Walled States, Waning Sovereignty

Abstract

In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty , Wendy Brown argues that erecting walls and increasing securitization efforts emerge at the same time as a decrease in national sovereignty. In an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, Brown marks the seemingly paradoxical investment in the premodern technologies of border walls and physical boundaries. Such sites include Israel’s West Bank, the US/Mexico border, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Nation-states are seemingly more interested in preventing the flow of migrants than in encouraging the flow of capital. These walls often occur at sites where migrants are fleeing war, colonization, or economic conditions, and are meant to keep particular people, and especially refugees, outside the nation-state. Unlike walls of the past, these walls are not meant to deter militaries, but instead nonstate actors, such as the movement of individuals, groups, or goods (i.e., drugs or weapons). Rather than demonstrating the power of nation-states, Brown says these contemporary walls function as “hyperbole” (2010, 24) a symbol of state erosion. Brown’s text offers us tools for thinking about the paradoxical nature of recent calls for the building of more border walls at the same time as labor shortages are creating challenges for many industries.