Putting Borders in Their Place

We are in a world of proliferating border controls and intensifying territorial disputes – one in which, Nick Megoran argues, a radical rediagnosis of border violence is necessary. The problem is not the boundaries themselves but the way modern states treat them as inviolable, even when they divide communities, fuel conflict, harm migrants, and produce widespread human suffering. If we were to understand people, rather than borders, as sacred, new ways of thinking about coexistence, mobility, and political community would be possible.Putting Borders in Their Place shows that liberal, conservative, and abolitionist approaches all fail to get to grips with the problem of border violence because the modern international system views state boundaries as quasi-sacred and beyond negotiation. Exploring theological readings of anarchist thought as well as global case studies, Megoran imagines a more humane world where borders act as tools to facilitate human flourishing instead of being sacralized absolutes. He examines deadly enforcement regimes at frontiers in Europe and the United States, territorial conflicts and annexations, and the borders that cut through Indigenous lands such as those of the Tohono O’odham Nation. He also highlights the creative and practical ways in which governments, international organizations, Indigenous Peoples, religious communities, and social movements across the globe are reducing conflict through cooperation and flexibility, including shared sovereignty arrangements, cross-border regions, and Indigenous mobility practices such as the Haudenosaunee passport. Original, interdisciplinary, and hopeful, Putting Borders in Their Place opens up an important new conversation about the possibilities of a less violent world.