EP 05: Immigration and State-Hood: Are All Who Wander Lost?

Is wealth THE dividing line between those who wander, and those who wander lost? It seems to me that chalking things up to wealth disparity has become our default, and that’s kind of an easy way out of a complicated, multifaceted issue.

Years of continuous news of crisis after crisis at the southern border of the US have highlighted the stark realities of immigration and migration.

The lingering–and still raging–pandemic has claimed the lives of over 5 million people worldwide, and has laid bare the incredible disparities in wealth, education, access to basic medicine, shelter, food and clean water among every nation on the planet.

In this context, I’m thinking about borders, about immigration and migration, national identity, and about unity and division in an increasingly global world.

There are vast differences in the experience of traveling, at home or abroad, depending on your nationality, race, gender, class, education, and more. Our identities influence our experience of moving between borders, whether you’re going across the globe or across town.

As many of us begin to consider traveling again, to school, to work, to places of worship, what does it mean to spend significant time with people who may not share our values? What does it mean to be able to move freely from one place to the next or not?