Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

Walls are physical constructs, built to enclose, divide, protect, and contain. Geopolitical borders operate in much the same way, as manifestations of state sovereignty and power. In previous studies, I examined border mobilities in Europe, including the racialist push by EU member states to impede asylum and immigration (Linke 2016, 2019). The deadliness of border-crossings intensified in the 21st century, concurrent with the dismantling of national borders in Europe’s (white) interior, observations that inspired critical challenges to visions of ‘a borderless world’ (Mbembe 2018). Such theorizing by scholars from the global South, posited with a decolonizing stance (Gupta 2021), exposes the regimes of violence evident in the border zones of states. How can such border practices and imaginaries be altered when, in this century, ‘border control has become a litmus test for governments, democracies, and civil societies around the world’ (Göktürk 2019)? What is the impact of border ideologies, politics, and practices on local communities? In forging a scalable global imagination of borders, we need to depart from ‘the taken-for-granted state-centric model or image of world-space’ (Beaverstock et al. 2006; Römhild 2017) and recalibrate our investigative attention to ‘the human scale’ (Gehl 2012). A human-centered research practice incorporates the perspectives of those who live in the racialized margins. Yet how can attention to the border-induced suffering not merely incite ‘spectatorial empathy’ (Göktürk 2019) but actual change? Drawing on the truth-revealing work of activists as forensic anthropologist Jason DeLeon and art-photographer JR, we glimpse the transformative potential of community engagement.