On 23 January 2025, the Department of International Relations at LSE hosted “The Cost of Borders” event, featuring guest speaker Dr Heba Gowayed, Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY Hunter College, in conversation with Dr Tarsis Brito, IRD Fellow in the Department of International Relations at LSE, and Dr Stephanie Schwartz, Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE.
Borders are more than just lines on a map; they are dynamic and costly systems that have a profound impact on people’s lives. Drawing on her ethnographic research, Dr Gowayed reframed borders as transactional spaces that generate staggering economic, emotional, and physical costs. She shared the stories of migrants like Joy, who climbed the US-Mexico border wall, risking her life and exhausting her savings to seek asylum, only to face rejection and deportation. Dr Gowayed used examples from Greece, Gaza, and the United States to demonstrate the complicated violence of borders, from exorbitant state expenditures on militarisation to the personal sacrifices migrants endure.
Borders are more than just lines on a map; they are dynamic and costly systems that have a profound impact on people’s lives.
Dr Brito’s response stressed the racial and colonial origins of border regimes, urging a departure from state-centric frameworks to uncover the structural inequalities that borders perpetuate. He highlighted how borders disproportionately impact marginalised communities and how their enforcement serves as a mechanism for global inequality.
Audience questions added layers to the discussion, focusing on the unexpected costs like the toll of repeated financial payments to smugglers and the widespread sexual violence experienced by most women. Others questioned the practicality of open borders, while acknowledging the role of Global North countries in externalising border control to the Global South. The recurring theme was the clear persistence of harmful border systems despite their inability to achieve their stated goals, raising questions about who benefits from their maintenance.
The recurring theme was the clear persistence of harmful border systems despite their inability to achieve their stated goals, raising questions about who benefits from their maintenance.
It became clear that borders are more than just physical barriers but sources of profound inequality. Dr Gowayed’s framing of borders as costly transactions revealed how their maintenance prioritises control over compassion within a broader system of racial and colonial power dynamics. It showed the human suffering they inflict and the structural inequalities they reinforce. These perspectives challenged the audience to rethink the very purpose of borders and consider how alternative systems could better address human mobility.
The lecture left us questioning: if borders are as inefficient and harmful as described, why do we continue to sustain them? Are we ready to imagine a world beyond borders? Dr Gowayed’s project challenges us to do just that – not as a utopian dream but as a necessary response to the failures of the current system.
Event report by Natasha Chávez, MSc International Relations
This article represents the views of the author, and not the position of the Department of International Relations, nor of the London School of Economics.
