Mellon Forum // The Cost of Borders

The book project, The Cost of Borders, observes borders from the perspective of people crossing the chasm between Global South and North. As wealthy countries dedicate large financial and human resources to offshoring, weaponizing, and fortifying their borders, crossing them requires increasingly larger physical risks as well as steep expenditures — such as on smugglers, brokers, and means of transportation. These expenditures vary not only by a country’s laws, or one’s anticipated legal status, but also by their categorization within intersecting inequalities of gender, sexuality, race or physical ability. Observing the economic realities of border zones, and their social meanings, borders can be viewed as a series of transactions that are always costly and often deadly.