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.
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