Description
One of the most pressing challenges facing the planet is that our current border imaginaries are unsustainable. By the end of 2022, for reasons including conflict, globalisation, and climate change, over 281 million people currently live in a country other than their country of birth, either out of choice or necessity. Furthermore, borders obscure the racialised violence that maintain them and harm those whom they nominally seek to protect; by creating a fear of the monsters who live out there, borders limit our social worlds and opportunities in the name of protection and security. Despite this, people remain emotionally attached to borders.
Drawing on ontological security studies and Lauren Berlant’s work in cultural theory, in this paper I argue that our prevailing relationship with borders is one of cruel optimism. That is, our attachment to borders, while comforting, inhibits our ability to live a full life. I put cruel optimism in conversation with ontological security studies – the psychological need for security of the “self” – to better understand the emotional needs that that borders satisfy in order to begin to envision how these needs can be otherwise satisfied in a way that is able to realise more ethical and less violent alternatives to our bordered world.
