Drawing lines in the right places

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One of the greatest achievements of the European project over the last 70 years has been the removal of visible borders over much of the continent.  The Schengen area doesn’t exactly match the EU (some EU countries are outside it, and some Schengen countries are outside the EU), but it would have undoubtedly been impossible without the existence of the EU and the single market.  It has shown that the absence of borders and border control does not, of itself, threaten the national identity of anyone.

There are others, though, who like borders and, for them, the stronger and more visible those borders are the better.  ‘Controlling our borders’ was one of the core Brexit messages – and that in a state which wasn’t part of Schengen and had never abolished border controls anyway. The reason that Brexiteers bang on about ‘controlling our own borders’ is that those borders define a demarcation line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, with an often unstated but nevertheless ever-present fear and distrust of ‘them’; and the more visible the border, the greater the degree of demarcation.  Part of my opposition to Brexit is precisely about rejecting that demarcation, that ‘othering’ of foreigners; in European terms, I consider myself to be at least as much a part of the ‘them’ as of the ‘us’, particularly given the narrow and exclusive way in which ‘us’ is often implicitly defined.

I’m uncomfortable with the way in which so many countries have responded to the pandemic by reinstituting border controls.  Movement controls I understand, but are state borders the right place to impose and police them?  In France, the virus seems to be spreading from east to west, and in Italy from north to south; closing the eastern and northern borders respectively look like drawing lines in the wrong places.  Choosing national or state boundaries is an easy option, but it may also be a lazy and sub-optimal option - the determinant of where any lines need to be drawn is the progress of the virus, not nationality.

Here in Wales, I have no argument with the restrictions on movement which have been imposed to respond to the covid-19 outbreak, and accept that there is a need for enforcement of those restrictions, even if I have some doubts about the details of that enforcement.  It follows that I entirely accept the need to stop people travelling to second homes, potentially bringing the virus from urban hotspots into rural areas lacking the resources to respond to any major outbreak.  I can understand why local people in the areas most affected are concerned about people travelling to them under current circumstances. They are right to be concerned. 

There is, though, something that makes me feel uncomfortable about some of the language and rhetoric involved, particularly when it translates into fear and distrust of the ‘other’.  Calls for the effective closure of the Wales-England border when the virus is already circulating both sides of that line look like another example of trying to draw a line in the wrong place. There are holiday home owners in Wales as well, who would be unaffected by any border closure – unless we move to close county (or even community?) borders as well. 

Logically and rationally, restricting movement makes sense and enforcing those restrictions is a natural concomitant.  Those are things which can be undone easily and quickly if and when the situation allows.  But dark human emotions such as fear and distrust of others, once expressed and experienced, are much harder to reverse. Control of movement doesn’t have to be the same thing as managing flows across a line on a map and the association between ‘control of movement’ and ‘enforcement of borders’ is a potentially dangerous one.  Effectively encouraging the idea that people on the other side of an arbitrary line are in some way ‘others’, even if done entirely unintentionally and with the very best of motives, may have undesirable longer-term implications.