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No Borders: The Politics of Immigration Control and Resistance
From the streets of Calais to the borders of Melilla, Evros and the United States, the slogan 'No borders!' is a thread connecting a multitude of different struggles for the freedom to move and to stay. But what does it mean to make this slogan a reality?
Drawing on the author's extensive research in Greece and Calais, as well as a decade campaigning for migrant rights, Natasha King explores the different forms of activism that have emerged in the struggle against border controls, and the dilemmas these activists face in translating their principles into practice.
Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, No Borders constitutes vital reading for anyone interested in how we make radical alternatives to the state a genuine possibility for our times, and raises crucial questions on the nature of resistance.
Drawing on the author's extensive research in Greece and Calais, as well as a decade campaigning for migrant rights, Natasha King explores the different forms of activism that have emerged in the struggle against border controls, and the dilemmas these activists face in translating their principles into practice.
Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, No Borders constitutes vital reading for anyone interested in how we make radical alternatives to the state a genuine possibility for our times, and raises crucial questions on the nature of resistance.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
208 pages, Hardcover
Published October 15, 2016
3 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Natasha King
20 booksNatasha has been involved in a lot of different expressions of the struggle for the freedom of movement, in the UK, Calais and elsewhere. Natasha would like to call herself an author but isn’t sure if you can do that after finishing your first book. She hopes this will be the first of many. Natasha has a PhD in politics from the University of Nottingham, Centre for Social and Global Justice. She is from the south of England and is based in Nottingham. Right now she is travelling around Europe exploring different kinds of autonomous communities.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 27, 2017
This book is quite some way off the account of the dynamics of migrant resistance to border control that I thought it would be. It is built around reflections on struggles taking place in Athens and Calais in which the author participated, but migrants only figure in this as rather vague sketches intended to illustrate some point about anarchist theory. We get no sense of the reasons why the people in these situations are on the move and why they seem to be willing to risk everything to get to some final destination. Instead we are offered a high-blown theory about ‘the autonomy of migration’, as though those on the move are motivated by an existential desire for freedom for its own sake.
In my view if you get the reason why people migrate wrong then everything else you say about the issue is likely to be a bunch of hooey. With the presumption that she and the subjects of her study are some sort of soulmates on the same road to absolute freedom, King goes on to spin a theory of solidarity which binds people together with the tenuous threads of mutual regard for each other’s projects. Some anthropological notions about equality are prayed in aid for this argument and the strategic problems which the book seems to think are central are how it is possible to live out the experience of non-hierarchical, mutually-reinforcing action without doing deals with the state.
This ranks high amongst all the examples of privileged activists imposing their agendas on the struggles of people who exist many rungs lower down the social ladder than themselves. The dilemmas of being an anarchist and the opportunities that might exist for creating non-hierarchical spaces displaces the actual essential task of reducing the power of the capitalist state in determining the lives of people whose very existence requires forcing a break with its processes and controls. The world of the anarchist activist is one of a constant flurry of social experiments in communality and efforts at the pre-figuration of a social order in which external coercion has ceased to exist. But in the case of the type of egoistical anarchism which King seems to favour, even this takes place in a Foucauldian universe where repression is a permanent condition for the human soul and where the state itself is raised a bleak authority in which its capitalist features are only a peripheral issue.
This is a current which lost any connection with the profound critique of capitalism that brought other versions of the anarchist creed to a point of influence amongst a swathe of the European and American subaltern classes a few generations back. There is a world of difference between a starting point which says that the state takes the form that it does because of the capitalism interests that lie at its heart, and one that assumes that it is merely another manifestation of authority and its desire to oppress. This book makes no more than a few scattered references to capitalism as such, and when they occur they subsume the notion to just one of several different species of deplorable activity that anarchists tend to be against.
The result is an account of collaborations between ‘activists’ and migrants which are always disappointing. The disappointment is all the greater because the anarchist invests so much hope in the migrant being the hero of her fantasy of a group of human beings who are intent on living ‘autonomous’ lives. They are ‘refusing the state’ and the challenge for the activist is to make sure that they do not backslide into compromises that might bring about only partial gains. King makes it clear that she appreciates that a conundrum exists here and she calls on her comrades to be more understanding that ‘engagement’ with the forces that are denying you the right to cross a border is pretty well the inevitable consequence of fighting them in the first place. The thing to strive for from this perspective is a set of institutions – safe houses, communal kitchens, community centres and the like – which embody anarchist ethics and which might be the basis for an investment in a future, alternative, way of existence.
Unfortunately the examples she offers from her experiences in working with migrants in Athens and Calais show just how vulnerable these experiments are to be washed away by a turbulent political and economic environment. If what we want from our activism is lessons well learnt about the nature of the power we are up against that haven’t come from this experience. Despondency, if not outright despair, seems to be the legacy of jungle camps that are raided by police, migrant personal belongings wrecked, and people scattered to the wind. The brief experience of communal living ends up as not much more than a wistful memory after the evictions have taken place and the authorities cease control of the property.
Yet there is a rock which is capable of breaking the force of the current that would sweep people on the move on to defeat. It is a type of organisation which, maybe existing as nothing much more than an ephemeral network of collaborating organisations and individuals, nevertheless has learning about the ways in which the enemy can be taken on and defeated at its core. The task that lies at the heart of this collaboration is understanding how capitalism structures the state and the ways that this configures the controls that exist at borders. This process brings us face-to-face with a vast range of tensions as the interests of different stakeholders within the system of power clash and begin to reveal the extent of the contradictions that exist at every level of the social system. A strategy which aims to maximise opportunities for escape from the control of the state when it comes to exercising a right to move freely needs to be more cognisant of what the nature of these conflicts are and how they can be used to the advantage of the subject group.
When the various collectives and networks whose work King reviews are really doing a useful job (and, if this review seems rather negative in assessing their role, let me say that I think they do a lot of really important work) then they will be alongside migrants in accomplishing this task of probing and pushing back at the structures of power. This, after all, is what migrants who are on the move do all the time in any event. Grandiose ideas about exercising an autonomous right to migrant seldom figure in the plans of a Filipina social care worker looking to evade the onerous obligations of being ‘self-sufficient’ as she pursues her profession, or the Eritrean refugee stopped by border controls from reaching the networks that would provide support and a degree of security.
What they want are tactics which will push back and paralyse the efforts of immigration controllers to harass, imprison and deport them. A movement which builds on the capacity of the working class to resist the oppression and exploitation endemic to the capitalist system ought to be able to play a role in helping migrants in achieving that end. What a shame that anarchist theory, which once helped workers and peasants organise a practical fightback against capitalism has, in the egoistical version presented in this book, got so little to say about how those battles might be resumed..
In my view if you get the reason why people migrate wrong then everything else you say about the issue is likely to be a bunch of hooey. With the presumption that she and the subjects of her study are some sort of soulmates on the same road to absolute freedom, King goes on to spin a theory of solidarity which binds people together with the tenuous threads of mutual regard for each other’s projects. Some anthropological notions about equality are prayed in aid for this argument and the strategic problems which the book seems to think are central are how it is possible to live out the experience of non-hierarchical, mutually-reinforcing action without doing deals with the state.
This ranks high amongst all the examples of privileged activists imposing their agendas on the struggles of people who exist many rungs lower down the social ladder than themselves. The dilemmas of being an anarchist and the opportunities that might exist for creating non-hierarchical spaces displaces the actual essential task of reducing the power of the capitalist state in determining the lives of people whose very existence requires forcing a break with its processes and controls. The world of the anarchist activist is one of a constant flurry of social experiments in communality and efforts at the pre-figuration of a social order in which external coercion has ceased to exist. But in the case of the type of egoistical anarchism which King seems to favour, even this takes place in a Foucauldian universe where repression is a permanent condition for the human soul and where the state itself is raised a bleak authority in which its capitalist features are only a peripheral issue.
This is a current which lost any connection with the profound critique of capitalism that brought other versions of the anarchist creed to a point of influence amongst a swathe of the European and American subaltern classes a few generations back. There is a world of difference between a starting point which says that the state takes the form that it does because of the capitalism interests that lie at its heart, and one that assumes that it is merely another manifestation of authority and its desire to oppress. This book makes no more than a few scattered references to capitalism as such, and when they occur they subsume the notion to just one of several different species of deplorable activity that anarchists tend to be against.
The result is an account of collaborations between ‘activists’ and migrants which are always disappointing. The disappointment is all the greater because the anarchist invests so much hope in the migrant being the hero of her fantasy of a group of human beings who are intent on living ‘autonomous’ lives. They are ‘refusing the state’ and the challenge for the activist is to make sure that they do not backslide into compromises that might bring about only partial gains. King makes it clear that she appreciates that a conundrum exists here and she calls on her comrades to be more understanding that ‘engagement’ with the forces that are denying you the right to cross a border is pretty well the inevitable consequence of fighting them in the first place. The thing to strive for from this perspective is a set of institutions – safe houses, communal kitchens, community centres and the like – which embody anarchist ethics and which might be the basis for an investment in a future, alternative, way of existence.
Unfortunately the examples she offers from her experiences in working with migrants in Athens and Calais show just how vulnerable these experiments are to be washed away by a turbulent political and economic environment. If what we want from our activism is lessons well learnt about the nature of the power we are up against that haven’t come from this experience. Despondency, if not outright despair, seems to be the legacy of jungle camps that are raided by police, migrant personal belongings wrecked, and people scattered to the wind. The brief experience of communal living ends up as not much more than a wistful memory after the evictions have taken place and the authorities cease control of the property.
Yet there is a rock which is capable of breaking the force of the current that would sweep people on the move on to defeat. It is a type of organisation which, maybe existing as nothing much more than an ephemeral network of collaborating organisations and individuals, nevertheless has learning about the ways in which the enemy can be taken on and defeated at its core. The task that lies at the heart of this collaboration is understanding how capitalism structures the state and the ways that this configures the controls that exist at borders. This process brings us face-to-face with a vast range of tensions as the interests of different stakeholders within the system of power clash and begin to reveal the extent of the contradictions that exist at every level of the social system. A strategy which aims to maximise opportunities for escape from the control of the state when it comes to exercising a right to move freely needs to be more cognisant of what the nature of these conflicts are and how they can be used to the advantage of the subject group.
When the various collectives and networks whose work King reviews are really doing a useful job (and, if this review seems rather negative in assessing their role, let me say that I think they do a lot of really important work) then they will be alongside migrants in accomplishing this task of probing and pushing back at the structures of power. This, after all, is what migrants who are on the move do all the time in any event. Grandiose ideas about exercising an autonomous right to migrant seldom figure in the plans of a Filipina social care worker looking to evade the onerous obligations of being ‘self-sufficient’ as she pursues her profession, or the Eritrean refugee stopped by border controls from reaching the networks that would provide support and a degree of security.
What they want are tactics which will push back and paralyse the efforts of immigration controllers to harass, imprison and deport them. A movement which builds on the capacity of the working class to resist the oppression and exploitation endemic to the capitalist system ought to be able to play a role in helping migrants in achieving that end. What a shame that anarchist theory, which once helped workers and peasants organise a practical fightback against capitalism has, in the egoistical version presented in this book, got so little to say about how those battles might be resumed..
April 4, 2019
This wasn't really what I was expecting to read, nor was it what I hoped to read. Some parts are interesting but it largely felt too focused on the role of activists to actually be of much use. Frustrating because I'd hoped to find a succinct way to explain the situation in Northern France to share w friends and family - but I think it's missing too much context for those who haven't experienced either Athens or Calais (or similar) but without enough to engage those of us who have?
Also it's barely two years post publication and a lot of the information, at least in Calais, seems to be completely different now. So I don't even know if it's "useful" currently?
Also it's barely two years post publication and a lot of the information, at least in Calais, seems to be completely different now. So I don't even know if it's "useful" currently?
March 5, 2019
A scholarly analysis of freedom of movement targeting those living outside the State in Athens, Greece where Ms. King lived for a time in 2011 among those without papers and Calais, France because they represent particular brutal intensity in the struggle against the border in her opinion; places where people travelling without permission have had to stay, where the mechanisms of control have been diverse, creative and brutal and where people have continued to struggle for the freedom of movement in diverse and creative ways. This provides the basis for her research as well as having visited many a No Borders camp starting in Brussels in 2009. She looks for the potential throughout for a world order without borders.( The principle of free movement between mainland European countries was first noted in the Schengen Agreement of 1985 and is still considered on the the greatest achievements of the European project per Patrick Kingsley The New Odyssey. Ironically, no notice is given to the 1951 UN resolution on Global Migration nor the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights authored in part by Eleanor Roosevelt and not signed off on by US in current times by the agents of border enforcement.)
A variety of theories on social movement, power and resistance etc.are discussed giving much credence to each source as well as how they play out in reality. It is hopeful to see the results of perseverance of the human spirit and creativity despite the squalor and oppression which surrounds such as the "apartment" in Athens and the "church" built by those in the Calais Tioxide jungle. Emphasis is placed on how such societies exist apart from power base and hierarchy lauding the impact of cooperation when interdependent. Dilemmas presented for those who want to transform the State versus those who wish to live outside the State and trials of each. She explains difficulty of aiding each other's cause when there is not agreement on merit of a particular course of action and the impossibility of developing trust necessary for any collaborative action when parties are fleeing and temporary at best.
The gains to Capitalism in having a non-mobile dedicated labor force historically and in current times such as those detained was an interesting point. In the end, Ms. King concludes that the force of movement will not stop though the gains by those who travel are harder and harder to acquire with the leaps made in identification technology and the risks to their bodies and souls growing. It was sad to read the current status of self-made settlements in the Afterword (ultimately eliminated), people relocated far from the point of exit and in isolation from all others. This book presents an amazing collection of all who have had a role in enabling some freedoms for those who move without papers as well as those forces who resist and constrain agents of the State. Nonetheless, it was uplifting to see what actions had been taken between and among those affected countries to lessen the crisis which provide food for thought for other sites. Greece, for example, followed the lead of other European States in carrying out 4 mass legalization amnesties starting in 1998 and ending in 2007. The gain was only temporary but a means by which the undocumented could gain status. Furthermore, Greece was a signatory to the Schengen Agreement of 1992 fully implementing in 2000 which gave free movement in a designated area for citizens of those states signatory to it yet enhanced border control as well. On the other hand, the Dublin Regulation enabled some who left Greece and claimed asylum elsewhere to be returned. The 300 Hunger Strike in Greece is yet another point of success by a migrant-led group.
To quote close with hope in the words of Natashsa King: "There are a number of accounts of the suffering of people trying to cross in Calais, and of the terrible living conditions they have to endure. But I also think it is important to recognize that, DESPITE ALL THIS, such places are still also places of humanity, equality, and autonomy, and I thinks this makes them also amazing and hopeful and beautiful, because people make their lives there, despite controls."
Introduction to chapter one contains 2 quotes worth remembering: "Migration is a force of nature."
"No set of border controls has ever worked to fully contain people's desire and need to move. In this sense, . . . the everyday practice of refusing the border has existed as long as borders have."
A variety of theories on social movement, power and resistance etc.are discussed giving much credence to each source as well as how they play out in reality. It is hopeful to see the results of perseverance of the human spirit and creativity despite the squalor and oppression which surrounds such as the "apartment" in Athens and the "church" built by those in the Calais Tioxide jungle. Emphasis is placed on how such societies exist apart from power base and hierarchy lauding the impact of cooperation when interdependent. Dilemmas presented for those who want to transform the State versus those who wish to live outside the State and trials of each. She explains difficulty of aiding each other's cause when there is not agreement on merit of a particular course of action and the impossibility of developing trust necessary for any collaborative action when parties are fleeing and temporary at best.
The gains to Capitalism in having a non-mobile dedicated labor force historically and in current times such as those detained was an interesting point. In the end, Ms. King concludes that the force of movement will not stop though the gains by those who travel are harder and harder to acquire with the leaps made in identification technology and the risks to their bodies and souls growing. It was sad to read the current status of self-made settlements in the Afterword (ultimately eliminated), people relocated far from the point of exit and in isolation from all others. This book presents an amazing collection of all who have had a role in enabling some freedoms for those who move without papers as well as those forces who resist and constrain agents of the State. Nonetheless, it was uplifting to see what actions had been taken between and among those affected countries to lessen the crisis which provide food for thought for other sites. Greece, for example, followed the lead of other European States in carrying out 4 mass legalization amnesties starting in 1998 and ending in 2007. The gain was only temporary but a means by which the undocumented could gain status. Furthermore, Greece was a signatory to the Schengen Agreement of 1992 fully implementing in 2000 which gave free movement in a designated area for citizens of those states signatory to it yet enhanced border control as well. On the other hand, the Dublin Regulation enabled some who left Greece and claimed asylum elsewhere to be returned. The 300 Hunger Strike in Greece is yet another point of success by a migrant-led group.
To quote close with hope in the words of Natashsa King: "There are a number of accounts of the suffering of people trying to cross in Calais, and of the terrible living conditions they have to endure. But I also think it is important to recognize that, DESPITE ALL THIS, such places are still also places of humanity, equality, and autonomy, and I thinks this makes them also amazing and hopeful and beautiful, because people make their lives there, despite controls."
Introduction to chapter one contains 2 quotes worth remembering: "Migration is a force of nature."
"No set of border controls has ever worked to fully contain people's desire and need to move. In this sense, . . . the everyday practice of refusing the border has existed as long as borders have."
January 5, 2020
One of the things Natasha King’s No Borders does best, besides present a clear history of the struggles for freedom of movement in Calais and Athens, is to account for ambivalence, difference, and fluidity. Among the ambivalences, or contradictions, King acknowledges are: the author’s positionality as insider/outsider and researcher/activist, the struggle for representation versus autonomy (pointing out what’s wrong in the system and seeking amends while also being other to it), the agency of migrants in taking flight and resisting the border versus the coercion and control that have conditioned their movements, and the ambivalence of equality itself.
The imperfections, negotiations, and pitfalls within the ways that Europeans with papers (both activists and aid workers) express solidarity with non-Europeans stuck in border zones––for example, reproducing racial or gender hierarchies, are woven through King’s every account in a way that is refreshingly straightforward.
King’s migrant-centric account of agency and resistance does not ignore the trauma and lack of freedom within border sites as well as border crossings. As she acknowledges, people die trying to cross the border. However, throughout her writing, she sensitively provides testimony to the ways in which violence, coersion, and hurt can exist alongside resistance, autonomy, solidarity, and love. No Borders is testament to how denying migrant agency in the name of migrants’ subjugation and oppression is itself violent and effacing.
The author quotes an email exchange with someone living in Calais that describes how the term “activist” is often racially and class charged; reserved for the people assisting those who are crossing clandestinely, rather than those who are doing the crossing themselves. King thus writes:
“I define activism as doing which either intentionally or otherwise potentially transforms or escapes the state. As such, everyone who does such things is an activist, and everyone I talk about in this book is an activist.” (17)
As a further instance of ambivalence, while actions by European activists or humanitiarians might unwittingly reproduce hierarchies, they also, at many times, provide support and refuge to migrants, and even contribute to political change.
There is no way for a person with papers to express solidarity with a person without papers, within a system that dominates and organizes hierarchically, in a way that is not fragile and close to conflict. Asserting the potential for solidarity, despite its inherent complications, is aligned with what King describes as radical anti-racism.
Having lived and worked in some of the same places King writes about, I have felt the freedom, autonomy, and vitality that she ascribes to border spaces. Most of the people I met who frequented these spaces––with or without papers––had their own experience of the solidarity, beauty, and autonomy the author at times expresses––experiences that coexisted with pain, deprivation, and trauma. I knew people who having successfully crossed to the UK from Calais, expressed a certain nostalgia for the jungle and the togetherness it represented––what King describes as collective community organization, or the mobile commons. I quote Ahmed, who I met in one of Calais’ jungles: “I don’t like this place, but I love these people so much.”
King presents border spaces as they are, dynamically––in their confusion, irresolution, and life; inbetween destruction and creation. Effective action seems to depend on embracing ambivalence rather than solving it, which also includes embracing conflict through dismissing reductive definitions of agency, rights, solidarity, resistance, and positionalities. The way to move past exclusion and oppression is to live, and act, within all the conflicts and contradictions that King so acutely describes.
The imperfections, negotiations, and pitfalls within the ways that Europeans with papers (both activists and aid workers) express solidarity with non-Europeans stuck in border zones––for example, reproducing racial or gender hierarchies, are woven through King’s every account in a way that is refreshingly straightforward.
King’s migrant-centric account of agency and resistance does not ignore the trauma and lack of freedom within border sites as well as border crossings. As she acknowledges, people die trying to cross the border. However, throughout her writing, she sensitively provides testimony to the ways in which violence, coersion, and hurt can exist alongside resistance, autonomy, solidarity, and love. No Borders is testament to how denying migrant agency in the name of migrants’ subjugation and oppression is itself violent and effacing.
The author quotes an email exchange with someone living in Calais that describes how the term “activist” is often racially and class charged; reserved for the people assisting those who are crossing clandestinely, rather than those who are doing the crossing themselves. King thus writes:
“I define activism as doing which either intentionally or otherwise potentially transforms or escapes the state. As such, everyone who does such things is an activist, and everyone I talk about in this book is an activist.” (17)
As a further instance of ambivalence, while actions by European activists or humanitiarians might unwittingly reproduce hierarchies, they also, at many times, provide support and refuge to migrants, and even contribute to political change.
There is no way for a person with papers to express solidarity with a person without papers, within a system that dominates and organizes hierarchically, in a way that is not fragile and close to conflict. Asserting the potential for solidarity, despite its inherent complications, is aligned with what King describes as radical anti-racism.
Having lived and worked in some of the same places King writes about, I have felt the freedom, autonomy, and vitality that she ascribes to border spaces. Most of the people I met who frequented these spaces––with or without papers––had their own experience of the solidarity, beauty, and autonomy the author at times expresses––experiences that coexisted with pain, deprivation, and trauma. I knew people who having successfully crossed to the UK from Calais, expressed a certain nostalgia for the jungle and the togetherness it represented––what King describes as collective community organization, or the mobile commons. I quote Ahmed, who I met in one of Calais’ jungles: “I don’t like this place, but I love these people so much.”
King presents border spaces as they are, dynamically––in their confusion, irresolution, and life; inbetween destruction and creation. Effective action seems to depend on embracing ambivalence rather than solving it, which also includes embracing conflict through dismissing reductive definitions of agency, rights, solidarity, resistance, and positionalities. The way to move past exclusion and oppression is to live, and act, within all the conflicts and contradictions that King so acutely describes.
May 21, 2024
When the organisations that profess to protect migrants do not let them speak.
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