Robin Monotti: WHY BORDERS MATTER…
WHY BORDERS MATTER "Borders and national citizenship rules are a primary check upon migration. Migration is not limited just because of xenophobia. Unregulated migration now would undermine both citizenship and welfare rights. This would threaten democracy, which depends of the notion of a national community. Thus a degree of exclusion of outsiders is essential to democracy, and democracy is a key basis for the legitimacy of a government’s external actions. Borders and local policies of national security are now central to containing terrorism and organized crime. Citizens still identify with the nation-state. States are the largest bodies that can claim any sort of primary legitimacy. There is no global ‘demos’. If democracy implies a substantial measure of homogeneity in the demos, then the world is just too unequal economically and too different culturally for the rich to submit to the decisions of the poor, or for one established culture to accept the internationalization of the norms of another. The territorial state will remain a central component of the new division of labour in governance, even if it no longer has quite the monopoly of governance it had when it appropriated political power from the complex division of labour in governance of the later Middle Ages. Politics is no longer exclusively territorial. On the other hand, it cannot hold together unless it is rooted in the democratic political will of territorial states." Paul Quentin Hirst
https://x.com/robinmonotti/status/2064970390506500498?s=20