The author is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She directed the collective work Feminist approaches in international relations (PUM) and written lose the south (Ecosociety), which strongly inspired this text.
In 2010, I was selected to participate in a journalistic project for Swiss television at the Sommet de la Francophonie in Montreux. I bought my ticket a few days after receiving the news, and left a few weeks later. I discovered brilliant colleagues, fellow innovators, working in a panoply of media. I learned a lot from them. Especially alongside Madeleine, from New Brunswick, and Véronique, from the Yukon, who helped me understand the Canadian Francophonie. And alongside Hélène and Julie, who told me about minorities in their French-speaking countries, or Nass, who taught me things about this language in its native country.
Fifteen young adults who are passionate about the media, from the four corners of the Francophone and Francophile world. From the four corners… not quite, because Switzerland had refused visas to all African participants except one person, who had dual Swiss and Cameroonian citizenship. A Francophile journalist from Vietnam and those from Eastern Europe had obtained tourist visas, while those from Canada, Belgium and France did not. Journalists from the African continent were not so lucky, although the French language is today in Africa “almost better than at home”, as Amadou Lamine Sall poetically writes in the pages of To have to.
Even for a project supported by the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), all expenses paid, hierarchies have been created. In a world where borders are almost non-existent for some people (myself included), they become more and more watertight for others.
A few years ago, a group of international cooperation professionals and I wanted to bring Aminata Traoré to Montreal. Canadian authorities kept him waiting for weeks, only to deny him entry days before the event. Mme Traoré was Minister of Culture and Tourism of Mali from 1997 to 2000 and coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme. Let’s assume that there is very little risk that she will take advantage of an international event to illegally immigrate to another country. And that if she wanted to settle in a country with wavering French, we would welcome her with open arms.
Borders delimit the world arbitrarily through what researcher Ayelet Shachar calls the “lottery of birth”. Canada ranks sixth in terms of the ease of visa-free travel for its nationals, tied with Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Only 10 countries out of 184 require me to apply for a visa before crossing their borders. In comparison, a young Iranian woman can travel without a visa, or with a visa on entry, to only 38 countries, and can immigrate to these countries even less.
Strangely, the world is segmented in a surprisingly similar way to the division that prevailed in feudal times. Individuals in the North enjoy the same kinds of mobility and wealth privileges as native-born nobles of the Middle Ages, and those in the South enjoy the same kinds of privileges as peasants. Of course, there are wealthy peasants and less wealthy nobles, but overall, place of birth is the most determining factor in the number of opportunities and constraints associated with moving.
Opening of the borders
Although borders can be violent, abolishing them is unrealistic at present. However, greater openness is not only possible, but desirable. While the first position is a pure and simple abolition of borders between States, openness promotes the free movement of people between legal entities, without distinction of geographical origin or financial means, and therefore ultimately the elimination of restrictions movement across borders.
The Schengen area, for example, which includes 26 European States, allows the opening of borders between European countries for visitors and tourists while maintaining the existence of borders which make it possible to legislate with regard to migration between countries, or manage taxation and redistribution within given territories.
The fear that the opening of borders will lead to a mass exodus is contradicted by history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, only 200,000 people from East Berlin moved west. In the same way, between 2004 and 2007, the European Union admitted ten countries of the former USSR to its ranks, which had a standard of living that was much lower than that of the countries of Western Europe. However, only four million people from these countries (out of a total of 100 million) decided to move to another European country after the establishment of the union, despite the fact that the average income in Sweden is more than eight times higher than that of Romania.
In comparison, the average income in the United States is five times that of Mexico, but the American government is scared to death that all Mexicans will suddenly decide to immigrate to its soil. The attachment to the soil, to a culture and to a language is thus minimized in favor of purely economic arguments which would like immigration to follow only a cost-benefit line.
Although borders can be violent, abolishing them is unrealistic at present. However, greater openness is not only possible, but desirable.
Rather than leading to massive relocations, the opening of borders would rather lead to rotating immigration. When states control their borders less strictly, migrants tend to work there on a seasonal basis and return to their countries. When the difficulties of immigrating increase, they tend to do everything to stay in their host country.
Mexican workers in the United States are a good example. Prior to increased control of its southern border in the 1950s, the United States allowed Mexicans to cross it more freely and a smaller proportion settled permanently on American soil. Not least because the higher salary in the United States gives them a social status and an ability to buy in Mexico that they will never obtain as immigrants with Uncle Sam.
Being born in Canada gave me undue luck and a passport that allows me to freely visit and settle in 184 countries. While my cousins from Madagascar, if they had applied to participate in the project in Montreux, would have knocked their noses at the door. The lottery of birth therefore depends neither on talent, nor effort, nor value, but only on the place of birth.