In the present political moment, “border walls” between the U.S. and Mexico have become a flashpoint, representing binaries like governed / ungoverned spaces, security / insecurity, morality / immorality, respect / disrespect for human rights, human unity / disunity, North / South, haves / have-nots, citizens / non-citizens, Republicans / Democrats, conservatives / liberals, patriots / traitors, nationalists / internationalists (or globalists), and others. This work explores some of the thematic Global North – Global South implications of a notional “border wall” based on social imagery (in a multi-loop image analysis approach). This work questions how the “other” may be viewed through the limiting slats of a fence or windows in a wall. In addition to the image analyses, topic-related textual data will also be studied from various sources: academia, journalism, and social media (including mass search correlations, big data word search, related tags networks, and #hashtag network analysis).
TopIntroduction
Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge. -- Benjamin Franklin
Good fences make good neighbors. -- Robert Frost in “Mending Wall” poem (1914)
Borders everywhere attract violence, violence prompts fences, and eventually fences can mutate into walls. Then everyone pays attention because a wall turns a legal distinction into a visual slap in the face. We seem to love walls, but are embarrassed by them because they say something unpleasant about the neighbors—and us. They flow from two sources: fear and the desire for control. Just as our houses have doors and locks, so do borders call forth garrisons, customs officials, and, now and then, big walls. They give us divided feelings because we do not like to admit we need them. (Bowden, May 2007)
La fontiera es grande porque estamos de rodillas (The border is great because we are on our knees) – graffiti on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, undated
i chinga la migra (i f—k immigration) -- graffiti on the U.S. – Mexico border wall, undated
I know from personal experience that the southern border, despite conventional rhetoric, is not and will never be a neat, impenetrable line of demarcation. It is not a Tupperware container but rather a living, breathing membrane, a region where family members live and work on both sides. The border is a vital artery for commerce, agriculture, travel, and tourism, as well as a naturally porous environment for livestock and wildlife, not handily sealed by artificial barriers. -- Janet Napolitano (with Karen Breslau), in How Safe are We?Homeland Security Since 9/11 (2019, p. 36)
Solitary existence is a safe approach for keeping what one has worked hard to get. For life in a crowd to pay off—any crowd, let alone a whole society—something must be gained in dealing with needy and greedy others. -- Mark W. Moffett, The Human Swarm: How our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall (2019)
Imagine that this line below is a border. Pick a side. That side is yours. On the other side is someone else’s space…
Borders demarcate inside/outside, belonging/non-belonging, ownership/non-ownership, legality/non-illegality, and other binaries with all points in between. The border demarcations, in the present day, extend on land, through water, and in space. As cultural touchstones, borders are places where momentous exchanges occur, bridges where spies are exchanged, where lovers are reunited, where nation-states face off across barbed wire, and where lives are changed forever.
Sometimes, borders are made material with physical barriers. In the modern world, they are also criss-crossed with various electronic and other security measures. There is a “here” on one side and a “there” on the other. People often imbue meaning on the other side, as having more opportunity, more romance, more potential. Then, there’s the “anywhere but here” phenomenon, where people want to leave something behind. People will sometimes go to extreme lengths to make their way to another space. There are formalized paths forward, with people bartering their skills, their education, their youth, their family ties, and other factors, to arrive. Then, there are informal paths—as stowaways, as smuggled humans, and others.