Can we—should we—do without borders? Interview with Astrid Von Busekist
Astrid von Busekist holds a full professorship at CERI, and is co-author, with Dominique Bourg and Michel Foucher, of Frontières, une illusion ? Méditations sur le risque (Philosophie Magazine éditeur). Here she answers our questions on this burning and often controversial issue.
Borders are clearly a successful concept, given the world has seen more than 27000 km of them created since 1990 (mostly in Europe and in Asia), but how would you define a border?
It is not easy to give just one definition. As I show in the book, borders are not only political or geographical, they unfold in a range of social situations and are continually shifting. A migrant who crosses a state border still has a number of obstacles to overcome.
Borders are not merely lines on a map, even though maps help us to understand them in metaphorical terms. They separate geographical territories, but also social and psychological spaces. They separate high from low, “us” from “them”, inside from outside, sacred from profane, left from right.(...)
