tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/walls-28088/articlesWalls – The Conversation2021-02-15T13:41:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1550072021-02-15T13:41:12Z2021-02-15T13:41:12ZHow border walls threaten species trying to escape rising temperatures<p>Whether it’s <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-014-0606-8">blackbirds in Sweden</a>, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/106/5/1479">moths in Borneo</a>, or <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/322/5899/261">mice in California</a>, animals around the world are on the move thanks to climate change. Species are shifting higher up mountains and closer to the poles as global temperatures rise, following the climate conditions to which they’re adapted. Their futures depend not only on their changing natural environment but the countries in which they happen to live.</p>
<p>As conservation scientists, we need to know how species will move between countries to understand how they’re likely to fare. National borders define where the authority of laws and policies begins and ends, so a species living on one side of a border can sometimes expect very different levels of protection – and very different threats – compared to one living on the other side. </p>
<p>But national borders have become increasingly fortified over the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14650045.2011.574653">last two decades</a>. Walls and fences erected to control immigration don’t just affect humans; they present an obstacle to all kinds of animals seeking safe habitats as the planet warms. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/7/e2011204118">new study</a> simulated how 12,700 bird and mammal species might move between countries as a result of global warming between now and 2070. We found that the ranges which 29% of birds and 35% of mammals currently occupy are likely to shift so significantly in that time that more than half of their distribution will fall in countries they’re not currently found in. Most of these cross-border movements of species will be in the western Amazon, around the Himalayas, and in central and eastern Africa.</p>
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<img alt="A border wall running along a dirt track in a hot, dry plain." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384221/original/file-20210215-23-15bacex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The US-Mexico border is an impenetrable obstacle for people and wildlife.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Hillebrand/USFWS</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Between a wall and a hot place</h2>
<p>Walls and fences now cover more than 32,000km of the world’s political borders. Placed end to end, the combined structure would nearly circle the Earth. Fences are generally <a href="https://theconversation.com/fences-have-big-effects-on-land-and-wildlife-around-the-world-that-are-rarely-measured-147797">bad for wildlife</a> as they break up habitats and animals can get tangled in them. But border walls are on another scale entirely, dividing entire regions or even entire continents in two. </p>
<p>Most birds and bats will have no problem flying over borders, though <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01277.x">some low-flying species</a> might struggle. Others may be reluctant to cross <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2008.16842.x">even small areas</a> of border habitat if they’re put off by the lack of trees, human noise or artificial lighting. Mammals that can’t fly are of greater concern. We estimated that almost 700 species could be prevented from moving into new countries to escape intolerable temperature rises as a result. </p>
<p>Three border barriers are particularly worrying. The US-Mexico border – which alone could trap 122 mammal species in either country – the India-Myanmar border, and the border between Russia and China. The first two are still under construction, but their completion will prevent many species passing safely. </p>
<p>Centuries ago, jaguars are thought to have been widespread in <a href="https://www.biophiliafoundation.org/jaguars-united-states/">the southern states of the US</a>, but now they’re largely found south of the US-Mexico border. This solitary feline predator is likely to spread north again as the climate changes, but an increasingly fortified border with the rest of North America could impede its passage. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/s/sloth-bear/">Sloth bears</a> – familiar to many as Baloo from The Jungle Book – and <a href="https://www.pangolinsg.org/pangolins/indian-pangolin/">Indian pangolins</a> are set to face the same problem when trying to cross between India and Myanmar. Walls and fences along borders in Africa and the Middle East could affect <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-so-fast-why-indias-plan-to-reintroduce-cheetahs-may-run-into-problems-152301">cheetahs</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/l/leopard/">leopards</a>, while barriers in central Asia could interrupt the migration of the critically endangered <a href="https://theconversation.com/planet-earth-ii-why-more-than-200-000-saiga-antelopes-died-in-just-days-69859">Saiga antelope</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A jaguar sitting on a rock in a tropical forest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384220/original/file-20210215-19-h3de8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jaguars seeking cooler habitats further north face a difficult journey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Willis</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Our modelling also showed that the largest proportion of species will be lost from tropical regions. Here, species are adapted to more stable climates and so are <a href="https://theconversation.com/biodiversity-why-foods-grown-in-warm-climates-could-be-doing-the-most-damage-to-wildlife-147584">most sensitive</a> to rising temperatures. Many of the countries most affected tend to be poorer, with weaker systems of governance and less responsibility for the emissions driving climate change in the first place. Conservation efforts to save species might be harder to fund and enforce in these hardest-hit places. </p>
<p>This also raises important questions of international justice. Via their greenhouse gas emissions, wealthier countries are <a href="https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-highest-per-capita/">effectively exporting</a> species extinctions – and all their <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review">ramifications</a> – to less wealthy countries. Limiting the cross-border movements of wildlife will only exacerbate the problem.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fences-have-big-effects-on-land-and-wildlife-around-the-world-that-are-rarely-measured-147797">Fences have big effects on land and wildlife around the world that are rarely measured</a>
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<p>Our research shows how important it is to ensure habitats stay connected across borders, whether security measures are present or not. Where walls and fences exist, governments must minimise their effects by ensuring they are as permeable to wildlife as possible. Or they should create wildlife passage points, such as <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-utahs-largest-wildlife-overpass-earlier-expected-180976420/">bridges</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/23/how-wildlife-crossings-are-helping-reindeer-bears-and-even-crabs-aoe#:%7E:text=On%20Christmas%20Island%2C%20bridges%20have,beaches%20on%20their%20annual%20migration.&text=A%202014%20study%20found%20that,black%20and%20grizzly%20bear%20populations.">other crossings</a>, that can circumvent these unnatural barriers.</p>
<p>In an era of rapid global change, policymakers must zoom out from their usual national focus to ensure they protect species wherever they live, and wherever they need to move. Ahead of the UN’s COP26 climate conference in November 2021, our findings underscore the importance of deep and swift cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. This is the best way to reduce the effects of climate change on the wildlife we share our planet with, and the best way to relieve the unfair burden of biodiversity loss on the least culpable parts of the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155007/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Titley receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Willis receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.</span></em></p>Nearly 700 species of flightless mammal could be barred entry to cooler habitats due to national borders by 2070.Mark Titley, PhD Candidate in Conservation Ecology, Durham UniversityStephen Willis, Professor of Conservation Ecology, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/972832018-06-05T08:02:54Z2018-06-05T08:02:54ZPeace walls and other social frontiers can breed crime and conflict in cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221578/original/file-20180604-175407-4q2wwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=352%2C638%2C5078%2C2826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alainrouiller/29135657734/sizes/l">rouilleralain/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In several cities across Northern Ireland, so-called “peace walls” mark the boundaries between Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. Erected amid <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/troubles">the Troubles</a> which started in the late 1960s, the barriers were intended as a temporary measure to prevent outbreaks of violence between the two communities. Yet since then, the peace walls have <a href="https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/articles/department-justice-interface-programme">continued to grow in size and number</a>, and 69% of those living closest to the walls <a href="https://www.ulster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/224052/pws.pdf">believe they are still needed</a> to protect civilians from conflict. </p>
<p>Living near social frontiers such as the peace walls can have a huge negative impact on residents mental health and well-being. A <a href="http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2016/04/24/jech-2015-206888">recent study</a> on the effect of segregation in Northern Ireland found that households living in an area divided by a peace wall were 19% more likely to be on antidepressants, and 39% more likely to be taking anti-anxiety medication.</p>
<p>Clearly, Northern Ireland is an extreme example. But cities all over the world have social frontiers, where neighbouring areas display sharp differences in the religious beliefs of their residents. Differences such as ethnicity and class may also have an impact on frontier residents. For example, researchers from the USA recently discovered a link between <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/686942">social frontiers in ethnicity and low-level crime</a> – they also found that more established frontiers were relatively peaceful. </p>
<h2>Finding the frontier</h2>
<p>Social frontiers can be difficult to detect when there are no physical markers, such as the peace walls. And being able to identify where these frontiers lie is crucial to understanding the impacts on those living nearby. That’s why, with colleagues at the universities of Sheffield, Liverpool and Glasgow, I set out to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tesg.12316">develop a way of identifying social frontiers</a>, which might otherwise be invisible.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221622/original/file-20180604-175414-1xwcx41.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Social frontiers in Sheffield, mapped.</span>
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<p>We came up with a method that distinguished between genuine frontiers and those that were just due to random variation. We then applied the method to neighbourhood differences in country of birth and ethnicity in Sheffield, and tested whether the identified social frontiers were linked to crime. We found that neighbourhoods joined by a social frontier had significantly higher rates of violent crime, burglaries, vehicle crimes and total crime. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/immigration-and-crime-is-there-a-link-93521">Immigration and crime, is there a link?</a>
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<p>But we still don’t know why these social frontiers emerge and why they are associated with higher crime rates. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009411907690036X">One theory</a> is that social frontiers are a symptom of underlying tensions between two communities. Such tensions mean that no one wants to live among members of the other group, so a kind of cliff edge emerges, where there are sharp differences in the make up of neighbourhoods, even though they are right next to each other. As such, both the social frontiers, and the related crimes, are symptoms of the social tensions. </p>
<h2>Mapping our differences</h2>
<p>We have also visualised these cliff edges in the social landscape using 3D maps, such as the one below showing the percentage of Muslims in neighbourhoods in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. The highest share in any neighbourhood is around 42%. And although this is not particularly high compared to levels of ethnic concentration seen in other countries, such as the US, it’s large enough to wonder why there are far fewer Muslims living in neighbouring areas. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221623/original/file-20180604-175445-1ajzple.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Percentage of Muslims in Rotherham neighbourhoods, mapped.</span>
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<p>A further issue with social frontiers, like the one we see here, is that there is a shortage of “bridge-builders” – households that are prepared to live in the other camp, providing vital links between otherwise isolated social networks. These bridge builders help avoid misunderstandings, and can help the two communities connect with each other and resolve points of conflict. Without them, tensions escalate and communities drift even further apart. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stopping-segregation-its-not-just-where-you-live-its-the-places-you-go-that-matter-68263">Stopping segregation: it's not just where you live, it's the places you go that matter</a>
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<p>It’s not yet clear whether frontiers are always sites of conflict, or whether they can also be places where diverse communities come together, or whether they are the results of arbitrary causes, such as local authority housing allocation decisions. We are also not sure how typical our results are of other UK cities, and whether higher crime rates are linked also to other inter-group divisions. </p>
<p>For example, groups might become segregated out of fear for their own safety: research using <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ethnic-and-racial-harassment-damages-mental-health-73076">large-scale nationally representative household survey data</a> found that ethnic minorities living in neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of residents from their own ethnic group experienced lower levels of harassment and better mental health. </p>
<p>Being able to identify social frontiers is the first step to understanding what impacts they have on the people living nearby. And if they are linked to crime, depression and anxiety in other cities too, then governments will have good cause to set about dismantling the invisible frontiers that divide society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym Pryce receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>The fault lines between highly segregated neighbourhoods have been linked to higher crime rates and mental health issues.Gwilym Pryce, Professor of Urban Economics and Social Statistics and Director of the Sheffield Methods Institute, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/745812017-03-24T04:41:05Z2017-03-24T04:41:05ZFrom waterfalls to snowy forests, Egyptian posters show what exotic looks like from the desert<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161777/original/image-20170321-5395-1v25k0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not what most Egyptians see when they look out their windows.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://vbat.org/spip.php?article644">Vincent Battesti</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Egypt is a tourist destination famous for its archaeological sites, natural beauty and ancient culture. But fascination can be found even in more mundane places, as in an unusual form of wall art ubiquitous in Egyptian apartments and small businesses.</p>
<p>Not quite photographs, the posters are photoshopped representations of numerous natural environments or differing architectural styles, juxtaposed in improbable ways. These made-in-Egypt <em>mandhar ṭabīɛī</em>, or “natural landscapes” – which range in size from small, 50-by-35 cm framed images to wallpaper-scaled – reveal a particularly Egyptian form of exoticism. </p>
<p>All the posters illustrating this article <a href="http://vbat.org/spip.php?article644">come from my 2009 fieldwork in Cairo</a>, purchased for just a few Egyptian pounds (less than $US1). These idealised images are displayed across the country, in private indoor spaces, coffee shops, restaurants, hairdressers, and rural and urban areas, but are especially common in the arid Sinai countryside, Libyan desert and west Mediterranean coast.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161622/original/image-20170320-9114-1vvf8rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A lighthouse borrowed from Scandinavia enhances this 2009 poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://vbat.org/spip.php?article644">Maktaba al-Maḥaba/Vincent Battesti</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The posters depict a version of the “exotic” not centred on ordinary date palms, flat fields or mundane sand dunes – all clichés used in tourist catalogues to attract visitors to Egypt. Instead, they express a more local aesthetic form, far removed from Western standards. </p>
<h2>Nature’s Photoshop artisans</h2>
<p>I at first incorrectly assumed that these posters were cheap Chinese products filling a niche Egyptian market. In fact, they are designed and produced in the Shubra neighbourhood of Cairo or the nearby suburbs. Maktaba al-Maḥaba, a major Coptic Christian bookstore (مكتبة المحبة القبطية), distributes their catalogues across Egypt (and apparently throughout the North Africa region, as I have since noticed some posters in Tunisia’s Jerid oasis and the Moroccan Rif). </p>
<p>The main design tool in these Egyptian cut-and-paste compositions is clearly Photoshop (or a similar software). The craftsmen show great mastery of pasting, fusion, blurring, cropping, scaling, duplication and other techniques, creating on their computer monitors three-dimensional scenes encompassing all the best of different continents – even if it means implausible coexistences and genuine problems with scale. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161621/original/image-20170320-9108-1tfx97a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Though humans are rare in these posters, here we see the known Copt saint Tamav Irene (1936-2006) and the Pope Pope Cyril VI (1902-1971).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maktaba al-Maḥaba/Vincent Battesti</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The artisans of the Maktaba al-Maḥaba shoppe, who don’t hesitate to cater to the Christian community by printing Jesus Christ or the late Pope Shenouda III in these bucolic settings, undoubtedly inherited the Coptic iconographic know-how behind the store’s endless production of pious images depicting triumphant saints, benevolent popes and monks, and suffering martyrs. </p>
<h2>Snow, rainforests, Christs and Chinese pagodas</h2>
<p>Water is everywhere in these posters, its presence seemingly required by consumers. It may be a sea, a lake, a river (sometimes with fanciful route), or, of course, those elaborate fountains.</p>
<p>The other prerequisite is greenery and a rich palette of florals – regardless, again, of botanical, agronomic or ecological incongruities and impossibilities. The posters are saturated with garden motifs, leaving some space for the sky but very little room for humans or animals. </p>
<p>Architectural elements reflect not just Islamic motifs (columns, ceramics) but also styles quite foreign to Egypt, such as Californian villas, Chinese pagodas and Scandinavian lighthouses. Other exotic landscapes include reproduction photos of snowy Swiss mountains with equatorial rainforest waterfalls, punctuated by the palace of Versailles or other Renaissance-style building, plus Islamic ponds with lush floral arrangements – and perhaps a yacht or ice floe in the background. </p>
<p>Sometimes, there’s a photographic enlargement of an English garden in its autumn glory. But, in general, natural nature is not enough, and the thirst for exoticism triumphs. </p>
<h2>What is exoticism? What is ‘natural’?</h2>
<p>These posters are prominently displayed across Egypt, offering visual delight in gas stations and local eateries. In Siwa, a remote oasis in the Libyan desert of Egypt, I spotted them in the <em>marbūɛa</em> (living room) of houses.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161619/original/image-20170320-9121-1k9i3dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The living room interior in a newly built home in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt’s Libyan Desert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vincent Battesti</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Siwa inhabitants do not see <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004050">their landscape as particularly original</a> or interesting. Meanwhile, tourists who come to Siwa do not focus on the area’s true agro-ecosystem but look beyond at a more familiar scene, the <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00569247">“already known” oasis of their Western imagery</a>, an iconic Eden landscape that conforms with <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00350921e">their own perception of exoticism</a>.</p>
<p>This observation supports <a href="http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/654">social anthropologist Gérard Lenclud, who said</a> that landscape is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“the product of the view of someone who is ‘foreigner’ to it. Man doesn’t think of elaborating a landscaped representation of the place to which he is attached and where he works or lives.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Exotic is always found elsewhere, beyond the horizon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161775/original/image-20170321-5408-1k87c76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fountains are recurrent elements of Egyptian posters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maktaba al-Maḥaba/Vincent Battesti</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What does this reveal about Egyptians’ ideal of nature? In accumulating images from other eras and places, these posters create an exotic space located somewhere between the nostalgia for a lost Eden and the promise of Paradise. The inclusion of Islamic golden-age gardens, Swiss chalets and Atlantic lighthouses also reveals the attractiveness of a globalised world. </p>
<p>The amassing of elements speaks for itself: saturation is probably the key concept of <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00842075">popular aesthetics, part of the pursuit of sensorial experience</a>. The beholders of these <em>mandhar ṭabīɛī</em> constructions do not distinguish between “natural” nature and artificial renditions. In interviews I found that Siwa residents either do not notice this phoney flavour or do not care about its inauthenticity.</p>
<h2>Dreams of lush gardens</h2>
<p>What Egyptian consumers do clearly prefer is that the posters’ iconic jumble should be organised according to repeating patterns of three main elements: flora, water, and architecture. Some of these elements reappear from poster to poster – the same fountain can be recognised stretched a bit here, or with a different basin there. </p>
<p>I could unwittingly track the biography of some key patterns as I vainly sought evidence of a similar craft around the world. <a href="https://medihal.archives-ouvertes.fr/medihal-00455926">The mill</a> sometimes seen in the midst of a lush tropical vegetation, for example, is “sampled” from a poster entitled “<a href="http://www.babcocksp.com/gristmill.html">Glade Creek Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, West Virginia</a>” (credited to Robert Glusic). The original is an already romanticised depiction of a tourist attraction in Babcock State Park in West Virginia, United States.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161625/original/image-20170320-9147-1ve9vhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This West Virginia waterfall is sampled in some Egyptian posters, including the one in the Siwa home, shown above.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot-AllPosters.com/Vincent Battesti</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Egypt, a simple reproduction of this image does not suffice. That distinguishes its popular aesthetic tradition from Europe’s, where, according to Jean-Claude Chamboredon in the collective book, <a href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/rfsoc_0035-2969_1987_num_28_2_2409">Protecting Nature: history and ideology</a>, “the countryside as an idyllic social setting results from a long process of progressive disappearance of the rural proletariat … since the second half of the 19th century”. </p>
<p>The French countryside has become an ideal, neutral space whose very construction (via a history of social struggles) is erased and replaced with a narrative of an authentic, traditional and beautiful seasonally-changing subject. (I recall now the plywood-mounted poster of a continental forest that my parents proudly displayed in our living room in Le Havre, France.)</p>
<p>Not so in North Africa and Egypt. In deserts, it seems, the people dream of lush gardens and Italianate palaces that allow them to be swept away, if only for a moment, from arid native soil.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent Battesti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pastiche-style poster art ubiquitous in Egyptian houses and businesses reveals how locals imagine far-off landscapes, idealise nature and define beauty.Vincent Battesti, Chercheur CNRS en anthropologie sociale (au Musée de l'Homme), Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/720402017-02-13T07:55:04Z2017-02-13T07:55:04Z‘Big, beautiful’ walls don’t stop migrants in the US or Europe<p>Walls have a strong political connotation in post-war Europe. The most tragically famous was <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall">the Berlin wall</a> built in 1961 to prevent citizens of the DDR (otherwise known as East Germany) from seeking refuge in the West. </p>
<p>The fall of that wall in 1989 signalled the reunification not only of Germany but of the entire European continent, and the end of the Cold War. It also marked a European commitment to providing asylum to people fleeing from persecution. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, history often repeats itself and citizens forget. Thus, walls and fences have been proliferating in Europe over the past 12 years as a response to migration flows. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156231/original/image-20170209-8651-bmwq3m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The most famous wall of them all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin_Wall,_Niederkirchnerstra%C3%9Fe,_Berlin_1988.JPG">Roland Arhelger</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fortress Europe</h2>
<p>It was as early as 1995 when the first project for <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228547872_Ceuta_and_Melilla_Fences_a_EU_Multidimensional_Border">building fences around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla</a> on the North African coast started. It was completed in 2000, three-quarters funded by the European Union for a total cost of €48 million.</p>
<p>However, the continuing <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ips/article/7/1/75/1825789/The-Other-Side-of-the-Fence-Reconceptualizing-the">attempts by desperate migrants</a> from West Africa to storm the two fences in 2005 led to the construction of a third fence around Melilla for an additional cost of €33 million. The fence around Ceuta was further fortified, rising from three to six metres high.</p>
<p>These fences were not conceived of as being properly European as they were built around extra-European territories on the African continent. Europe in the meantime, continued its path towards closer integration, including the full implementation of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13194723">Schengen</a> agreement and its abolishing of border provisions. </p>
<p>The next barbed wire fence, not quite a wall, was <a href="http://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MIDAS-Policy-Paper-EN.pdf">erected by Greece in 2012</a> in an effort to seal its land border with Turkey. This was a relatively unsophisticated fence that ran through the land strip of the Greek northeastern border with Turkey for 12.5km. It was originally budgeted at €5.5 million but <a href="http://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/index.php/articles/archive/8-blogs/2752-evros-border-fence-completed">eventually cost €3.16 million</a>. The fence was fully financed by Greece, as the European Commission refused to contribute.</p>
<p>The fencing that has shocked Europe the most was built by the Hungarian authorities in 2015 to seal their 175km <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/hungary-build-border-fence-stop-refugees-160826084509375.html">border with Serbia</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hungary-completes-croatia-border-fence-to-keep-migrants-out-1444927774">with Croatia</a> (another 350km long). </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/world/europe/hungary-croatia-refugees-migrants.html?_r=0">caused despair among asylum seekers</a> travelling through the “Balkan route” to northern Europe, and diverting flows through Croatia and Slovenia. Fencing the Hungarian-Serbian land border cost €106 million. </p>
<h2>Donald’s big, beautiful wall</h2>
<p>And now Donald Trump has ordered the extension of the wall that divides the US from Mexico from its current <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/the-wall-building-a-continuous-u-s-mexico-barrier-would-be-a-tall-order/">1,000km length</a> to cover the <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160304-us-mexico-border-fence-wall-photos-immigration/">full extent</a> of the 3,200km border. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156232/original/image-20170209-28704-ia52tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scaling the US-Mexico barrier in Texas.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37243269">said</a> his wall will be “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful”, and will run for about 1,600km while natural obstacles and the existing barrier will cover the rest.</p>
<p>The barrier that already exists for a good part of the Mexico-US border includes different structures of relatively short walls and sections where the wall is “virtual”, implemented by radars, drones and other high-tech surveillance equipment as well as border-guard patrols. </p>
<p>This physical barrier runs through both urban terrain and desert crossings across California, Texas and Arizona, encompassing those areas where the highest number of illegal crossings were registered in the past.</p>
<h2>Does border control pay?</h2>
<p>In the face of all this wall-building, the question arises: do walls work? Do they stop population flow, and at what human, material and political cost?</p>
<p>While arguments proliferate both against and in favour of such radical enforcement measures, little is said about their costs – both direct and indirect – and about their effectiveness in curbing migration or asylum-seeking flows.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684200">recent study</a>, Douglas Massey, Jorge Durand and Karen Pren demonstrate that despite a 20-fold increase in nominal funding for border control in the period between 1986 and 2008, the undocumented migrant population in the US has grown from an estimated three to 12 million people. </p>
<p>They also found that the border patrol budget leapt from approximately US$300 million per year in the mid-1980s to just under US$4 billion in 2010. The money has been spent on personnel and the high-tech enforcers of walls such as drones, sensors, helicopters, planes and satellites.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156236/original/image-20170209-8646-1tm6csh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The existing US-Mexico border wall runs for 1,000km.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OpenStreetMap</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A similar <a href="http://www.eliamep.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MIDAS-REPORT.pdf">study on the costs of migration control in Greece</a> has shown that during the period 2010-2012, Greece multiplied its border personnel, increased technical capacity and implemented a blanket detention policy for all undocumented arrivals, including those who applied for asylum. This cost €67 million without effectively curbing irregular migration. </p>
<p>From 2007-2012, <a href="http://www.lunaria.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Inhuman_cost.pdf">Italy</a> spent €1.7 billion on external border control as well as technology systems to improve surveillance, repatriation programmes, centres hosting undocumented migrants, and developing cooperation with third countries to combat illegal immigration. But the number of undocumented migrants residing in the country did not significantly decrease. </p>
<p>In both Greece and Italy, as well as in the US, it was <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/why-countries-continue-consider-regularization">regularisation programmes</a> that effectively curbed irregular migration rather than walls and the machinery of enforcement. </p>
<p>These programmes, otherwise known as amnesties, give undocumented aliens a chance to legalise their residence status under certain conditions: usually a clean penal record, having been in the country for a number of years, having a job and showing signs of integration in their local area, such as renting a flat or sending their children to school. </p>
<p>Such programmes usually come once a country admits that irregular migrant workers provide a much-needed labour force and to expel them would be both inhumane and counterproductive for the host society’s interests. <a href="http://research.icmpd.org/projects/migration-governance/regine/">Regularisation programmes</a> in Europe and North America have varied in size from a few hundred cases (for example, ad hoc programmes in the UK or the Netherlands for rejected asylum seekers) to hundreds of thousands (in the US in the 1980s and in southern Europe through the 1990s and early 2000s).</p>
<h2>An inhuman cost</h2>
<p>On the other hand, studies have consistently found that the results of enforcement have been mediocre and often carry <a href="http://www.naid.ucla.edu/uploads/4/2/1/9/4219226/a53_hinojosa_2012_cato_091511.pdf_published.pdf">unintended consequences</a>: most commonly, routes are shifted to remote areas with particularly difficult environmental conditions. The use of migrant smugglers becomes the norm and their fees increase. </p>
<p>In the US, tight border controls have led the undocumented migrant population to <a href="http://www.naid.ucla.edu/uploads/4/2/1/9/4219226/a53_hinojosa_2012_cato_091511.pdf_published.pdf">settle</a> north of the border, instead of keeping families back home and moving between the two countries. </p>
<p>In other words, walls and heavy militarisation do not lead to an overall decrease in irregular migration. And their <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-wall-could-cause-serious-environmental-damage/">environmental costs</a> are significant, while the human costs of separating families are truly non-quantifiable. </p>
<p>While countries need to keep their borders secure, there is no escaping the fact that irregular migration is a complex phenomenon. <a href="https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/eu-regularization-programmes-an-effective-tool-to-manage-irregular-migration">Regularisation programmes</a> and the provision of legal migration channels are much more effective – in material, <a href="http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/1827-FRA_2011_Migrants_in_an_irregular_situation_EN.pdf">human and moral costs</a> – than any border fence can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Triandafyllidou has received funding from the Open Society Foundations to conduct the MIDAS study on the costs of migration control in Greece. The results of that study, which ended in 2014, are cited in this article. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Solidarity Now, a NGO active in asylum seeker reception in Greece. Neither she nor any of the organisations with which she is affiliated benefit in any way from the publication of this article. </span></em></p>What do border walls cost? And do they work?Anna Triandafyllidou, Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700472017-01-25T00:04:31Z2017-01-25T00:04:31ZWhy Trump’s wall with Mexico is so popular, and why it won’t work<p>Donald Trump tweeted on Jan. 6 that “any money spent on building the Great Wall (for the sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"817329823374831617"}"></div></p>
<p>Feasibility aside, this policy reflects a common belief among governments that countries should be walled, and that walls solve problems of migration and trade. </p>
<p><a href="http://econ.st/2jbKR0e">The Economist</a> reports that 40 countries have built fences since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirty of these were built since 9/11; 15 were built in 2015.</p>
<p>The United States already has about <a href="http://bit.ly/2jlsum4">650 miles</a> of wall along the border with Mexico. Hungary <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/hungary-is-building-a-wall-along-the-serbian-border-to-keep-migrants-out">built</a> a wall on the Serbian border in 2015, and is erecting barriers on its borders with Romania and Croatia to hinder the entrance of refugees. Spain – an important link in Europe’s southern border – built fences in its enclaves of Ceuta and in Melilla (northern Morocco) to thwart African immigration and smuggling.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://bit.ly/2j4XyHH">research</a> focuses on why countries build legal and physical walls, especially in the Americas. The logic of walls – creating a spatial separation between people – predates the current craze. It’s part of a broader logic of nation-building that humans have used for over three centuries.</p>
<p>This strategy is politically appealing for its simplicity, but it misunderstands the problems of globalization and migration it aims to address. Building walls has rarely has achieved its intended effect, and may result in wasted resources and lost opportunities for the United States.</p>
<h2>Logic behind walls</h2>
<p>People in countries like the United States and Britain are uneasy about what they perceive as falling economic fortunes, and outsiders who threaten a way of life. Erecting paper or concrete walls to protect the national economy, jobs and culture is a strategy that has strong appeal. British Prime Minister Theresa May recently referred to the Brexit plan as a way to regain control of Britain’s borders from <a href="http://read.bi/2iIa9id">Europe</a>, and to “build a stronger Britain.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153969/original/image-20170123-8075-19rz4lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newspaper caricature of Chinese man, 1882.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001696530/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In U.S. history, building paper and concrete walls resulted in episodes that today are widely viewed by <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-5308.html">historians</a> as inconsistent with our better democratic angels.</p>
<p>Among the first paper, or legal, walls erected in the U.S. were the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which limited the entry of Asian immigrants, as well as their eligibility for citizenship, beginning in 1882. What the late political scientist Aristide Zolberg called “The Great Wall against China” did not come down until 1943, and did only then because the U.S. needed <a href="http://bit.ly/2ib7QXU">China’s support</a> in the war against fascism.</p>
<p>For 220 years, the U.S. discriminated against prospective immigrants and citizens on the <a href="http://bit.ly/2i9xdpL">basis of race</a>. Although the United States was among the first countries to implement this strategy of excluding by race, all other countries in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa had <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-regional-history/drawing-global-colour-line-white-mens-countries-and-international-challenge-racial-equality?format=PB">similar laws and policies</a>. In the U.S., this approach led to policies such as Chinese exclusions, the Nationality Quotas Act (which selected immigrants by ethno-racial origins), Japanese internment and closing doors to Jewish refugees fleeing murderous Nazi persecution. </p>
<p>Most countries used discrimination by origin to build their nation. It allowed political elites to choose which immigrants were suitable as workers, or as citizens. For example, in the U.S., Chinese immigrants were seen as suitable as workers who did dirty, demeaning and dangerous jobs, but not as full members of the nation.</p>
<h2>Rise and fall of walls</h2>
<p>My <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674729049">work</a> with David FitzGerald describes how blatant discrimination by race in immigration and nationality law eventually came to an end <a href="http://page99test.blogspot.com/search?q=culling+the+masses">in the Americas</a>, including in the United States. This marked a decline in wall-building policy, though not of the underlying racism which surfaced in other policy areas. </p>
<p>The United States and other powerful, primarily white countries needed the support of countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa to wage wars against fascism, and later communism. The U.S. and its allies could not easily ask for support from the countries whose citizens they excluded on racial grounds.</p>
<p>Reluctantly, the U.S. and Canada ended their overtly discriminatory immigration and nationality laws in the 1960s – much later than other countries in the Americas. The fall of paper walls against particular groups resulted in a <a href="http://pewrsr.ch/2iZbfts">dramatic demographic transformation</a>. In the 1950s, immigrants to the United States were 90 percent European and 3 percent Asian. By 2011, 48 percent were Asian and 13 percent were European.</p>
<p>The face of the nation was transformed, and “Americans” confronted questions about who was a full member. Was it those who belonged to a particular ethnoracial group? Or, was it those who subscribed to civic ideals of democracy? </p>
<p>The demographic changes that have happened since the demise of the Nationality Quotas Act in 1965 have again raised these <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-and-the-rise-of-white-identity-in-politics-67037">questions among whites</a> in the political mainstream. Immigrants are settling in “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2676260">new destinations</a>” – areas primarily in the South and Midwest that had experienced little migration until the 1990s. Calls to revive the logic of walls have become louder in those areas.</p>
<h2>No easy fix</h2>
<p>Building a wall does not address the complexities of unauthorized migration, or the economic woes of America’s middle class.</p>
<p>For instance, as many as <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chasing-growth-role-national-economies-us-visa-refusal-rates">half</a> of unauthorized immigrants in the United States are people who overstay their visas, not border crossers. Barriers also result in more deaths because people try to cross the border at the most inhospitable and unwalled places. The barriers in place now have generated billions of dollars of <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/09/12/160758471/u-s-grows-an-industrial-complex-along-the-border">federal expenditures</a> for border security and investment.</p>
<p>Working- and middle-class Americans are also feeling a vague unease about their place in the economy. Rhetoric that identifies specific culprits – immigrants and international trade – is very appealing. So are simple, concrete solutions.</p>
<p>But walls to limit mobility or trade are too simple a solution to a complex problem. Today’s economies are more linked by exchanges of data, goods and services between countries than at any time in the past. Workers have also moved between countries, even if with greater regulation than <a href="http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319244433">in the past</a>. </p>
<p>The effects of global income inequality have been felt differently among groups. Economist <a href="http://bit.ly/2jbFqhM">Branko Milanovic’s research</a> shows that during the most intense period of globalization, from 1988 to 2008, people in Asia and in the top 1 percent of global earners experienced the highest real income growth. Meanwhile, people in the lower- and middle-income strata in Western Europe, North America and Oceania experienced no growth.</p>
<p>The demographic shifts described, the perceived loss of political advantages among whites and stagnant incomes among working- and middle-class people in the United States are hard realities. No wall can change these facts. </p>
<p>Most importantly, walling the world distracts citizens and policymakers from complex problems. Extreme economic inequality, global conflict and environmental decline surpass the borders and capacities of any single country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70047/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Cook Martín receives funding from National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>The logic behind building a wall is centuries old. But can concrete solve the complex problems the U.S. is facing today?David Cook Martín, Professor of Sociology and Assistant Vice President of Global Education, Grinnell CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655442016-09-27T05:36:39Z2016-09-27T05:36:39ZDear Mr Trump: here’s how you build a wall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139365/original/image-20160927-20144-1b5n130.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Performers march along the Great Wall of China in 2008. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Gray/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dear Mr Trump, </p>
<p>As soon as you are inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, I would dearly like to build for you and the American people the wall along the Mexican border. It will be, as you say, <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/2016-09-01/donald-trump-promises-impenetrable-and-beautiful-mexico-wall/">a beautiful wall</a>.</p>
<p>Pundits may question the efficacy of a wall in achieving social segregation. But you know intrinsically, in this dark and turbulent age of terrorism, illegal immigrants and lawlessness, a wall will keep the unwanted vice and violence at bay, restoring peace and security in American society.</p>
<p>When building walls, our ancestors were terribly complacent. At about the same time – the Golden Age from approximately 600-500 BCE – both the wise mortals in the Mediterranean and the clever Chinese turned skyward: though they never managed to contact each other, they both found the simple predictability and geometric beauty of the cosmic world a panacea for the inclemency and toil of life on earth. </p>
<p>It should not be a surprise that both the Greco-Roman world and China barred themselves in walled compounds and courtyards so that they could lift their heads towards the heavens. The Chinese went even further: they built vast walled enclosures as cosmic cities on earth.</p>
<p>After having been assaulted by the barbarians from the north, they woke up to the wisdom of border-spanning walls: they built the Great Wall of China to ward off the bandits. The first emperor of China <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shihuangdi">Qin Shi Huang</a> ordered his people to unify the wall with zeal.</p>
<p>As a result of centuries of building, the Great Wall of China was extended to more than 8,000 kilometres. But, with perhaps the exception of a few wild rabbits, the barbarians were not held back at all. China was taken and ruled for centuries by the Mongols and the Manchurians.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139366/original/image-20160927-20126-toqv2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Lee/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dear Mr Trump, surely this is not what you want. A wall, as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1580515.Translations_from_Drawing_to_Building_and_Other_Essays">neatly summarised</a> by the English architectural historian Robin Evans, affords the rights for retreat and gives rise to the rites of exclusion. But the common women and men in the United States of America are progressive and forward looking; they will not put you in the White House to lead them to retreat. You ought to build a different wall.</p>
<p>Let me pinch this idea of a splendid wall from the Chinese architectural historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Sicheng">Professor Liang Sicheng</a> and market it to you, Mr Trump. (You will be delighted to learn that Professor Liang read architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1930s, when law and order were in place and America was still great. So there is no Chinese conspiracy here.)</p>
<p>In the early 1950s, driven by a self-imposed mission to revitalise China’s pre-modern architecture, mixed with the high optimism generated by the new Communist government, Liang hoped that the new regime could save the magnificent city wall (dating back to 1264, when the Yuan dynasty imperial capital was beginning to be built) by turning it into a civic park for the leisure life of the citizens in the new era. </p>
<p>A hopeless romantic, Liang wanted to give the new republic capital a splendid “green necklace” of 39.75 kilometres, for the city wall that enclosed imperial Beijing would be greened by lawns and plants. This would be the world’s only city-ring-park in the sky; it was not only a civic place, but also would allow the residents of new Beijing to break away from the confined courtyards to climb high to inspect the horizon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139358/original/image-20160927-20100-12trzje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liang Sicheng’s Sky Garden Proposal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Liang Sicheng</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This, if materialised, would be a magnificent creation at a civic scale of a Chinese idea that might have existed only in imagination. It would be the collective garden for the vast tapestry of courtyards in Beijing.</p>
<p>China’s Chairman Mao Zedong, alas, was not quite as clear headed as you are: he worried less about the enemies’ attacks from beyond the wall than the internal law and order of his own people within the wall. Why would he give his newly minted republican citizens leisure in a park hanging in the sky?</p>
<p>Legend has it that the Chairman, in the early days of the new republic, once stood on the Tienanmen – the Gate of Heavenly Peace – while facing a sea of red flags, Mao reared his head to inspect the horizon: he envisioned a forest of gigantic industrial chimneys with black smoke bellowing into the sky. Mao saw this as the future of Beijing. Liang was devastated! The government went ahead to tear down the entire city wall to give way to roads – the symbol of progress and work, not leisure.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139367/original/image-20160927-20126-4w4ql2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters hold a banner reading ‘Wall Off Trump’ as they attempt to block an entrance to the arena hosting the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jim Urquhart/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Mr Trump, you will build this sumptuous garden in the sky along the Mexican border. To ensure its efficacy, you will also learn from another Chinese wall that actually worked. In the grandiose Tang dynasty capital of Changan, in addition to the city wall and the walled imperial palace, all the residents were locked in the walled residential wards, much like that of the peacefully gated communities in America. </p>
<p>Night curfews were implemented to lock the gates of residential wards at dusk, and security guards patrolled the deserted streets and laneways at night to enforce law and order. Not that the residents had no freedom: they shopped in walled markets and visited walled gardens during the day!</p>
<p>Being an enthusiastic student of Chinese history, Chairman Mao surely had this glorious Tang dynasty idea in mind. After taking down Beijing’s city wall, he ordered to build dangwei (walled compounds of “work units”) not only for Beijing but also for the entire country. </p>
<p>For the next four decades or so, the Chinese life, from the cradle to the grave and from a farming hamlet to a factory, was all sorted and ordered in these dangwei enclosures.</p>
<p>The Chairman realised your dream, Mr Trump – that is, law and order. Better still, no criminal-minded illegal migrants ever dreamed of entering China in Mao’s heyday. </p>
<p>You too could see the common women and men of America, with full surveillance and military protection, walking their dogs, barbecuing and having a beer on your Great Wall.</p>
<p>Dear Mr Trump, let me most enthusiastically offer my architectural service to you <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/so-how-high-will-donald-trumps-wall-be-an-investigation/">to design your beautiful walls</a>, though in the true capitalist spirit I must charge you a modest fee. I trust the engineers, the construction managers and the contractors will do just the same. After all, they will create jobs for America’s economy. With these walls, my dear Mr Trump, you will make America truly great again!</p>
<p>Yours faithfully,</p>
<p>Professor of Good for a Wall</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xing Ruan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump, if he takes the US presidency, will immediately start building a wall between Mexico and the US. What lessons can he take from that celebrated wall-builder, Chairman Mao?Xing Ruan, Professor of Architecture, Associate Dean International and Director of Architecture, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/594922016-06-05T16:35:20Z2016-06-05T16:35:20ZBeyond the unthinkable? City dwellings without security walls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125131/original/image-20160603-11593-gi4q8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In response to the surge of crime in the mid-1990s, suburban dwellers in South Africa began to fortress their houses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It started – as so much of my research has – with a hunch. For many years I have been completely overwhelmed by the high walls that South African suburbanites have created around their dwellings. They have always struck me as confronting, offensive and aesthetically unappealing. </p>
<p>But, more than this, I couldn’t shake the feeling that these walls, which were supposedly created to make people safer, were actually having the opposite effect. As a criminologist by training, I’ve worked with police officers and security guards over many years. So I reached out to a member of the <a href="http://www.durban.gov.za/City_Services/police/Pages/default.aspx">Durban Metropolitan Police</a>, Chris Overall. That was the start of a journey that has taken us through very different suburbs and very different ways of thinking about security – and that will, later this year, see the Durban chapter of a global organisation, <a href="http://www.alliance.org.za/">Alliance Française</a>, literally <a href="http://www.stabilityjournal.org/collections/special/citizen-security-dialogues-south-africa/">break down its walls</a>.</p>
<h2>Two suburbs, walls apart</h2>
<p>In the late apartheid period South African suburbs began to change dramatically in both their appearance and design. This was the result of rising levels of crime that are typical of countries in transition, particularly those characterised by high levels of inequality as is the case in South Africa.</p>
<p>South Africa is renowned for having a very high rate of violent crime. By way of illustration, by the mid-1990s, South Africa’s murder rate was six times higher than that of America and 20 times higher than that of Britain. Since 1995, South Africa has ranked in the <a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violent-crime/Murder-rate#1998">top six countries for violent crime</a>.</p>
<p>As a response to the surge of crime, particularly violent crime, urban (particularly suburban) dwellers began to fortress their houses. Increasingly, housing was designed with the aim of keeping intruders out. This included constructing increasingly high walls, and erecting electrified fences and laser beams. </p>
<p>A new mentality emerged that focused on the fortification of home and office space. Initially this was strongly supported and bolstered by the private security industry, which had vested interests in the rush to monitor space and strengthen security. Rising crime rates effectively prompted South Africans to create alternative and substitute policing institutions. </p>
<p>In light of this fortification, we decided to interrogate whether this response has had the intended result: has it reduced crime victimisation? We decided to make use of a comparative approach in trying to make sense of this.</p>
<p>Our first step was to compare crime rates – particularly for violent crime (such as armed robbery and hijacking) – in two Durban suburbs. This is the second most populous city in South Africa and is the capital of the KwaZulu-Natal province. One of the suburbs we studied, Umbilo, is not characterised by high walls. It’s a lower middle-class area that’s often referred to disparagingly as “Scumbilo” because of its class make-up and slightly grimy appearance. The other suburb, Westville, is strikingly walled. It’s viewed as a more desirable place to live – a place of aspiration, if you will, even though it is by far not Durban’s most affluent suburb.</p>
<p>These suburbs were selected following conversations with members of both public and private policing agencies in Durban. The <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/">South African Police Services</a>, the city’s Metro Police and private companies <a href="https://www.bluesecurity.co.za/">Blue Security</a> and <a href="http://www.adt.co.za/">ADT</a> all became partners on <a href="http://www.dut.ac.za/faculty/engineering/urban_futures/">this project</a>. They, too, were keen to explore the function and impact of walls in regard to crime targeting.</p>
<p>Chris and I spent a few months in 2014 studying incident reports from the two areas. As part of our exploratory research we also joined police and private security firms on their day and night patrols in both areas. On those journeys, we witnessed incidents first hand – and saw, without a doubt, that violent crime was far more common behind high walls in Westville than it was in Umbilo. These observations were reinforced by reading through incident reports and talking to the police while they were on patrol, as well as in their offices.</p>
<h2>Walls are ‘policing nightmares’</h2>
<p>Through their experience and their expert knowledge the police had come to view walls as “policing nightmares”. Solid, high walls are viewed as an obstacle to policing. Organised criminals always look for ways to be hidden from sight. Walls are perfect for this purpose.</p>
<p>Walls prevent patrolling officers from knowing what is happening inside a property. This detracts from the value of patrols as a form of crime prevention and rapid response. Walls can also become a defence for criminals: they’re given the freedom to conduct their activities without being seen from the street.</p>
<p>In addition, private security guards told us, the existence of a wall makes those in a home or yard feel trapped once an intruder has accessed their property. Homeowners are then slower to alert either the relevant private security company or the police.</p>
<p>Walls are also a problem because they prevent those who live “inside” from seeing what is happening on the outside. High walls mean that reaction officers can’t easily get onto a property – they can often only do a perimeter check, which is very frustrating for these officers and guards who are trying to protect people. Lastly, walls and other forms of solid boundaries create real problems for patrol officers. Jumping a high wall is physically dangerous in itself. There’s also the very real possibility that patrol officers will be caught unawares by home intruders who are already inside targeted properties.</p>
<h2>Beyond walls?</h2>
<p>That initial hunch has brought us a long way. Our research has received a huge amount of public <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/can-high-walls-keep-burglars-away-1778065">attention</a> and sparked debates in a country where high walls are ubiquitous. These debates have centred not only on physical walls but on the interconnected metaphysical walls that suburban dwellers have created. </p>
<p>Talk shows on this project were hosted by a number of radio stations including <a href="http://www.capetalk.co.za/">Cape Talk</a> and <a href="http://www.lotusfm.co.za/sabc/home/lotusfm">Lotus FM</a>. What emerged in the talk show discussions was that people feel compelled to live behind high walls as these are the only “defensive” structures they are aware of. They are also afraid that, should they be the one house on the street without a wall, they will immediately be targeted by criminals. However, almost unanimously, callers were nostalgic for times when they lived without walls and were envious of places where walls do not exist.</p>
<p>A real dystopia exists in the minds of those who build walls and yet are very uncomfortable with them, both symbolically and physically. During public forums and radio shows a number of people claimed that they were going to “experiment” with taking down their walls. Whether or not this takes place is an individual choice, but there is certainly evidence that walls are not necessarily generating the safety that is desired. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most exciting and real life outcome is that one of Durban’s most visible and active cultural centres, the <a href="http://www.alliance.org.za/durban/">Alliance Française de Durban</a>, has decided to literally break down its existing high boundary wall. It will be replaced with a boundary that generates security and engagement, and builds neighbourliness. </p>
<p>We don’t yet know what this boundary will look like. The <a href="http://www.kznia.org.za/">KwaZulu-Natal Institute of Architecture</a> published an expression of interest advert for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Alliance-Without-Walls-1013879511973003/">Alliance Without Walls</a> project on May 28 2016. The final new boundary structure will be designed and constructed by December 2016. This is one important step on the road to imagining cities without walls.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monique Marks receives funding from the National Research Foundation and in kind funding from the CSIR.</span></em></p>In response to high levels of crime, South Africans have turned their homes into fortresses, seeking security behind high walls. But doing so might be counter-productive.Monique Marks, Head of Urban Futures Centre, Durban University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.