With trade wars and threats of annexation dominating the news in Canada in recent months, “Reimagining Borders” proved to be a gripping title for the second annual “Conversations: sponsored by Charles Bronfman,” a yearly panel discussion co-hosted by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The series was launched last year thanks to a recent gift from Charles Bronfman, LLD’90, to publicly consider issues of national interest and policy.
More than 600 people gathered at the Centre Mont-Royal on March 18 for a timely exchange on the role of borders and the challenges nations face in managing migration amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment.
This year’s topic was chosen months ago, says Jennifer Elrick, Associate Professor of Sociology and Interim Director of MISC, when the idea arose to explore the challenges of humanely managing geopolitical boundaries in the context of migration.
But the topic has taken on new significance in light of recent developments in the United States following President Donald Trump’s return to office, bringing attention to Canada’s national borders in unprecedented ways. “I think that’s why we are experiencing such a shock right now, the shock of a reversal of the trend towards economic globalization,” Elrick says.
Canadians, along with citizens from other high-income countries, enjoy an ease of passage across many borders. But, as Elrick points out, this “socioeconomic security is really a matter of birthright lottery.”
People migrate due to conflict, authoritarian regimes, economics and, increasingly, climate change. Modest estimates say climate change will spur 200 to 300 million migrants by 2050. Refugees are not always welcome, and the human cost is high. Some 27,000 lives have been lost this past decade – roughly equivalent to McGill’s undergraduate population – trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe.
“Canada is exceptional in the world of wall builders and has the opportunity to be a thought leader on this issue,” Elrick says. “If Canada doesn’t lose its nerve.”
‘People don’t want to pick up and go somewhere else’
Nahlah Ayed, host of IDEAS on CBC Radio One, moderated a thoughtful event with panelists Peter Altmaier, former Christian Democratic Union member of the German government, whom Angela Merkel tasked to coordinate the refugee crisis in 2015; Julián Castro, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation, who was mayor of San Antonio, Texas, from 2009 until 2014 when he took on the post of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama; and Ayelet Shachar, Professor of Law, Political Science and Global Affairs at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and author of The Shifting Border and The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality.
Shachar set the conversation in motion, noting that borders serve two functions: to protect territorial integrity, and to regulate what passes through them. “Borders stretch out, borders stretch in,” she said. For example, once you pass U.S. customs at Montreal’s Trudeau airport, you are legally in the United States. Historically, this sense of control over border entry has existed since roughly the late 19th century. But Shachar noted that under international law, “no country can force another country to change its border.”
The panelists agreed that the right to protect borders and control immigration must be balanced with values based on humanity, however challenging.
For instance, Altmaier noted that Germany, with a population of 80 million, admitted over 1 million refugees in the last decade and is still feeling the ramifications, even though integration is high. Among Syrian refugees, 86% are employed, and nearly all speak German.
Altmaier strongly believes, “If we are a rich country that has benefitted so much from the solidarity of others, if we are unable to provide protection, we have failed in history.”
“I cannot see any successful country with a brilliant culture and a decent standard of living, without interaction with its neighbours, other countries, and other people in the world,” Altmaier said. A country that closes its borders, “would destroy its own future in a modern and globalized world.”
But Shachar noted that when the public starts to perceive a strain on resources like housing, health care and schooling, goodwill can shift, and someone will always take advantage of these sentiments. Governments must reassure their citizens, lest they lose trust. Once that happens, it’s like trying “to put a genie back in the bottle,” she added.
Though anti-immigrant sentiment is high in the U.S., Castro is optimistic that the pendulum will “swing in the other direction because of the cruelty and overreach of Donald Trump.”
He believes the U.S. should welcome, not deport, its migrants. “You need a strong, vibrant labour force in the years to come, more than ever. If we make the Border Wall the symbol of our country instead of the Statue of Liberty, you’re going to be begging people to come to the United States.” Castro quoted his twin, Joaquin, also in politics, who says, “The scariest time for the United States will not be when everybody wants to come, it will be when nobody wants to come.”
Another path, Castro said, is to work in earnest – not paternalistically – with other countries, “to help people find safety and opportunity and a good quality of life where they live.” We must remember the pressures on those who are driven to asylum, uprooting their children, leaving their families, their jobs. “People don’t want to pick up and go somewhere else.”
Managing human migration requires collaboration across nations, said Shachar. “The problem is too large for any country to address it single handedly.”
As a final thought experiment, Shachar challenged the audience to rethink borders, not as walls of division but as spaces for exchange, evoking the mountainous International Peace Park between Alberta and Montana. People can enter from both sides to hike or attend events. “It’s full of flowers. That’s a very different image, a totally different atmosphere for people to interact,” she said.