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A review by machadamia
Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
4.0
This is a truly thoughtful book about what the world is like at the moment, where borders are hard and violence is carried out everyday.
I picked this book up thinking that it would be about the various borders around the world and what makes them violent. Sort of a revelation to the public or an expose on what it is really like for people who are not privileged enough to own a good passport or even be born in a country whose citizens are widely accepted in many countries. While it definitely started out this way, it later delved into the history of how certain borders came about - very mind blowing by the way and really gave me an insight into how damaging colonialism was for everyone aside from the colonisers.
The book also went through aspects I knew about but never really considered it to be problematic. Such as borders in the sea, and how people migrate because of climate change and how the UN is essentially useless because of how it started and who is heading it. The environmental problems and how having borders plays a huge part in countries not banding together to solve it.
The book is so pack full of information and is really reminiscent of Naomi Klein's work for me. As someone who cares deeply about the environmental state of the planet and social problems, this was an eye opener. With that said, I cannot say that I enjoyed reading it. Not just because the topic and writing is serious, but also because the writing is sometimes a little dry and packs way too much information such as statistics at times. I do think that they are important but putting some of them in footnotes instead would greatly help the reading experience of a layman. Of course, the author may not be targeting an everyday person.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about migration, environmental problems and who benefits and why from countries having such well defined borders and who protects only their own (spoiler alert, it is really why the world is so unequal).
I picked this book up thinking that it would be about the various borders around the world and what makes them violent. Sort of a revelation to the public or an expose on what it is really like for people who are not privileged enough to own a good passport or even be born in a country whose citizens are widely accepted in many countries. While it definitely started out this way, it later delved into the history of how certain borders came about - very mind blowing by the way and really gave me an insight into how damaging colonialism was for everyone aside from the colonisers.
The book also went through aspects I knew about but never really considered it to be problematic. Such as borders in the sea, and how people migrate because of climate change and how the UN is essentially useless because of how it started and who is heading it. The environmental problems and how having borders plays a huge part in countries not banding together to solve it.
The book is so pack full of information and is really reminiscent of Naomi Klein's work for me. As someone who cares deeply about the environmental state of the planet and social problems, this was an eye opener. With that said, I cannot say that I enjoyed reading it. Not just because the topic and writing is serious, but also because the writing is sometimes a little dry and packs way too much information such as statistics at times. I do think that they are important but putting some of them in footnotes instead would greatly help the reading experience of a layman. Of course, the author may not be targeting an everyday person.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about migration, environmental problems and who benefits and why from countries having such well defined borders and who protects only their own (spoiler alert, it is really why the world is so unequal).