As intolerance deepens across Europe and as elections draw near in the UK, we urgently need to reframe the debate on border controls. With their spectacular inefficiencies in mind, we may start by asking who actually benefits from the “tough measures” so cherished by governments and much of the media. It is certainly not the “native poor”, as some would contend. It is rather those with a stake in the border game: Western security forces and their third-country collaborators, the defence and security industries, and other powerful groups – as well as smugglers, who have found a captive market among people stranded in limbo. In times of globalisation, bordering has itself become a globalised business, bloated by anxious states oblivious to its efficacy or nefarious effects as refugees drown and willing workers turn their eyes elsewhere.
Behind our cloistered walls, Western nations may in years to come seem like a latter-day Easter Island civilization. While the world went about its business, there we rabbited away at useless border monuments whose significance – like the mind of those Spanish golfers at Melilla’s fence, oblivious in their game – future generations may not even begin to unravel.