Walls, Barriers and Violence: The New Border Narrative

The past decade has witnessed a significant increase in the number of walls and fences - physical barriers - which have been constructed by States as they focus on self narratives of homeland security in the post 9/11 era. the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall and the opening of borders which were so characteristic of the 1990's have increasingly been replaced with an alternative border narrative relating to the (re) construction of borders and walls. Different governments have used different narratives to justify these actions, ranging from the physical defence of the homeland territory against terrorism and violence from the outside, the prevention of the free flow of migrants and refugees seeking to escape persecution and / or to improve their family quality of life, and a desire to retake control of their borders and sovereignty in what some of them perceive as a weakening of the effective control of State territories. But the construction of walls ignores the impact of globalization and cyberspace which, while not necessarily creating a borderless world, have changed the significance and impact of borders on the spaces of exclusion. At the same time, the construction of walls and fences have created new spaces of both violence and ignorance, the former resulting from violent practices exercised by the agents of border control, the latter created - especially for a younger generation who have not experienced a non-wall reality - from what actually takes place on the other side of the wall. The paper draws on examples from both the USA-Mexico and the Israel-Palestine walls, and shows excerpts of a research documentary produced at the Israel / Palestine interface as part of a European funded FP research project examining the changing roles and functions of borders in the contemporary world.