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26 Refuge 5 (2009)
Why No Borders?

handle is hein.journals/rfgcjr26 and id is 198 raw text is: Volume 26 Refuge Number 2 Editorial: Why No Borders? BRIDGET ANDERSON, NANDITA SHARMA, AND CYNTHIA WRIGHT Abstract This editorial article argues for No Borders as a prac- tical political project. We first critically examine borders as ideological, generating and reinforcing inequality. We consider some responses to injustices produced by borders: the call for human rights; attempts to make immigra- tion controls more humanitarian; and trade unions' organizing and campaigning with undocumented workers. Recognizing the important contributions of some of these responses, we argue that nevertheless they have often been limited because they do not question sovereignty, the ter- ritorializing of people's subjectivities, and nationalism. No Borders politics rejects notions of citizenship and statehood, and clarifies the centrality of borders to capitalism. We argue that No Borders is a necessary part of a global sys- tem of common rights and contemporary struggle for the commons. The article concludes by highlighting the main themes of the papers that make up the Special Issue, a number of which explore practical instances of the instan- tiation of No Borders politics. Risumi Le present article de tete presente le mouvement No Border comme projet politique pratique. Les auteurs examinent d'abord de fapon critique les frontieres en tant qu'ideo- logie produisant et renforgant l'inegalite. Ils considerent quelques reactions aux injustices produites par les fron- tieres : appels aux droits humains », tentatives de rendre les contr6les d'immigration plus «humanitaires», mou- vements syndicaux d'organisation et de lutte avec les tra- vailleurs sans-papiers. Reconnaissant l'importante contri- bution de certaines de ces reactions, ils soutiennent qu'elles sont n anmoins souvent limit es parce qu'elles ne mettent pas en cause la souverainet, la territorialisation des sub- jectivites individuelles et le nationalisme. Le mouvement No Border rejette les notions de citoyennete et d'Ztat et met au grand jour le role central des frontieres au sein du capi- talisme. Les auteurs soutiennent que No Border est un ele- ment necessaire d'un systeme mondial de droits communs et de lutte contemporaine pour les communes. Ils mettent enfin en evidence les themes principaux des articles qui composent ce numero special, dont plusieurs etudient des cas pratiques de la manifestation des politiques No Border. Only the battles which aren't even begun are lost at the start. -Madjiguene Cisse, spokesperson for the Sans-Papiers in France A cross the world, national states, especially in what the Economist likes to call the rich world, are imposing ever more restrictive immigration policies. Such state efforts are being enacted at precisely the time when migration has become an increasingly important part of people's strategies for gaining access to much-needed life resources. These may be a new livelihood, closeness to significant persons in their lives, or escape from untenable, even murderous, situations, such as persecution and war, as well as the opportunity to experience new people, places, and situations. That the greater freedom of mobility granted to capital and commodities through neo-liberal reform has taken place alongside this lessening of freedom of mobility for people has been analyzed by many as constituting one of the great contradictions of the present era. In contrast, in this Special Issue on the emergence of a No Borders politics, we show that the simultaneous process of granting more freedom to capital and less to migrants is far from a contradiction and is in fact a crucial underpin- ning of global capitalism and the equally global system of national states. The growing restriction on the freedom of people to move has not led to fewer people crossing nation- alized borders. Exactly the opposite: today more people are doing exactly this than ever before. The United Nations Population Division currently estimates that there are now about 200 million international migrants each year. This 5 © Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright, 2009. This open-access work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits use, reproduction and distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author(s) are credited and the original publication in Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees is cited. Volume 26 Refuge Number 2

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