Violent Borders, Conclusion & Generating Ideas for Essay 2

For my essay, I want to focus on how border violence and all the issues that goes with borders stems from capitalism. I want to integrate the idea that long ago "all humans were hunter-gathers" and now that characteristic of humans has become extinct due to the many restrictions placed on mobility as a result of capitalism (162). I want to demonstrate the drastic changes humans have gone through and the steps that were taken by states in order to gain more power. I also want to highlight the issues that become present when borders are placed such as environmental issues, violence, more control, less rights to the individual, and many more stated in the novel. I definitely want to state all the things the United States has done, and other countries but mainly the United States, to control the people more such as requiring passports, drivers license, and other documents. This will help further my thesis that capitalism is the reason states are so power hungry which is why borders were formed. A solution I might recommend in my paper would probably be to change this capitalistic ideology that states have in order to obtain from creating more strict borders which could eventually lead to "more extreme systems of migrant capture and control" (180). I might also bring up the idea that the United Nations should start taking actions towards the problems being discussed in their conferences such as climate change which borders to contribute to. Basically, the solution should be something that attacks capitalism directly because states will never stop being power hungry.

Second peer post

For my essay, I want to look at ways to make immigration easier. There will most likely continue to be conflict and economic hardship, so at least making it easier for people to legally move between countries would be a step in the right direction. I am going to focus on the two main places that the book mentions, The EU and the US, and look at the tactics used to prevent legal migration as well as illegal migration. There are two parts of that as well, the physical and bureaucratic restrictions like a physical wall or an intangible travel ban, but also the political messaging used to justify restricting migration such as Australia's anti-immigration campaigns and the justifications in the US like the Real ID act in 2005 or even earlier and the examination of the ramping up of security after 9/11 with measures like the patriot act. In the last few paragraphs, I will provide my own solutions with some evidence that I find to try to justify my solution to make immigration easier and try to reduce the amount of illegal and dangerous methods of immigration like smuggling. I will also try to find evidence to reject the claims of anti-immigration campaigns in regards to the possible benefits of taking immigrants aside from just the moral and ideological high ground. I will format my essay and show each problem in one paragraph and the solution in the next although it might change to have all problems and then all solutions. Overall, I want to appeal to the idea that taking these people in will benefit everyone in the long run and we need to look past whatever short term losses there are to enacting new policies that promote legal and safe immigration and promote a mentality that we as a country should be trying to help these people immigrate and promote citizenship rather than turn them away. For sources, I want to look at the new EU immigration and asylum-seeking plan as well as other proposed plans. I could also use plans proposed and not enacted in the US. I do not know where to look in the databases though. I could just do some searches for immigration reform.