How do we relate to the borders drawn by colonialism and empire, and to peoples’ need to move across them?

Borders are enclosures—just like fences or property lines, they impose artificial limits that restrict movement and turn collective resources such as water and energy into commodities that can be bought and sold. Borders represent claims of power over land and of the right to exploit it. They have been especially useful for colonizers, who invented them to seize and extract land and resources and to divide people who might fight back.

We don’t often pay attention to the things that are allowed to pass through borders with little or no difficulty. The people who create borders usually move freely across them, as do corporate assets and the money of wealthy people. Migrating birds and deadly viruses pass across borders more easily than most people can. Displaced and poor people are often kept from moving freely by force. The hoarding of basic resources inside a country or region—while those outside suffer violence and ecosystem destruction—also creates a need to move. Migration has always been a fact of life, but the scale of forced migration due to war, poverty, and climate change is accelerating and destroying families and communities every day.

Unlike borders, boundaries are not inherently violent. Neither is migration. Boundaries are necessary for individuals and communities to claim their identities and self-govern. The boundaries we want honor life and invite change, while preventing extraction, privatization, and exploitation. Migration is a natural part of that change and creates opportunities for cultural exchange and for expanding our collective understanding of what it means to be human. The migration we want honors and seeks reparations for the theft of land and culture from Indigenous peoples, while also honoring and seeking healing for people living in diaspora.

As Michelle Mascarenhas of Movement Generation says, “Today, our communities are bound by borders created by nation states. As we shift to ways of meeting our needs in right-relationship with the living world rather than by taking it all, the containers for governance will shift from borders to boundaries. We can see the boundaries that the living world creates in Indigenous peoples’ territories that also relate to watersheds, foodsheds, and tradesheds. When those impacted by decisions are the ones making them, our governance will better take into account the needs of the land, water, air, and creatures of that place.”

Can we resist the borders maintained by force and honor the boundaries set by Indigenous peoples and communities? Can we resist forced displacement and support freedom of movement? How can our solutions redraw our maps of the world?