Lately I have not infrequently come across articles such as this one (here the original article), which emphasize, from the tones of the same it would seem almost unidirectionally and more out of pride than for any other reason, the strong affirmation of the borders of one's own nation, and I wanted to make some remarks on this topic with historical-anthropological implications, characterized by its ebbs, flows and reflections.
Do borders save peoples and civilizations?
Short answer: borders are not a necessary condition for saving peoples and civilizations, and one would have to strike a balance, moreover subjective, between advantages and disadvantages as appropriate. The existence of borders essentially depends upon whom or what, peoples and civilizations would be saved, based on the relations between neighboring countries, assessing whether one is the subject of a realistic threat of some kind to the other, such as war threat, invasive imposition of other's cultures, customs or traditions (in this regard, the borders of certain 'states' as we currently find them in Africa, with their chaotic military-totalitarian regimes and coups d'état, serve those who from time to time have control over those communities, also limiting the bidirectionality of movement, i.e. who enters and who leaves the borders, but hindering international organizations and observatories in cases where they would do well to seriously monitor
the evolution of certain situations), mass migrations realistically unsustainable for a host country¹ (and here the term 'realistically' is relative: for example, the 'needs', comforts, and consumption to which the western man is unfortunately accustomed are much greater than those of the people who fuel migration flows, even psychosocial aspects such as personal sphere of protection, or someone's racial prejudices), and other such reasons, or whether relations are relaxed.
Then one has to consider the 'type' of frontiers (more or less restrictive) also based on their relations. There are a number of variables in the context. But what I would like to make clear is that the identities of collectivities can be independent of whether they are confined or not.
Which is what some arguments, such as the article I started from, which I happen to read, suggest, where it seems to me that in that in essence the author inextricably links the existence of borders to peoples' identities (value-based, cultural, artistic, traditions, customs and whatnot), but let's think about the fact that for hundreds of thousands of years, before human beings became settled (basically with the advent of agriculture), being nomadic or semi-nomadic, certainly the tribes at that time had their 'identities' i.e. customs, traditions, rituals, etc. As examples of non-confined identities, today we find the Tuareg of the Sahara Desert, a subgroup of the Berber identity.
that encompasses diverse ethnic groups with varying lifestyles, including nomadic, semi-nomadic, and fully sedentary communities, often shaped by geography and historical pressures such as Arabization and colonialism42, gypsies (about whom one could then argue about their behaviors, but that is another matter), the many ethnic groups in China (should we draw boundaries for each?), one for all the
Uyghurs, and in some ways the Chinese outside their country, like the Jews; and still, albeit very few, there are groups in the semi-tribal state. More identities than those...
Similar implications would exist for other ethnic groups without their own borders but annexed or more or less coercively recomprised into other states, e.g., the Kurds, politically divided among the current states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and, to a lesser extent, Syria and Armenia, and here the issue becomes more delicate and complex.
Another consideration, many remarkable artistic creations could not have existed without cross-cultural 'contamination', to cite one example, remaining in Italy, the basilica of San Marco in Venice, in Romanesque-Byzantine-Gothic-Moorish style, another example is the Alhambra in Granada in Spain, a landmark of, again, Moorish art. If there were impassable borders, these remarkable artistic creations would not have been created.
So when we talk about borders, we must criticize those people whose vision conveys a preconceived attitude of closure towards others. No one is obliged to feel like a 'citizen of the world' (in reality, I imagine they are in the minority, and analogously I know people who really love traveling but who are far from free of prejudices in this regard), but there are also middle grounds, and with prejudice we would lose opportunities for exchange (we Europeans think for example of potatoes, tomatoes, corn and other foods introduced from the Americas, now in common use, and then, the way I think about it, unfortunately oil, and then gas) and mutual cultural growth, unless, as I said, we have to defend ourselves against real threats from someone across a border. If, on the other hand, borders represent going more in a direction of reasonable accommodation, such 'less-borders' are opportunities for enrichment for all parties involved. After all, and this is not really that insignificant, borders have always been constantly changing throughout in human history, borders have always been in perpetual change, and it is easy to see that they always will be in their own time and manner, one need only think of the various empires that have spanned our history with their associated boundary upheavals, such as the colonization of North America, where the Indians were, precisely, confined to reservations by the colonizers. And from a historical point of view, states themselves are a characteristic institution of the modern age and, at least originally, characteristic of the West (cf. Wikipedia).
And in my view, the most 'virtuous' solution is a world composed of variously decentralized, republican governmental administrations, as in Europe they are internally, for example, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, and the political question of a Europe along these lines is up.
As a concluding conceptual summary, mine is an invitation to adopt a more flexible approach in matter of frontiers: borders do not have to exist, and likewise neither do only non-borders have to exist. Neither the one nor the other.
Notes
(1) Consider the current massive migration flows resulting from conflicts and climate change, which require international organizations to focus on global cooperation to address these truly urgent problems, realities of despair, as evidenced by the UNHCR's Global Trends 2024 report, with over 117 million refugees in the last 10 years, and estimates for 2050 ranging from an additional 45 to 216 million migrants due to climate change alone (hot climate, desertification).
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