Borderline
One Lane Bridge (Isabelle Roughol)
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Borderline is a podcast for defiant global citizens covering geopolitics, immigration and lives that straddle borders, with host Isabelle Roughol.
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May 5, 2022
Ukraine's other battlefield, with Thierry Cruvellier
"Ukraine has provided us with, I think, the most striking, the most rapid, the most swift and complete legal offensive or lawfare strategy that has ever been implemented."
In this episode
🇺🇦 Ukraine's aggressive lawfare strategy
⚖️ International justice finally comes for the West
🤐 Why former great powers can't cope with their colonial crimes
🇫🇷 Reckoning with the Algerian War
🇨🇩 The DR Congo schools us on prosecuting environmental destruction
🇨🇴 Transitional justice lessons from Colombia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and more
🕊 Restitutions, reparations and truth commissions – justice beyond the courts
Show notes
[00:00:16] Intro
[00:01:42] "There is a before Ukraine and an after Ukraine"
[00:07:18] "Justice has become the third weapon of Ukraine's strategy"
[00:11:46] Is lawfare a communication tool?``
[00:15:39] The slow wheels of the ICC
[00:18:43] Justice gets much more pragmatic at the local level: the example of environmental crimes in the DRC
[00:25:52] A renewed interest in justice for indigenous people
[00:28:58] Colombia, a case study for all-encompassing transitional justice
[00:30:14] Why are some countries better than other at looking into their colonial past?
[00:32:26] The restitution of pillaged objects
[00:34:28] A generational reckoning with colonial crimes: the French Algerian war
[00:40:13] Statues, history vs memory and the new frontline of transitional justice
[00:42:53] Outro
🌍 justiceinfo.net
📚 The Master of Confessions, by Thierry Cruvellier. Ecco Press. 2015. Find it here.
🧬 Check out The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast, where I'm executive producer for the next few weeks.
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Apr 19, 2022
Jose Antonio Vargas on telling the full, messy story of immigration
A decade ago, journalist and "American without papers" Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in a national magazine. Today he works with Hollywood and TV studios to humanise the immigrant story through pop culture.
In this episode
📺 Trafficking in empathy and the power of story to change minds
😢 Why he regrets his mom sending him away to the US
🇺🇸 Reaching America's "moveable middle"
💸 How the economic argument for immigration backfired
😰 Why progressives abandoned the fight
📖 Stories as the last place for nuance and complexity
Show notes
[00:00:16] Intro
[00:02:27] "Home is where I can do my work"
[00:04:05] "Being a journalist is the identity I figured out before all others"
[00:05:22] "All definitions are suspect"
[00:07:28] "Why is it that only a certain portion of the population gets to be an activist?"
[00:09:52] "Legalizing pot is a higher priority than legalizing people"
[00:10:33] "Imprisoned by the language we use on immigrants"
[00:14:09] "We can call immigrants essential labor, but we don't think of them as essential people"
[00:16:16] "Storytelling is trafficking in empathy"
[00:18:09] "The only time many white Americans meet a person of color or an immigrant is through the media they consume"
[00:24:51] "We work on shows that reach the movable middle"
[00:28:23] "We have yet to find some sort of language that talks about how borderless business and money is and how people are still very much, you know, locked up by these borders"
[00:32:55] "If I had a say in the matter as a 12 year old, I would have told my mom, don't do that"
[00:35:39] "That's the power of story"
[00:37:51] "Narrative is not a slice of the pie. It's actually the pan."
[00:39:39] "Storytelling is the only place where nuance can happen"
[00:42:38] "White is not a country"
[00:49:05] "I traded a life of being in the closet as undocumented in limbo to being a public undocumented person whose life is still in limbo"
[00:52:46] Outro
Jose Antonio Vargas's works
🇺🇸 Define American, a culture change organization that uses the power of narrative to humanize conversations about immigrants.
📚 Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen (2018, Harper Collins). Upcoming: White is Not a Country (2023, Pantheon Books)
🎬 Documented: A film by an undocumented American (2014, CNN)
🎭 What the Constitution Means to Me, a play by Heidi Schreck (producer)
Works referenced
📚 Beloved, Toni Morrison
📺 Superstore (NBC)
📺 Roswell, New Mexico (CW)
🎬 The Lost Daughter (Netflix)
🎬 Drive my Car
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Mar 28, 2022
Could the hostile environment turn on you? (with Sonita Gale)
It starts with unauthorised migrants and doesn't end there. Filmmaker Sonita Gale follows professionals, students and British citizens whose lives were upended by the UK's immigration system.
Sonita Gale is the director and executive producer of Hostile, a documentary film about the UK hostile environment, now in cinemas.
Show notes
[00:00:09] Intro
[00:03:54] "The home of my parents is the home of the migrant story."
[00:07:29] "A film about the migrant struggle"
[00:13:08] "Different experiences, all interlinked by the hostile environment"
[00:16:27] "People will start having more empathy, love and understanding"
[00:21:04] "Where have you been the last 20 years?"
[00:28:30] “I started to question whether that hostile environment is going to turn on me”
[00:32:10] Where to see the film
[00:33:21] Outro
🌍 www.hostiledocumentary.com
🐦 Follow @hostiledoc on Twitter
📷 Follow @hostiledoc on Instagram
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Mar 1, 2022
The UK's very low bar on Ukrainian refugees, with Colin Yeo
An emergency podcast with immigration lawyer and founder of freemovement.org Colin Yeo on the British government's bare minimum help to Ukrainian refugees, the gap between pronouncements and practice, and how Europe's own programme is putting Britain to shame.
Plus:
- the Nationality and Borders bill under scrutiny,
- non-white refugees discriminated at the border,
- lessons from last summer's Afghanistan promises, and
- can we trust the EU long-term on this?
Show notes
[00:00:10] Intro
[00:00:42] "Half a million people have fled"
[00:03:10] "The UK has done almost nothing"
[00:11:01] "The government's been very consistent in being anti-refugee"
[00:12:59] "The asylum system is in a really sorry state"
[00:15:08] The Nationality and Borders bill
[00:18:21] Europe's response is a sharp contrast
[00:20:52] International students and other non-white refugees stopped at borders
[00:24:53] How you can help
[00:26:47] Outro
Colin Yeo is an immigration lawyer, the founder of freemovement.org and author of Welcome to Britain. Follow him on Twitter at @ColinYeo1.
Evacuees from Ukraine seeking free immigration advice or lawyers who want to help can find information and contacts at https://advice-ukraine.co.uk.
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Feb 23, 2022
Multiculturalism is a superpower, with Michael Rain
Show notes
[00:00:20] Intro
[00:03:22] "A large number of first-generation people"
[00:04:54] "Fufu is a far superior lunch"
[00:09:09] "It's three identities I'm juggling"
[00:11:43] “The tension between the collectivist culture of most of the world and this very individualistic American culture”
[00:13:54] "People raised in that context approach the world with a different eye"
[00:16:23] "If I was not (multicultural) and I was saying the same things, it would be received much differently"
[00:18:27] "You can't be an expert of your own experience"
[00:22:05] "The people in charge are worried about everyone else's biases when the core problem is their own"
[00:26:04] "The Great Resignation? I was way ahead of that curve"
[00:31:08] "This value of humility that I was raised with is outdated"
[00:39:42] Outro
Follow Michael Rain on Instagram and on Twitter
Watch Michael's TED talk
Photo by Pamela Chen
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Feb 16, 2022
[Essay] The burnout crisis is a workload crisis
Sure, burnout is not *just* about overwork. But it *is* about overwork.
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Jan 16, 2022
[Essay] We don't need a global news brand. We need a globally literate media.
Read the essay and find all links at www.isabelleroughol.com.
When New York Times media columnist Ben Smith and Bloomberg CEO Justin Smith quit to start “a new kind of global news media company,” many of us sniggered at the thought that two middle-aged white American men with literally the same last name could be the ones to bring together all of the world’s news consumers. The Smiths may not be the ones to do it. But can anyone create a truly global news source? And most vitally, would there be an audience for it?
I’ve spent my whole career expanding news brands across borders and trying to address audiences as more than just inhabitants of a single nation-state. And I’ve come to this conclusion: We don’t need a global media, we need a globally literate one.
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Dec 23, 2021
[Replay] How the UK turned hostile to immigrants, with Colin Yeo
In 2012, then Home Secretary Theresa May announced the plan: "The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants." The idea, borrowed from counterterrorism, was to make life so difficult for unwanted visitors that they would give up and go home. Instead, the hostile environment became a policy of systemic discrimination against all immigrants, authorised or not, their British families and any person that could be mistaken for an immigrant. And rather than leaving, many were pushed into illegality by changing rules, long waits and exorbitant fees. Colin Yeo, immigration lawyer, author of Welcome to Britain and founder of freemovement.org, explains how the policy came about and what it's meant for Britons, wannabe Britons and the country's own future.
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Dec 14, 2021
[Replay] The end of the American century, with Wade Davis
A conversation with anthropologist and National Geographic explorer Wade Davis about the unraveling of America. The full-length and unedited interview from September 2020.
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Dec 8, 2021
Donald Trump's lingering immigration legacy, with Susan J. Cohen
Susan J Cohen is an American immigration lawyer who has seen the last few decades of US immigration policy. She talks about the situation Joe Biden has inherited, after Donald Trump changed more than 400 immigration laws, rules and processes; why a record number of arrests has been made at the US Southern border; what is happening in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala or Haiti that is making people move north; and what the impact of the Trump presidency has been on immigrants, lawyers and activists.
Cohen is the founding partner of the immigration law practice at Boston firm Mintz, an author and a songwriter. In 2017 she was part of a small band of legal minds who fought the so-called "Muslim ban" in court and won a short-lived victory.
📚 Journeys from There to Here: Stories of Immigrant Trials, Triumphs and Contributions. Susan J Cohen, with Steven Taylor. River Grove Books, 2021. Buy it here. (This affiliate link supports Borderline.)
🎶 Beyond the Borders and Looking for the Angels, written by Susan Cohen and performed by students and alumni of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachussetts.
Show notes
[00:00:16] Intro
[00:01:32] The immigration situation Joe Biden inherited
[00:05:21] Title 42 and Remain in Mexico: How the US keeps lawful asylum-seekers at bay
[00:08:49] What it's like to wait at the US Southern border
[00:12:43] A historical record for arrests at the Southern border
[00:15:13] What's happening in Central America and Haiti to push people north
[00:18:42] The massive problems we'd need to solve to stem migration flows
[00:22:27] Patterns of discrimination and aggression at the border
[00:26:58] How the American public feels about immigration
[00:29:46] Changing the perception of immigrants
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Dec 1, 2021
Busting myths about refugees and Channel crossings, with Daniel Sohege
Crossing the Channel without preauthorisation is legal, the vast majority of people crossing are rightful asylum seekers and there is no such thing as the "first safe country" rule. Also, there is no queue to wait in or to jump, most people aren't trafficked or smuggled, and only a trickle of the world's refugees arrive in rich countries. Refugee rights consultant Daniel Sohege breaks down the false arguments about asylum seekers making the rounds in media and on Twitter.
Show notes
[00:00:22] Intro
[00:03:05] Is this a migrant crisis?
[00:06:01] Channel crossings are for many the only option. Still, very few take it.
[00:07:25] There just isn't a queue to jump to apply for asylum
[00:09:43] "First safe country" is a myth
[00:11:55] Arriving by boat without pre-authorisation is not illegal
[00:12:46] Most border crossings are not arranged by smugglers
[00:16:14] Hard border controls can feed smuggling and trafficking businesses
[00:19:47] Airlines and other carriers can be fined for u…
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Nov 24, 2021
Why we go back to where we come from, with Kamal al-Solaylee
Immigration isn't a one-way ticket. For many, the homeland calls back. From the Basque region to Israel, Jamaica to Taiwan, Kamal al-Solaylee talks to those who've chosen to make their way home as he plans his own return. Will reality match the fantasy? Why is the call of home so powerful? And what if you're still a foreigner there?
Show notes
[00:00:30] Intro
[00:01:29] Migration isn't just a one-way ticket
[00:05:27] Ghana's Year of Return
[00:07:25] Return is big business, politics and emotion all mixed up
[00:09:08] Can reality match the fantasy?
[00:13:44] Return is not a failure of the immigration journey
[00:16:54] The irrational call of the homeland
[00:18:48] The pain of feeling like a foreigner at home
[00:23:00] The exploitation of nostalgia
[00:25:07] Return can feed or soften the edges of nationalism
[00:29:14] Whose return is actually wanted?
[00:31:12] Deportees, the unwanted returnees
[00:35:02] Kamal's own return plans
📚 Return: Why we go back to where we come fro…
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Nov 11, 2021
Why mass migration is inevitable, with Parag Khanna
Climate change and economic inequality are pushing people of the Global South to move north. Countries in the North are depopulating, losing their workforce and their tax base. It shouldn't be that hard to put two and two together and create migration policies that benefit all of humanity. So why won't we?
📚 "Move: The Forces Uprooting Us." Parag Khanna. 2021. Scribner. Buy it here.
Show notes
00:00 Intro
02:41 We are a migratory species
04:57 Domestic migrants are migrants too
07:55 Lockdown was actually a massive migration
09:35 Reverse migration is also migration
11:08 Britain's immigration policy has killed people
17:21 A tragic lack of imagination
19:22 Three doom scenarios, one hopeful scenario
22:35 Not moving is not really an option for billions
26:13 There will never be a global migration policy
28:59 Could allegiance to the city replace the nation state?
31:17 London vs. Britain
34:04 Doing away with the outdated passport
37:38 We'll do everything wrong before we do it r…
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Oct 28, 2021
A conversation on (not quite) everything, with Jonn Elledge
How World War II is a British psychosis. Why we don't talk about empire. French universalism vs. British multiculturalism. How the nation state was made up. And a geopolitical utopia out of Star Trek. A freewheeling conversation with author and journalist Jonn Elledge.
📚 The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything, by Jonn Elledge. Headline, 2021. Buy it here and support Borderline.
📬 Sign up for the Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything.
🎙 Listen to the Podcast of (Not Quite) Everything.
Show notes
00:00 Intro
02:52 How one of the world's largest countries dumps its migrants on one of the world's smallest
05:25 Insular news and why you may never have heard of Nauru
07:12 A worldwide obsession with US news
08:34 It's appalling how little we knew or know about the EU
10:17 How Brexit gave rise to a pro-EU movement
13:00 We're finding geopolitical solutions in Star Trek
15:12 The nation-state is such a recent mythology
19:46 Countries that think too highly of themselves
26:02 How…
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Oct 21, 2021
Living stateless, with Christiana Bukalo
Who are you when no nation claims you? Millions of stateless people navigate daily life and personal identity unrecognised by any country. They are the literal citizens of nowhere.
Show notes
[00:00:00] Intro
[00:01:42] What is statelessness?
[00:04:51] Born in Germany but not German
[00:09:48] Turned around at the airport
[00:13:31] Creating a source of truth for stateless people
[00:15:24] How one falls through the nationality cracks...
[00:22:07] Ad
[00:23:00] ... and other ways of becoming stateless
[00:26:06] Belonging and self-worth without a national identity
[00:32:04] Is citizenship owed or earned?
[00:35:34] How "passported" people can help
[00:41:14] Outro
🌍 statefree.world
Related episodes
36 Dina Nayeri on the immigrant's gratitude
23 Selda Shamloo on passport privilege
41 Qian Julie Wang on growing up undocumented
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Oct 14, 2021
Why you should leave the door open to strangers, with Will Buckingham
Will Buckingham gave me my new favourite word. He's a philosopher so it's only right the word should be Greek. Philoxenia is the word. Love of the foreign. It's that sense of curiosity, desire to connect and good will that make us seek out those we don't know and invite them to share our hearth. It's the cat that runs up to a house guest to smell his hand and rub against new legs. But we fear the stranger too as much as we wish for him. The cat hisses, scratches and hides under the sofa. You know that word – xenophobia.
Will Buckingham explores what the stranger means to us and why philoxenia is worth cultivating. In this episode:
🤝 home is a social network
💪 stranger danger is male danger
🏡 safety at home, danger abroad is a false story
👀 how busy-buddy neighbours keep us safe
👥 sorry introverts: you'll never be rid of strangers
Also backpacking in Pakistan, slow Ubers in Bangalore, Manggarai villages in Indonesia, a vicarage in Norfolk, a foggy morning in Prague, a…
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Oct 7, 2021
Growing up undocumented in America, with Qian Julie Wang
When she was 7, Qian Julie Wang – just Qian Wang then – landed at JFK airport in New York City. Her airsick mother leaned on her for support. Her father, whom she hadn't seen in two years, had skimped on food to afford the cab driving them from the airport. Thus started her life as an undocumented child in America.
Show notes
00:00 Intro
02:32 "A privilege, power and responsibility to share my secret"
06:13 "What it means to be a writer"
07:56 "At bottom we're all not really that different"
09:49 "The before and after of my childhood and my life"
13:10 "We had to be everything for each other"
15:22 "It was my job to keep us from being noticed"
17:44 "Salvation and refuge in books"
18:39 "Split between the two worlds"
20:48 Membership ad
22:19 "Public school in Chinatown"
27:49 "I went to school hungry every day"
31:18 "Everything I thought was wrong with me was simply a part of being human"
34:10 "There's nothing we are afraid of now"
39:01 Outro
📚 Beautiful country, by Qian J…
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Sep 30, 2021
Tfw you lead a team you've never seen, with Ariane Bernard
Ariane Bernard founded Helio in 2020. Her startup has never known a world where you could network in person, meet clients and investors easily or work from a common space with your employees. How do you lead a team you've never seen? And in a multinational startup, how do you work past cultural barriers and incomprehensions when you can't look your coworkers in the eye? She had to find out the hard way.
Highlights
- "A lot of good team culture is safety, ultimately. You want a culture whose first achievement is the ability to say the words "I don't understand. I don't agree. I propose that we do X. Has anyone thought about Y?" If all team members, whether they are the most junior all the way to your executive team, equally feel like they have access to these words without risking something, then you have the making of solving for many other problems."
- "Everything that helps you understand whether people are connecting with a particular goal, everything that helps you understand whet…
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Sep 23, 2021
The US reopens to foreign visitors* (*terms and conditions apply), with Anna Lekas Miller
Travelers from 33 countries – nearly half the planet – were long barred from entry into the United States for pandemic reasons. They’ll be allowed in again from early November as long as they can prove they are fully vaccinated and provide a negative Covid-19 test. People who do not have access to the vaccine, however, can add one more item to the list of reasons why they may never set foot in the world’s richest country. Journalist Anna Lekas Miller discusses how the United States’ pandemic travel restrictions fit into the larger historical and political picture of American borders, from white supremacy to Biden's policies.
Show notes
00:00 Intro
01:47 How US travel restrictions are changing
05:53 Vaccination status will increasingly condition travel
11:22 Has the pandemic opened privileged immigrants' eyes?
16:47 White supremacy was enshrined in immigration law
21:01 Immigration enforcement targets racialized people
23:13 Membership ad
25:08 Has the Biden administra…
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Sep 16, 2021
How China built the perfect police state, with Geoffrey Cain
It’s got the Big Brother and Newspeak of 1984, the predictive policing of Minority Report, the monitoring and neighbourly delation of the Stasi and the cultural erasure of the Khmer Rouge. And concentration camps. In Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party may well have created the perfect police state. Journalist Geoffrey Cain investigates the Uyghur genocide and reveals what happens in the real world when you combine totalitarian ideology with artificial intelligence.
Show notes
00:17 Intro
02:26 A day in the life of a Uyghur woman
07:28 Every totalitarian dystopia wrapped into one
10:16 A 21st-century genocide
12:32 The technology doesn't even need to be that good
15:48 Why China went after the Uyghurs
18:06 Membership ad
19:47 How the return of the Taliban might impact the Uyghurs
21:45 Dystopia in the dark
24:34 How China exports its surveillance
27:51 How Western corporations and economies got trapped
30:44 The New Cold War
32:46 The death of techno utopianism
35:23…
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Sep 9, 2021
Manifesto for a new nomadism, with Felix Marquardt
Movement is core to the human experience and to the emancipation of ambitious young people all over the world. Leaving home – really leaving – is the final step of one's education, says Felix Marquardt, author of The New Nomads. But globetrotters must leave another place – La La Land, the magical world where their privilege isolates them from the world as it really is for most of humanity. And just as important as the moment we leave, is the moment we come home.
For the first episode of the new season, a wide-ranging conversation about belonging, climate, addiction, the lessons of indigenous cultures and why we've been thinking about nomadism all wrong, with author and recovering "global schmoozer" Felix Marquardt.
00:15 Intro
02:07 Meet Felix Marquardt
03:37 Who are the New Nomads?
06:12 The two most important moments in one's life
08:37 The limits of digital nomadism
12:22 We've been thinking about nomadism all wrong
16:39 What indigenous cultures can teach us
18:41 (A…
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Jul 9, 2021
[Extra] LinkedIn Live: How to make remote, hybrid and distributed work actually work, with Lauren Razavi
Tips from a digital nomad and a global team manager on how to work from anywhere successfully. (Audio from a LinkedIn livestream on 7 July 2021)
See it on LinkedIn.
See it on Youtube.
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Jul 6, 2021
What immigrants never tell you, with Dina Nayeri
Refugees are modern Scheherazades. They trade their story for another chance at life. The sultan is an indifferent asylum officer behind her desk, a well-meaning charity worker or a hostile native citizen. But so much truth goes untold.
The exhausting expectations of gratitude, the long wait that douses your inner fire, the battle for dignity and the big impact of small acts… Iranian American novelist Dina Nayeri lifts the veil in The Ungrateful Refugee, her first memoir, weaving her personal story with reporting in Greek refugee camps.
02:18 Why she made the move from fiction to nonfiction
05:07 How the refugee experience has changed from the 80s
07:30 A culture of disbelief in immigration offices
09:54 When refugees become storytellers to security guards
14:18 How culture changes storytelling
17:21 What you lose when you wait
21:51 How womanhood and refuge interplay
24:19 Why do we make a difference between political refugees and economic migrants?
26:46 Stop asking what…
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Jun 22, 2021
The unkept promises of the Windrush scandal, with Amelia Gentleman
Through dogged reporting in The Guardian, Amelia Gentleman showed that British residents and citizens who had arrived from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 60s had been mistakenly classified as unauthorized immigrants. That came to be known as the Windrush Scandal.
Three years on, I caught up with Amelia Gentleman ahead of Windrush Day to talk about its aging victims, the compensation scheme and the Home Office’s promises of reform. And in the waning days of the EU settlement scheme, we ask: Just as the Windrush generation was caught out by the end of free movement in the empire, could the Brexit generation be Britain’s next immigration scandal?
00:23 Intro
02:42 Amelia Gentleman's career story
04:20 The Windrush scandal: a primer
08:14 Malice, incompetence or both?
10:49 People screaming into the void
14:42 When austerity and the hostile environment meet
17:31 Individual cases were solved, but systemic issues ignored
19:51 How these stories became "The Windrush Scandal"
25…
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Jun 8, 2021
Wtf is going on inside the Home Office? with Daniel Trilling
How can one institution be so universally criticised, not just by the immigrants and citizens who at one point or another must use its services, but by all those who encounter it, whether lawyers, judges, activists, journalists, or even those who work there. Daniel Trilling, a journalist who has been covering immigration for a decade, spent six months investigating for The Guardian the organisational culture and history of the Home Office to answer this simple question: wtf is going on there? He talked to me about what he found.
Sources & further reading
📰 Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office, Daniel Trilling for The Guardian, 13 May 2021
Also on Borderline:
👀 The post-Brexit immigration scheme ends in a month. Its flaws could show up in a decade. 3 June 2021
👀 Yes, Europeans are being turned away at UK borders. Not all Europeans though. 28 May 2021
🎧 How being nasty to immigrants became law, with Colin Yeo. 13 July 2020
🎧 "We have a deeply unfeminist immi…
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May 25, 2021
Raising global teens, with Dr Anisha Abraham
Kids who grow up between cultures develop invaluable skills. But having to figure out one’s cultural identity, on top of the usual teenage challenges, can make adolescence even harder. Mental health, belonging, conflict, rites of passage… A pediatrician who specializes in multicultural teenagers helps parents navigate a challenging decade.
00:32 Intro
02:26 What is a teenager?
07:00 Inside the teenage brain
09:38 Global living makes adolescence trickier
11:24 The importance of telling your story
14:08 The mental health challenges of global teens
20:47 Conflict resolution, prolonged adolescence and grief in global teens
26:31 Screamers, mirrors and wallflowers
28:44 The adults global teens become
32:35 Outro
🎬 One Small Visit. A short film in pre-production, directed by Jo Chim, on the Abrahams’ true story.
📚 Raising Global Teens: A Practical Handbook for Parenting in the 21st Century. By Dr Anisha Abraham. 2020. Buy in US. Buy in UK.
📚 Third Culture Kids: Gr…
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May 18, 2021
[Replay] The century-long project to build a global nation, with Hassan Damluji
If globalists want to build a more united world, they need to look at how nation-states did it – at a smaller scale – in the last couple centuries, says Hassan Damluji, author of The Responsible Globalist. It’s a 100-year project, but one we can start now with concrete steps, he adds.
Note: this episode is a rerun of a June 2020 interview, in a new edit.
00:00 Introduction
01:42 How the nation brought people together
04:48 Nationalism vs. patriotism vs. globalism
08:45 How to create a global sense of belonging
15:32 Why we might want to stop talking about immigration
18:40 The rise of a global culture
24:11 Let's start with fixing the global tax system…
28:34... and then the United Nations
33:57 Outro
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May 11, 2021
How tech entrepreneurship exploded beyond Silicon Valley, with Christopher Schroeder
Venture capitalist Chris Schroeder travels the world to invest in emerging markets. To the entrepreneurs he meets, Silicon Valley is just one of many models, China is everywhere and South-to-South exchanges are constant. To succeed in this distributed world takes humility, agility and a certain comfort with the uncomfortable.
Show notes
00:00 Intro
01:33 Can you travel over Zoom?
03:11 What's been on global entrepreneurs' minds?
05:51 How technology unleashed talent
08:01 Silicon Valley isn't exactly irrelevant, just less central
10:23 Why it made sense for so long for Silicon Valley to be ethnocentric
15:24 You have to find wonder in being wrong
18:41 America is back. But back to what?
26:48 A return to sovereign industries, or the balkanization of the economy?
32:09 Capitalism, democracy and the mind models we can't let go of
39:32 The skills required to succeed in this world
45:03 Outro
Subscribe to Chris’s newsletter on Substack.
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👀 “Ame…
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May 4, 2021
Should we abolish borders? with Leah Cowan
The border isn’t a line on the periphery of the country, says Leah Cowan, author of Border Nation. It is a fog that covers all of society and can descend upon you at any time if you’re an immigrant or racialized as “other.” It wasn’t always thus and it can be ended, she insists.
00:43 Intro
02:06 What are borders for?
04:12 Borders, capitalism and racism
08:41 Did borders ever truly disappear?
10:15 The border isn't on the periphery, it's everywhere
13:07 Immigration enforcement is invisible to the rest of society
19:25 How the border breeds crime and violence
23:38 Do borders do any good?
24:43 Immigrants don't owe you a thing
29:11 The case for abolishing borders
34:20 "The pandemic is a portal"
36:14 Outro
👀 The pandemic is a portal, by Arundhati Roy. The Financial Times. 2020. (free to read)
📚 Border Nation: A Story of Migration, by Leah Cowan. Pluto Press. 2021.
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Apr 26, 2021
Vaccine nationalism is winning, with Tania Cernuschi
More than half of Covid-19 vaccines administered so far have been in high-income countries, which account for just 15% of the world population. Four out of five doses are purchased outside COVAX, the UN-backed procurement scheme that had attempted to set up fair and equal access for all countries. The most successful vaccination campaigns, in the US, UK and Israel, were unabashed us-first operations. Has vaccine nationalism definitely won? I caught up with Tania Cernuschi, team lead for global access in the World Health Organization’s vaccine department, to understand how things got so unequal and whether there’s hope to change that.
Show notes
00:27 Intro
02:36 The state of the worldwide vaccination campaign
05:57 Why can poorer countries not access the vaccine?
09:22 Should rich countries be vaccinating their young people right now?
16:04 Should vaccines be made a public good?
19:55 When will enough of the world have been vaccinated?
23:27 A note on the AstraZeneca vaccine
24:1…
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Apr 20, 2021
The psychology of borderless thinking, with Steve Taylor
Nationalist or globalist? It may come down to psychological health.
Strong attachment to group identity is born out of insecurity, explains psychologist Dr Steve Taylor. Psychologically healthy people feel connected to all humans and are able to think beyond borders. Could we lessen nationalistic stife by promoting psychological health?
Show notes
00:29 Intro
03:17 Are humans naturally tribal?
05:04 When humans developed individualism
08:55 "Psychologically healthy people are not nationalistic"
10:42 The theory of terror management
12:07 Post-traumatic transformation and identity
15:18 Could we attenuate nationalistic conflict by encouraging psychological safety?
17:49 Transnationalism should include more than the human species
19:56 Did the pandemic divide or bind communities?
22:36 Machiavels and narcissists in power
24:53 What psychologically healthy leadership looks like
28:35 Building institutions that encourage good leadership
30:52 Outro
What if the world was one…
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Apr 13, 2021
For transnational families, lockdown has no end
The UK is reopening, but not transnational families. Visiting friends or relatives abroad is the second most frequent reason for foreign travel. It's about one in four trips out of the UK, twice the volume of business travel. Travel restrictions have reduced these trips to a trickle. For millions who love across borders, spending time together has been impossible for most of the past year. Even illegal.
Yet, media coverage of travel restrictions has had a near pathological focus on foreign holidays. This week, we hear the voices of those who wait, still, to reunite.
With Arietta Deick, Mary Wooldridge Eligu, Jane Copland and Marion Specker 🇬🇧 🇭🇷 🇨🇭 🇺🇸 🇺🇬 🇳🇿
#LoveIsNotTourism
Show notes
00:00 Intro
04:03 Arietta Deick
06:04 Marion Specker
07:08 Mary Wooldridge Eligu
15:22 Jane Copland
20:03 Outro
👀 International travel restrictions stop more than just holidays. My op-ed in The Independent.
🇳🇿 Our Side of the Clouds. Jane Copland for Ent…
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Apr 6, 2021
One family’s 30-year quest for home, with Ty McCormick
Asad and Marian’s family fled conflict in Somalia and found refuge in eastern Kenya, one of the world’s largest refugee camps. That was in 1991. Three decades later, the family still hasn’t been allowed to build a permanent home together anywhere. Their story, like a novel you couldn’t make up, is that of the broken refugee resettlement system and of responsibilities no one wants to take. American journalist Ty McCormick tells it.
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Mar 30, 2021
The Year 1000: When globalisation began, with Dr Valerie Hansen
Globalisation isn’t just the stuff of airplanes and container ships. It’s not colonisation and circumnavigation alone. It started much sooner. Dr Valerie Hansen, professor of Chinese history at Yale University, points to the year 1000 as one early watershed era when the world expanded and became smaller at once. Trade routes criss-crossed the Americas, Islamic scholars mapped the globe and major religions spread across Asia. In large cities, exotic merchants set up shop, black and white people lived together… and sometimes mobs descended on reviled foreigners.
01:38 A convergence of global events in 1000
06:26 250 million people and an agricultural boom
09:20 Trade and religion made the world smaller
14:02 Slavery introduced the masses to a wider world
15:48 Southeast Asia, world factory
17:13 How to become a Borderline member
18:07 The globe and the average Joe
20:17 Xenophobia back then
25:02 A series of constantly expanding rings
29:50 How that globalisation differed…
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Mar 23, 2021
"We have a deeply unfeminist immigration system," with Zoe Gardner
In this conversation, Zoe Gardner, policy advisor at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, covers:
* How immigration exposes women to a higher risk of violence and abuse
* Why policing and immigration enforcement must be decoupled
* WTF “no recourse to public funds” and the “hostile environment” are
* How legal migrants are pushed into undocumented status
* Getting your COVID vaccine even if you’re undocumented
* The exodus of European migrants from the UK & the post-Brexit settlement scheme
* How US immigration activists inspire the British movement
* What a safe and constructive immigration system would look like
Show notes
00:00 Intro
02:18 "All women understand how all women have felt over the last week"
03:28 "We have a deeply unfeminist immigration system"
06:21 "It's by dividing ourselves that we are doing the work of the oppressor for them"
08:09 "MPs must put their vote where their mouth is"
10:32 "We feed the business model of the worst…
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Mar 16, 2021
Iran: When your passport locks you in, with Selda Shamloo
Selda Shamloo is taking the Home Office to court. Her mother, who’s Iranian, has been repeatedly denied a simple tourist visa to visit her. This is life on an ostracized passport.
For many of us, our passport is a symbol of our wanderlust, a badge of our freedom. It’s been gathering dust for the past year and we can’t wait to get it out. But if you’re Iranian or from any other country at the bottom of the passport power rankings, pandemic or not, it won’t get you anywhere. The Passport Index ranks Iran 193rd, ahead of just Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Only four countries let Iranians in without visas at the moment, and those who require them, often simply don’t grant them. For ordinary families caught in the politics, it can mean years of anguish and administrative complications simply to spend a few days together. Shirin Shamloo hasn’t been allowed to set foot in the UK, where her daughter is a citizen, since 2007. And she can’t see why.
00:…
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Mar 9, 2021
Liberalism is in a fight for its life, with Ian Dunt
Liberalism – a belief in the primacy of individual liberty – has built modern democracies. Now it’s in an existential crisis, caught between rising authoritarianism and identity politics. I look back and ahead for liberals with British political journalist Ian Dunt.
00:14 Intro
01:24 Another TCK childhood
04:19 Why write a book that goes back 400 years?
08:48 What is a liberal?
14:16 How liberalism failed to stand for the liberty of most individuals
19:28 Identity politics are both a threat and a gift
23:00 How to become a Borderline member
23:41 “The people” does not exist
27:44 Can liberalism make room for tribalism?
30:18 The immigrant’s whisper of loneliness
32:37 How liberalism survives the pandemic
36:11 Outro
📚 How to Be a Liberal, Ian Dunt, Canbury Press, 2020. On sale here.
Ian’s podcasts are Oh God, What Now? and The Bunker. His writing is on politics.co.uk and on Twitter.
Music by Ofshane.
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Mar 2, 2021
Expatriating while Black, with Amanda Bates
People of all kinds – yes, people of color too – go abroad to live, love and learn. They study a language, they follow a partner, they go just for the heck of it or for a midlife crisis. Sometimes, they flee war or poverty, but not usually.
Tired of not seeing her story represented, Amanda Bates created The Black Expat – a media centering the stories of Black global citizens. In this episode, she discusses her TCK childhood between Cameroon and the US, the challenges of life in-between and who gets to be called an expat vs. an immigrant.
00:00 Intro
01:55 A TCK childhood
06:14 An American teenager in Cameroon
09:08 A Cameroonian student in the US
12:56 Why TCKs and first-gen college students relate
16:43 Minority students and the study abroad experience
18:34 How to become a Borderline member
19:40 Centering the Black expat experience
22:27 Blackness is not monolithic
29:07 Expat vs. immigrant and the power of words
38:17 Outro
The Black Expat is at theblackexpat.com…
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Feb 23, 2021
Why every child should spend a year abroad, with Katherine Alexander-Dobrovolskaia
Exchange students aren’t just the butt of jokes in American teen comedies. They’re young people going through one of the most transformative experiences life has to offer. Expanding it to more children – dare we say, to all children? – could change not just them, but the world.
Katherine Alexander-Dobrovolskaia was dropped in Iowa from the newly broken-up Soviet Union in 1993. Borderline host Isabelle Roughol landed in New Jersey two weeks before 9/11. They reminisce and reflect on the impact of those formative years and share guidance for young people leaving home now – or returning, changed.
00:00 Intro
01:23 Pandemic and cancer
04:01 Vulnerability and what it means to be there for one another
07:13 From Moscow to Africa to Iowa
12:10 Being a young stranger in a foreign land
15:14 How technology ruined it
18:39 Dreaming of a borderless world
22:37 Imagining an universal youth exchange
24:32 How to become a Borderline member
25:36 Learning empathy through lots of…
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Feb 16, 2021
Being British and European after Brexit, with Peter Gumbel
When they narrowly escaped the Third Reich and found refuge in Britain, Peter Gumbel’s parents and grandparents cast off their German Jewish heritage to become a perfectly British family. Cricket, Marmite and Church of England. Two generations later, deeply unsettled by Brexit, Gumbel reaches out to Germany again in search of a new passport – and a reckoning with history.
In conversation with Isabelle Roughol, Gumbel explores the fragility of identity and who we still are when we can no longer recognize the nations we call home. It’s the story of one family and the story of Europe.
Show notes:
00:00 Intro
01:47 "Home is where I am"
03:14 From the Third Reich to Cool Britannia
06:35 How Brexit tore through his identity
07:56 Choosing a new passport
11:21 Coming to terms with a German Jewish heritage
15:10 How identity diverges within a single family
17:09 Reconnecting (or not) with a Jewish identity
22:57 How to become a Borderline member
24:06 His relationship with Bri…
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Dec 29, 2020
Reasons to hope (a 2020 review)
To close out Borderline's first calendar year, which will I hope not soon be matched in hardship and heartbreak, I looked back through the first 17 episodes to pick out moments of hope for what lays ahead. Because if there's ever a moment for an absolutely not rational belief that things might be okay, it's surely the new year.
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Dec 18, 2020
How to become an explorer, with Reza Pakravan
Reza Pakravan has everyone's dream job title – explorer. He just released on Amazon Prime, his latest travel series "The World's Most Dangerous Borders" for which he traveled uninterrupted the width of Africa, across areas any foreign ministry generally tells you to keep clear of and which rarely see a film crew. It's full of stories and chance encounters, of the magic and the messes that we make on the road. It's everything we've missed in 2020 and why I wanted to end the year on this episode.
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Dec 11, 2020
The world in 2021, with Ian Bremmer
A continued pandemic and fresh vaccines, a new US president with old problems, China triumphant and mistrusted, Brexit done at last, and global institutions on the fritz... Let's take a world tour of the geopolitics we can expect in 2021, with Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer.
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Nov 19, 2020
"Shame stops you from trying" with Marcela Kunova
"The hostility that you feel, one of the purposes is to make you feel ashamed and to hinder you, to make sure you don't act, or you don't aspire, or you don't fight back."
Marcela Kunova has been an immigrant in four countries in the last 20 years. She's had time to deconstruct xenophobia. In a deeply personal conversation, we discussed how shame can be internalized and weaponized against immigrants, how it limits us, but also how we can rise in spite of it. We chatted about mental health, vulnerability, belonging, language barriers and how the tide is turning against immigrants. Perhaps the most intimate episode yet.
Explore further:
* Brené Brown's TED talk on shame
* My episode on the journalism.co.uk podcast
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Nov 8, 2020
Americans abroad after Trump, with Sarah Browne, Geoffrey Cain & Lauren Tormey
What was it like being an American abroad during the Trump years? How do they feel about the election and the years ahead? Is it time to go back and give back? This week, I brought together three American expats to talk about politics, home, what was broken and what remains.
Sarah Browne is veteran innovation catalyst based in London. She is a proud member of IDEALondon, a partnership of UCL, EDF and Capital Enterprise. She is from Wisconsin and California.
Geoffrey Cain is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. He is the author of “Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech.” He is from Chicago.
Lauren Tormey is a content designer at the University of Edinburgh. She has written about her experience of the British “hostile environment” immigration system and wants you to help her change it. She is from New Jersey.
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Nov 1, 2020
🇺🇸 An election night invitation 🗳 (This is not an episode)
Join me on November 3rd (and 4th) to watch US election results come in together. Or not come in. Bring your own pizza.
Sign up here to receive the call link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-very-borderline-election-night-tickets-127128864857
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Oct 27, 2020
Are travel restrictions effective against Covid-19?
If we all can't travel or see loved ones across borders, please tell me at least it’s working.
In May, I found myself in tears when the British government decided to impose quarantines on anyone returning from France in order to combat covid-19. That was the last straw. How dare they close *my* border? Did it even serve a purpose? When in doubt, go to the library. I turned to science to find out if I had been right to cry or if indeed, the government was doing the right thing. What I found out is... it's complicated.
🍎 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
🎧 Subscribe on Spotify
📺 Subscribe on YouTube
Sources & further reading
* Delaying the Covid-19 epidemic in Australia: evaluating the effectiveness of international travels bans, Adeshina Adekunle, Michael Meehan, Diana Rojas‐Alvarez, James Trauer and Emma McBryde. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2020 Vol. 44 No. 4.
* Mobility restrictions for the control of epidemics: When do they work?, Baltazar…
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Oct 15, 2020
"I don't know what you are," with Ferdous al-Faruque
Why do we feel the need to put people into boxes, to assign categories in order to decipher them? And what happens to those who fit in many... and none at all? I discussed this and other things with Ferdous "Danny" al-Faruque, a third-culture kid all grown up. The second episode in the Borderlives series, exploring the lives and identities of global citizens, and what home even means.
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Oct 8, 2020
Will Brexit ever end? with Luke McGee
Remember Brexit? That's still in the agenda for 2020. The UK and EU have less than two months to agree a free trade deal and avoid a cliff edge. I caught up with Luke McGee, a journalist at CNN who's covered Brexit for years. We talked about where the negotiations stand, what's at stake, whether the British ever felt truly European and who can most afford to walk away.
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Oct 1, 2020
Why Lebanon is fed up with bearing up, with Lynn Chouman
Economic collapse, political chaos, wildfires, protests, pandemic and then a devastating explosion. Lebanese journalist and expat Lynn Chouman talks about how she and her countrymen are dealing with it all, why resilience is a double-edged sword, and how one relates to a country that keeps pushing you away, yet calling you home.
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Sep 25, 2020
"Living here is a decision other people made for me" with Janet Matta
Welcome to a new series of intimate conversations with global citizens, who talk about their identity, their choices and what home even means. This week, Janet Matta, an American working mom from Seattle, talks about leaving the United States and continuing a long American tradition – leaving your country to make a better life for the next generation.
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Sep 17, 2020
The end of the American century, with Wade Davis
What does the mishandling of the covid-19 crisis reveal of the United States?
Canadian anthropologist, author, and National Geographic explorer Wade Davis wrote a blockbuster essay this summer, "The unraveling of America," and hit a raw nerve.
He joins Borderline to discuss the grandeur and decadence of the United States, and what comes next if America is no longer a superpower.
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Sep 10, 2020
The plight of stranded Australians
Australians abroad are stranded: 23,000 have registered their desire to come home urgently, but they can't. Ostensibly to reduce the spread of covid-19 and the burden on the country's quarantine system, the federal government has instituted flight caps that reduce international arrivals to a trickle. Only 4,000 people may enter the country every week, less than two hours' worth of inbound international traffic in the "before world." Getting one of those golden tickets is an expensive and harrowing lottery for Australians left abroad by circumstances beyond their control.
Four stranded Australians speak about their fight to get home, the backlash from fellow Aussies and what it is doing to the fabric of the nation.
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Jul 19, 2020
How to take your job on the road, with Mandy Fransz
If we can work from home now, why not work from the road? A laptop and decent wifi is all many of us need. "To be able to work and live wherever you feel happiest and most productive," that's the digital nomad lifestyle as explained to me by Mandy Fransz. She started on that road herself a couple years ago and has become an advocate for remote work. On this week's episode, she explains how she made it work and how you can do it for yourself. With so many us stuck between four walls, the road calls now more than ever... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jul 13, 2020
How being hostile to immigrants became UK law, with Colin Yeo
How did a concept meant for counterterrorism become an immigration policy? Over the last decade, the UK set out to build a hostile environment that makes daily life a battle for many migrants and pushes even lawful ones into illegality. Colin Yeo lifts the curtain on the British immigration system in his book "Welcome to Britain." He's my guest this week. We talked about the UK, and a bit about the US, but it's really about all of us and how we behave to one another, badly often, which is quite universal.
Colin Yeo is an immigration lawyer in London and the founder of freemovement.org.uk. He just published “Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System.” --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jul 7, 2020
The Trump administration sends foreign students home, with Jamie Kanki
The Trump administration has reinstated the rule that forbids international students from staying in the US if they are taking online classes only. The rule had been relaxed in the spring because of the covid-19 pandemic. Now despite institutions such as Harvard planning to go entirely online in 2020-21, the US government is telling students they must be in the classroom or back in their country. I caught up again with Jamie Kanki to understand what that means for the more than 1 million international students in the US and their schools. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jun 30, 2020
What globalists should learn from nationalists, with Hassan Damluji
The great divide between nationalists and globalists is the political story of our times. But are they that far apart? "What would a united world look like other than people feeling, on a global level, something like what they do about their countrymen?" asks Hassan Damluji, deputy director at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and author of "The Responsible Globalist: What Citizens of the World Can Learn from Nationalism."
The nation was in fact one of humanity's most successful idea, he argues. To create a feeling of global citizenship, the same playbook applies. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jun 21, 2020
The big wooing of international students, with Jamie Kanki
Universities have been battling it out to woo international students. Can they survive without them? Schools in the US and UK, but also now China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea... have been racing to attract international students from Asia, Eastern Europe or Africa, and cash in on a $300 billion market. Then Covid-19 came on the scene. I discuss the new normal with Jamie Kanki, who spent years traveling the world recruiting students and now works for Grok and Concourse, two startups in digital student recruitment. "Universities are furiously looking at their financial model right now," she says. "The value of an experience and of a degree are really going to be put under a microscope over the next few years."
Sources:
Universities set to turn away hundreds of thousands of students, by Robert Bolton, Australian Financial Review
Beyond $300 Billion: The Global Impact of International Students --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jun 14, 2020
The super weird new way to travel, with Zach Honig
Zach Honig, editor at large at The Points Guy and ultimate frequent flyer, shares how he plans to stay safe on planes, how airlines have abused customers during the pandemic and why you might want to stay local. "Those of us who are used to enjoying the journey as much as the destination are going to have to keep an open mind." --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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Jun 10, 2020
Trailer
A podcast for those whose lives straddle borders, with host Isabelle Roughol. Coming soon on all your favorite podcasting apps. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/borderlinepod/message
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