In her generous review, Gillian Brock explains how On Borders’ normative framework—the watershed model—can be used to govern borders while sustaining universal obligations. However, she worries that the model may not help address questions about migration, that it could prioritize environmental concerns over the claims of asylum seekers, and that it cannot sufficiently guide us in managing cross-border pandemics or transnational drug violence.
On Borders’ first paragraph states, “Unlike most other books about borders, [this one] does not focus on migration.” The book challenges the assumption that migration is the fundamental border problem: it directs our attention to other issues, including border drawing, transborder resources, border policing, border walls, and transborder crime. Therefore, a full response to Brock’s questions about migration would require a new book. However, that book could still rely on my watershed model, which offers the politics of water as a guide for governing borders in general. Water politics require that we respect place-specific duties and that we use cross-border and international cooperation to solve local problems, which all border issues—including migration—fundamentally are.
But does the watershed model permit a country to deny admission to newcomers (“they’), arguing that their arrival would not leave enough environmental goods for “us” (as in the “We are full” slogan)? No, that is desert island thinking. In contrast, the watershed model prioritizes place-specific duties over the special obligations of identity, and it places universal obligations above both. Even in the (unlikely) scenario where a country did not have enough resources to sustain human life, there would be no reason to prioritize “us” over refugees, because “we” would be all those humans dealing with the problem in that place, including the refugees. But the model could permit controls on border crossing to better distribute resources to all those people.
Brock worries that the watershed model cannot deal with cross-border pandemics, because they require unilateral halts to immigration, which are ruled out by the model’s call for joint border governance. In my view, border checks and other key COVID policies actually exemplify the place-specific duties stressed by the model. Physical distancing and quarantines are excellent examples of such duties, because they are owed to those who are in the same place with us. But they are also obligations owed to all human beings, rather than a way to distinguish between “us” and “them.” When officials conflate health requirements with identity politics (as when Trump decried “the China virus”), they undermine the respect for place-specific duties inherent in a cordon sanitaire. Yet when border control is detached from group identity, as the watershed model requires, then borders and limited jurisdictions can help governments better deal with health crises (including “the war on drugs”).
The watershed model recommends that we govern borders by focusing on how the environment, built places, and infrastructure affect human relations. It argues that this focus helps us control disease and environmental destruction. Rather than using borders to make admissions decisions that protect national security, the model demands that we foster legitimate democratic local politics, such that everyone can have protections, wherever they happen to be.
