reserves and other natural resources deep underground was the final frontier in enforcing borders on most of the globe.

I remember watching a short documentary about a man in India who singlehandedly saved a diminishing barren land by planting a tree on it every day. In 30 years a huge forest had already emerged and he continues to make the journey every day to plant new trees. My first thought was that this action could not be possible in countries such as mine where such areas would most certainly be sectioned off to be private property or the property of the government. As Reece describes it borders "..changed the relationship between people and the environment by redefining land and oceans as closed areas of ownership that can be exploited for economic gain, not common spaces to be shared or conserved. As individuals, corporations, and states gained ownership over land, the ability to make decisions on how to use the land shifted from a public to a private concern."

A final quote:

"Today almost all of the land in the world is claimed by states that possess the authority to use its resources and limit the movement of people. The boundaries that enclosed land into private property and established state sovereignty within territories and seas are treated as if they have always existed eternally, but even the oldest political borders are only a few hundred years old; most are only a few decades old. They are not the result of a transparent sorting of historical peoples into their own territories. Instead, borders are an efficient system for maintaining political control of an area through agreements and documents that are backed up with the threat of violence.

Although direct violence was used to impose these regulations, as the deaths at the end of the Midlands revolt attest, these enclosures are more clearly examples of the structural violence of borders. They changed the relationship between people and the environment by redefining land and oceans as closed areas of ownership that can be exploited for economic gain, not common spaces to be shared or conserved. As individuals, corporations, and states gained ownership over land, the ability to make decisions on how to use the land shifted from a public to a private concern.

The current violence at borders that targets migrants fleeing war and economic inequality in search of a better life is the latest stage in the long-term conflict between states and rulers–who control land and want to protect their rights to the wealth and opportunity captured there–and people who move in order to gain new opportunities or leave repressive conditions. The enclosure of common lands and the lack of coherence within many decolonized states often result in violence and war as control over the mechanisms of power are contested, as is currently occurring in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and South Sudan. The irony is that migrants from these disorderly artificial states, which are the remnants of European colonialism, are denied the right to move to Europe to escape the artificial boundaries Europe left behind." ( )

This is a thought-provoking book advocating the right of people to move freely in search of a better life. Current border conflicts around the world are discussed and an overview is provided of how international borders were shaped through recent history. The last portion of the book takes a look at how international borders have contributed to ongoing issues such as world poverty and climate change. ( )