Border Effect

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Ono (2012) reminds us that while we often consider “the border” to be a figural “strip,” “edge,” “limit,” and “boundary,” each of these terms has a different emphasis. “Strip” implies three-dimensionality, “edge” denotes a dividing line between realms or that which cuts, “limit” suggests a point not to go beyond, and “boundary” meaning an enclosure of the outer extremity of a container. Instead of acting as synonyms, each one represents an attitude toward and about the border. Oto argues that what constitutes a border are relative to the practices that create that create conditions for exclusion. Therefore, the border should not only be understood in geographic terms but “also in terms of effect and effect: how borders affect lives, both materially and spiritually.” Instead borders go beyond borders, contrary to one no longer being present at a border once it has been crossed. …show more content…

Fences are both literal and figuratively “in words” and “on bodies” as a means to restrict entry. In other words, the effects of the border do not end when the border is crossed, but it is at that point that they may begin. Instead of “experiencing the borderless world of cosmopolitan capitalism, workers face borders to inclusion, employment, housing, health, education, and welfare not because of a literal border but because there is a figural divide seemingly immanent between contiguous nations.” Therefore, the border acts as a separator or divider of people with different social, economic, and political affiliations, as a signifier of inclusion and exclusion, and as a way to determine one’s worthiness as a living being (Ono,

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