Borders in Times of Instability

In this special episode of The History-Politics Podcast, we share a recording of LCHP’s recent event, “Borders in Times of Instability: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with Luwei Ying and Hiroshi Motomura.” This conversation is a continuation of our previous episode where political scientist Luwei Ying drew upon her work as an LCHP grantee to discuss her co-authored paper "Historical Border Insecurity and the Rise of Populism." In this event, David Myers welcomes legal scholar Hiroshi Motomura to join Luwei and explore the complex role of borders in shaping politics, conflict, and belonging. Ying explains how historical border instability, especially in regions like Alsace and Eastern Europe, have had long-term effects on the populations of these regions, including decreased trust in the government and greater support for populism. She also examines modern border fortifications, showing that while walls may reduce nearby cross-border violence, their overall effectiveness is mixed, as militant groups often adapt their strategies. Motomura expands the discussion by reframing borders as more than physical lines, emphasizing their legal and social functions in defining inclusion and exclusion. 

Hiroshi Motomura is the Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law and the Faculty Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy. He is a scholar of citizenship and immigration, influencing across a range of academic disciplines as well as federal, states, and local policy making. He has written multiple award-winning books including Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford 2006) and Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy (Oxford 2025). He is also the co-host of the podcast series: Unsettled: Immigration in Turbulent Times. For his collaboration on an overview of U.S. immigration law, see The Try Guys Try Immigrating to America.

Luwei Ying is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. in political science at Washington University in St. Louis in 2022. She received the 2022 Peace Science Society Walter Isard Award for the best dissertation in Peace Science. Her work has been awarded the Best Paper in International Relations Award, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the 2019 MPSA Conference, and the Best Poster Award at the PolMeth XXXVII Summer Meeting. Her published work has appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Analysis and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Transcript

David Myers 0:00

Great. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm David Myers. I'm uh uh a professor of history here at UCLA and the director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy. I'm delighted to uh be here with two esteemed UCLA colleagues, Luwei Ying and Hiroshi Motomura. Um, the original idea was to have a presentation by Lu wei based on her Luskin Center research project uh called Historical Border Instability and Democratic Backlash. This is a fascinating research project that um I think is especially relevant after Sunday's election results in in Hungary. Um you can read uh the report in full on the Luskin Center website. Uh you can hear about it in uh a self-standing podcast uh tomorrow, um, or whenever you listen to this uh recording. Um and we'll have the benefit of the live account in a few minutes um based on uh the way's interest in um borders. But we decided to expand the conversation by including our law school colleague Hiroshi Motomura, who has written a trilogy of books on immigration law, the last of which is called Borders and Belonging Toward a Fair Immigration Policy. Um, in this book, uh to the extent that I um understand it, Hiroshi seeks neither to erase borders as an actual uh historical phenomenon, nor to regard them uh simply as sources of instability and turmoil, but rather to propose a new and very interesting model, the ethical border that balances our desire to belong and our aspiration to be humane. And so it seemed like a really precious opportunity to bring uh into conversation two visions of borders drawn from two disciplinary perspectives from two esteemed colleagues here at UCLA, uh, really in order to help us make sense of the current discourse function and future of borders. Uh, such a contentious term in uh present-day discourse. Our goal at the Luskin Center in General is to uh use the past in order to illuminate the present and potentially chart a better future. Uh, so I'm really excited to hear what we can learn about borders and where it might take us. Um, in our case, the descriptive and analytic are closely integrated with the normative as we seek to link past and future. So, to see where this all might lead with respect to that contentious term borders, um I'm delighted now just to introduce very briefly our two speakers, each of whom will offer relatively brief remarks in sequence and then we'll open up for conversation. So, first, Luwei Ying is an award-winning assistant professor of political science with a particular interest in civil conflict and political violence. Um, and she was a 2024-2025 Luskin Center grantee. Um, it's great to see you, Luwei. And Hiroshima Motomura is the Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Fact and the faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration, Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. He's the author, as I mentioned before, of a trilogy of books, beginning with Americans in Waiting, The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States from 2006, Immigration Outside the Law from 2014, and Borders and Belonging Toward a Fair Immigration Policy published. Um, all of those books were published by Oxford University Press, the last uh last year in 2025. So uh first, uh Luwei, we invite you to begin. Um then Hiroshi will follow you and then we'll have an open conversation. So the floor is yours.

Luwei Ying 3:36

Okay, thank you so much, David. Thank you for having me.

Rose Campbell 3:50

We have a Zoom attendee, so let's share the zoom.

Luwei Ying 3:55

I am trying to do that.

David Myers 3:59

I was talking about the 25 minutes of class uh yesterday.

Luwei Ying 4:07

Hopefully now we see it. Uh and if you are on audio, you didn't miss anything.

Speaker 2 4:13

Dylan, do you see the screen?

Dylan Caine 4:15

I do. I don't see myself, I see screen, so that works.

David Myers 4:18

You see the you see the the the PowerPoint.

Dylan Caine 4:21

Yes. Okay, thank you very much.

Luwei Ying 4:25

Great. So hi everyone, it's such a pleasure to be here. My name is Luwei Ying and assistant professor of political science. So I'm just going to open up this conversation by very briefly going over my research agenda related to borders, uh, and then we can talk about anything that interests you. So here's my research agenda. I'm just putting a lot of keywords here, as you can see: borders, population displacement, political violence, how fled, international relations, civil war, insurgency, uh, terrorism, national security. These keywords all relate to each other in different ways. And today I'm going to center everything on borders, but I'm sure other things will just naturally come into the conversation. I have two strands of research on borders. The first strand is about the long shadows of history. Here we look at how border instability over the past centuries still shapes trust, identities, and populism today. And the second strand of my research on borders looks at borders in conflict today. This is very relevant. Uh, here I look at how wars, uh how wars of border border fortification reshape terrorism, insurgency, and militant strategy on the ground. So just to be a little bit more specific, when I talk about the long-term shadow of unstable borders, I look at how uh areas with frequent border changes in the past uh have different characteristics than areas without that frequent border changes. So uh we uh I do a lot of empirical research with quantitative data, and one area that I often look at is Europe. As you can imagine, there historically they had been a lot of conflicts in Europe, and they this conflict conflict uh constantly shift borders. So in these strands of research, I uh look at each locality. You can imagine these localities as each counties, and I count the number of border changes in these counties historically, and see how these counties uh have different characteristics today. And across several papers, I show that the localities with historical and stable borders generally show lower political trust, they show weaker social trust, and they show stronger support for populist movements, possibly because people in these localities pass down their memory across generations. They would tell their children and grandchildren that they were the abandoned region historically, they were changed hands between different regimes, and they feel less secure, and therefore they uh they uh they hold different political opinions even today. The second strand of my research really asks the question do bottle wars work? Uh and this ties borders into the bigger conflict dynamics in the international system. So uh actually, in the past 40 decades or so, we're seeing more border wars, I mean physical border fortifications on the ground between countries around the world. Uh this applies uh this applies to both the developed countries and the developed countries. And one reason uh the policymakers constantly cite is to prevent potential terrorism that flow into the border. So uh here we'll we look at whether these bottle walls actually work, and the empirical evidence are actually uh mixed. On one hand, it tends to really decrease the cross-border terrorism in the nearby locations, but the long-term evidence is really, really mixed. And we do have anecdotes that uh most uh transnational terrorism actually enter the country, not through the physical borders, but through other means, uh, including the 911 attackers who uh fly to the US uh by air on valid visa, and some of them even on valid green cars. So the effectiveness of border walls are actually uh contested. And then I also asked how militants, uh those who conducted violence, are actually affected by these physical borders. And I show that these militants actually adapted their strategies according to these uh border-related policies. For example, in Afghanistan, uh NATO and the US helped the previous Afghanistan government build a lot of border walls and unified their borders to prevent uh Taliban fighters from entering from Pakistan. But what we observed is that is that even though the fighters decrease, uh that only shifted the Taliban's attention to the inlands, and they that motivates the Taliban and uh militant groups to cultivate a better relationship with the local communities to win hearts and minds through means like what we call the insurgent influence campaign and propaganda efforts. So uh in that sense, we uh it's hard to say uh the whether the bottom wall is effective or not. Uh it's really a more complicated policy that has uh different implications on different dimensions. I'm gonna pause here uh and uh I'm more than happy to revisit these ideas.

Speaker 10 10:53

Thank you. Um someone who's someone who's getting over the waiting room, so I just want to let them in, so hopefully they are okay. Um that's correct.

Rose Campbell 11:09

Yeah, that's all right.

Speaker 10 11:10

Okay, Clark is with the question. Yeah, okay.

David Myers 11:13

Um much to say um uh in the wake of your remarks uh the way, but maybe we'll jump right in there, Hiroshi and see these presentations connect.

Hiroshi Motomura 11:24

Great. Um thanks for having me. Thanks for being here today. Thanks for being online. Um watching online or later. Um yeah, so I really appreciate the invitation to talk about borders. It it also makes me realize how many different ways there are to think about borders. So I really appreciate that opportunity to get into the conversation about this. Um so oh, you know, as as David generously mentioned, um, I have this book out that is um that is really in some sense about borders. I mean, this is this is the book, um, if you want to look at it. Um and you know, it's it's uh and let me just spend a few minutes giving background for how the book engages with borders, and then I want to talk specifically about what it says about borders. Um this book is a comprehensive examination of immigration law and policy. It attempts to connect a lot of basic issues that are typically dealt with separately, uh, especially in academic discourse, um, where I find that immigration policy discussions are often separated by discipline boundaries, um, and frankly, professional uh advancement opportunities. Um, and that channeling often happens in public debate where people talk about the thing they know about or care about, and then you discover a conversation that someone's take on this is entirely different. So, this book is a risky project. Um, it connects topics that I studied for a very long time and other topics that I only came to when I decided I was going to do this project. Um, but I thought that all these topics are essential to address, even if they're not in my discipline. So um something that's gonna kind of cliche, but I keep going back to it, is it's not frankly, it's not a book I would write to get tenure, um because it has all these topics that um were kind of outside my discipline, and many that are. It's not the book I'd write to get tenure, but I I think it's the book I got tenure to write. Um uh you know, because what can you do to me now? You know. Um so it's chapters deal with 10 topics and really 10 core questions, and they um they arrange uh chapter two is what are better responses to forced migration? Um another chapter just explores how time horizons affect policy making. Another chapter is what does it mean to address the root causes of migration? Something everyone says, but no one digs a lot of people dig into it, but you know, but they're they're not digging into something else. And and and the last chapter deals among other things with what's the role of history in making policy? Um that's a background of this book on the whole, is context for the look of borders. But let me just say a little bit more about chapter one, which is really about borders. It's the chapter is the question is why national borders and why not? Which I guess is core to this discussion today. And it sets out some key ideas that the rest of the book talks about in other ways. And I'll say a few words about that now. Um, you know, one is the idea that borders are actually all around us. I mean, we often think about borders as national borders, but we have borders of of many types. They're not quite like national borders. Uh, there's some real differences, but I think it's worth thinking about what they do. Um, I'll give you a few examples. Admissions to colleges and universities, that's a border. A border around your family home is a border, uh, borders between states in the United States, other similar subnational units in many countries, and belonging to indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations. These are all different, but they kind of uh let you make you think about why they're different and what is it about borders, what do they do? Um, and it's a way to start exploring what's good and bad in borders, basically. Um, and several points emerge that I want to highlight. Um, you know, the first one may be obvious, but I think it's something to remember, and that is that national borders are not just physical frontiers. They are that, but they exist in many forms, um, other forms, such as legal rules relating to status, from being undocumented to being lawfully present non-citizen to being a citizen. You know, another point is that having open borders is quite different from having no borders. You could have an open uh border, but still have some sense of agency, culture, identity, belonging. Um, and it can be porous to a degree, um, and but still do what borders do. And and and by by what borders do, I mean that it can work for good and also lead to consequences that are troubling. Um and so um the the the troubling and unjust consequences, I think, to to think about that it requires a closer look at the work that borders do in the law. Um borders can produce zones of exception. Um they can justify and even normalize things that would be unacceptable inside a society. Inside a society, examples are discrimination by nationality, race, uh, religion. Um, another example is excessive intrusions on privacy through arrests, uh searches, and surveillance. And this is often done in the name of national security and as enforcing a border or as standing behind a border. And it shows that the border, it's a zone where the term national security can do an awful lot of work um to immunize against inquiry that would occur inside a country. Um and uh and what's interesting is that it can the border can do that work of normalizing unjust things, um, not by creating new general rules, for example, for arrests, searches, and surveillance, but instead to allow more arrests, searches, and surveillance by saying that the border is in more places when you where you than where you thought it was. Um border rules come under less scrutiny. Um, and instead of confining the border rules to the physical border, um, you can apply and let them govern in many places. Um and I think we've seen this in 2025 because so many executive orders um in 2025 um started with the premise of this country being invaded. The word invasion appears so many times in these executive orders, and it's built on a narrative I think that's gotten traction over the past several decades. Um, migration patterns lead to pressure on the asylum system. The reason is you can only get asylum if you reach the border. So that creates a border crisis, which leaves the narrative that the borders out of control, which leads to the narrative that we're facing an invasion. And because we're having invasion, we need to adopt extraordinary rules for this emergency. And this shows you how the border is doing a great deal of political and narrative work. Um, this is what's behind the United States Supreme Court letting ICE do racial profiling and accent profiling, um, language profiling in Los Angeles. Um it's also consistent with the militarization of immigration enforcement through the National Guard and using normalizing the use of mask agents with no discernible agency insignia or identifiers. Um and much of this is going on is built on the idea that we're being invaded. In that sense, the move there, I mean in narrative and in politics, is to is to apply border rules everywhere to respond to this emergency. So it's an example. I mean, the most recent example, and only one of many of national borders functioning to normalize practices that I find troubling and unjust. So a couple of thoughts, um, one more thought that follows from this is to try to answer, identify and answer a question that falls from the idea that borders can normalize troubling and unjust practices. The question is, what makes these practices troubling and unjust? What's wrong with the border being everywhere? What's wrong with treating Los Angeles as downtown LA as a border zone? Um, and I think it has to be that um the border is being used to treat people who I would in the book call insiders, uh, but people who belong is what I mean. Um the border is using being used to marginalize or disrespect people who need to belong, as if they were outsiders, as if they're physically located outside and knocking on the wall with with no prior connection to this country. Um and if they're truly outsiders, then there I think there are other constraints on just uh on what you can do, but but but but that's that's a different inquiry. I think that the truly outsiders, then border rules might be appropriate. But the problem is that when border rules are used to diminish or disrespect the uh people who are inside a country who really do have a claim to belong, um, they could be relatives who would be immigrants, they could be businesses that want to hire them, or colleges and universities that want to admit them. It could be non-citizens in various immigration statuses, or even with no immigration status, um, who have an interest as insiders, as people who belong, and saying the border should be more porous or porous differently than the border uh is now today. So I know this gets controversial because I'm I'm saying that uh the belonging that the borders function a certain way, that lead to unjust results against certain kinds of people. Some of those people belong, they're insiders. Um, and that's that's my take, you know, that's my my uh that's a lot of what's in chapter one of the 10 chapters. Uh I think the next question that I have to identify and and confront is the question of who's an insider. Um does it depend on legal status or does depend on uh can it be in documented people? Um and that's the question I start to deal with in chapter two. So um so that's that gives you a sense of the book, but it gets you a sense of my take on borders as a as something that can work for good, but can also um uh be used to argue for and actually normalize uh injustice such that we don't even recognize it anymore because we think that's what the law says.

David Myers 20:40

Okay, I thank you very much. Um and thank you both for the relative brevity of your presentations that will allow for uh more time for conversations. Yeah, actually it works. Um I think I'll pose a couple of questions and then we'll open up to uh everybody else's uh comments and and feedback. Um and I guess I want to ask you both about sort of the Janice-faced quality of borders. Um you talked about borders as zones of exception or exclusion. Um borders are also zones of protection. And you know, for those who are members of the unit within the insiders, inclusion. So um I would love to hear you reflect on how you understand and assess that balance from your different perspectives. So, Luwei, in your case, you know, borders, it seems the more porous or unsettled the borders, the more unstable the political and perhaps economic conditions of that realm will be. Um and that seems to, at some level, to agitate for clearer delineation and demarcation um and and less um um um uh porousness. Um and if I understand Hiroshima correctly what you're you're suggesting um you know uh uh an overly uh exclusive understanding of borders is deleterious presumably not just to that insider outsider group but to the larger society at large so I'm just wondering how you understand that balance and you know borders can't live with them can't live without them sources of exclusion and inclusion sources of exception and protection so how do you how do you assess that balance maybe i'll start with you Luwei

Luwei Ying 22:36

Yes sure i i think you actually touch a very important point that i didn't get a chance to go over you know in my presentation which is borders are not unified uh demarcations on uh uh uh like on the ground like some of them are more porous than others and the implication is that uh that affects people's life on the ground so in my work i actually look at most borders uh as the international borders uh and in a lot of African countries and uh Latin American countries and even uh the the middle east the borders are not that uh the borders are very porous and people are still coming and going but having that legal border there means exclusion and exclusion like you you know whether you are on your territory or you are on someone else's territory even though you can you can go relatively free really so I think that is a porousness is not the criterion of distinction it's legal demarcation more than whether it's open or closed uh I I would say so two facts uh if we talk about international borders then uh we can always draw a line for any between any two countries except for some contested areas so we know theoretically what the border is but in reality the borders are are uh very uh borders vary vary a lot like some of them are very porous uh allowing people to come and go relatively freely while some are fortified right so I guess this is my question now what is the correlation if any between porousness and instability right you you your paper for the Luskin Center and other articles was about historical border instability is there a correlation between the degree to which a borders open and the instability of the border is that is there a direct connection between those two or is that not the connection of interest to you oh yeah so I mean especially we're talking about militant groups and how they how that how they're able to operate so uh right now in contemporary politics we do see that porousness correlates with instability um because porousness reflects a state capacity and when state capacity is low uh it has less control over its own borders allowing military group to grow in that area which often means instability so that's how the correlation works here.

David Myers 25:34

Okay so how do you assess that especially in terms of your interest in this insider outsider group I mean that's that's a threat that I mean that's a that presents a challenge to where I think you were heading which was

Hiroshi Motomura 25:48

okay so then I'm gonna operate on a couple tracks here. What does answer the question you you posed and then and then you know we we talked about the the forces you know I mean basically and I'll I'll do that and then but answer the question you just did you just presented and and so I think that um you know I I think that if you if a different way to say what I was saying uh earlier and maybe a different way of saying and something actually say in the paper in the in the in the chapter is that um what troubles me about borders is that uh we think of it as separating outsiders from insiders but in fact it's actually separating some other some insiders from other insiders it amplifies the voices of people who um you know may be troubled by immigrants and it it it diminishes the voices of people who want to welcome them for various reasons. I mean I could collaborate more on that but on the question of pourousness um and instability you know I I don't know I think I would have this is really worth talking about because I think that I would have given a different answer because um it depends on the um depends on exactly why the border is forest I mean let's take for example you're talking about Europe right so let's take the um uh let's take the border between France and Germany okay now of course it has been the source of a great deal of conflict historically but um a lot of people cite it today in the period since the European common market was established at least as a very porous border that is very stable you know um and so that suggests that it's the character of the pourousness is because the French and German governments entered into a compact that says that we're going to make the border porous but we're gonna do it out of a position of strength and for other gains that are for example economic um so that's why I question that the the the the I think porousness can be from position of strength to position of weakness. Maybe that's all I'm trying to say.

David Myers 27:39

I mean it's also struck me France Germany may be the outlier in your in your schema but I'm curious to hear I mean Russia Ukraine sure uh the Balkans um are very obvious cases in which there's a correlation between historical instability and um and a kind of destabilized uh populist politics. France Germany perhaps doesn't fit the model so curious to hear is it an outlier isn't an outlier

Luwei Ying 28:06

actually I wouldn't say so

David Myers 28:08

you wouldn't

Luwei Ying 28:08

I would really point to the definition of porousness so porousness doesn't mean uh the volume of migration across a border uh but states but more about states capacity to document such volumes so if we think about the the France Germany border as of today you'll see a lot of volume but they are documented like we know who is coming in who is coming out in that sense I wouldn't call it a forest border as of today.

David Myers 28:45

But I was thinking more about it historic and historical instability and is it an outlier in that correlation between historical instability and populist politics today. And as I mean think of you know Hungary and so the division of of East Central Europe after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 I mean that's that's border instability and you have populism trans-Germany historic border instability do you feel you have the same degree of illiberal populist politics there that you do and they found in other places

Luwei Ying 29:18

Again I find I have to clarify the definition a little bit and I'm sorry to go into the rabbit hole the definitions. So uh we're talking about two kinds of instability here uh when we say border instability as we used in the the paper and the paper for the Luskin center we mean how frequently the border changes so it's a simple quantitative count. But uh earlier when I talk about instability I feel we uh started to talk about conflict and chaos and that's how we colloquially refer to the word instability. So historically these cases are definitely uh high instable cases in terms of bothers but uh I would uh so again uh I actually have to look look at more archives to see how porous they are but uh I I do think anecdotally when the territory changed hands the uh the states not necessarily just open it up but uh quite often they do the opposite which is to guard the border um very seriously and in that sense the border is not porous

David Myers 30:39

yeah um you're gonna open up the two questions from others here um we have Kyle yeah I was gonna just say Dylan and yeah no Dylan raises after so Kyle and then Dylan Dylan no no no no you made him to it

Kyle 30:55

so this is a uh question just of does the internet and social media impact like is it a part of how you understand borders and does it impact therefore even what we talked about now your approach to civility instability conflict the shaping of borders

Hiroshi Motomura 31:16

well i'm I'm not you know I my daughter told me I was too old for Facebook by the way but egregious for then she later told me I was too young for Facebook so I'm not sure I'm in a good position to answer to this I mean let me let me talk it through and well you may have a much better sense of this but let me just talk it through um you know I think that the internet and social media is a different form of connection right and so it it serves this function of connecting people often notwithstanding the border right you you know you have a physical border you even have a sort of a non-physical border membership border but it seems it doesn't it doesn't really matter anymore if you're in the same you know whatever um and so in in that sense um it creates this uh a way in which or it opens up a way in which borders are porous in a sense in terms of social interaction but I wonder and this is this is where I come up against the question um and that is whether they diminish some of the things the borders can do um does it create and I'm just gonna in a very broad sense divide it into good things and what I consider good things and bad things. I mean um certainly national borders can affect the use of social media and internet we've seen things shutting down we've seen uses vpns um to to access things you're not supposed to access and stuff like that and government trying to shut down vpns um you know on the other hand I think that they create a certain kind of porosity that is that is um not threatening I think to the sense of belonging or empowerment in that country. So I'm just sort of talking this through I'm not sure I have a set answer but I just try to identify dimensions of how one would deal with this question because I think it's a really important question and and obviously it'll become you know even more important especially because of all this stuff that shows that people don't actually go out anymore. They just talk to people on their phones.

Speaker 8 33:30

Even when they go out on their phones.

Hiroshi Motomura 33:32

Yeah well I mean yeah well and don't get me started on that if you want

Luwei Ying 33:38

yes I I very much agree with what Hirosi just said like uh as as we can imagine internet and social media is diminishing uh many things that bothers used to do not perfectly but to some extent and from an empirical scholar point of view I can actually show you some evidence in my own research uh where I look at the effects of social media rhetoric and conflicts or political violence on the ground. So historically it has been very correlated uh on in each locality so if you do a survey uh you can basically predict uh where to see violence based on the overall sentiment in that locality but I did not find similar effects with social media these days like when an opinion leader uh says something and mobilize people into violence we don't see any effects negative or positive in that locality but overall we see a positive mobilization effect uh like just across the board so in that sense social media is changing the dynamic but I said only to some extent because we still see uh many governments are trying to control information flows and uh they they succeed in in many ways also even with the same same social media say Facebook or Twitter like different countries still use it differently and different users still have their own network and uh research show that people only interact within their own network. So if we were to visualize all the social network on the same social media platform I would still imagine you see some gaps between clusters and that gap is more likely to be the international border.

Kyle 35:45

The algorithm

Luwei Ying 35:46

yes

Hiroshi Motomura 35:47

I just have one short thing that is that when when when nation states impede cross-border internet or social media access, they're often doing it in the international security which is almost a quintessential border thing. I mean that's the thing you that's one of the most important things you do in a border actually is not just block people but block the information and and and interchange.

David Myers 36:13

Dylan um why don't you um introduce yourself briefly um and then pose your question.

Dylan Caine 36:19

Sure hi everyone uh my name is Dylan Caine I'm a PhD student at USC uh doing political science and international relations and I'm highly interested in thinking about territory and particularly in regards to thinking about non-stand non-state uh notions of territory so in terms of indigenous religious or other types of types of understandings of territory and territory and how that overlaps with state sovereignty. So I'm very glad to join you guys and really appreciate your time. I have two uh one question with a little second part I'd love to hear more of your thoughts in terms of what you think the significance of walled borders are in non from a non-security context in terms of significant of how you guys how you think about how does a wall change the nature of borders between between states and beyond the counterterror counterterror applications. And then second part with that as well too which moves more in a security direction is I'm curious about your thoughts also in terms of the propensity of using drones in recent years too and how that is in some ways mitigating the intended effects of border walls of harsher barriers too where even very well protected borders are vulnerable to these attacks world worldwide. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that

Speaker 9 37:33

we all maybe

Luwei Ying 37:35

I I I do want to start with the first question what borders are from a non-security context uh actually the security reason is usually cited for the uh southern countries and for for northern countries or developed countries uh economy is the major reason cited for for border walls uh and we we do have empirical evidence for this and we're more likely to see border wars walls being constructed between two countries with large economic inequality um like we can we can imagine this in our daily lives uh like when you see a poor country and a rich country next to each other um like the people people in the rich country would have an incentive to go to the poor countries to get uh dental hair uh dental care or or just buy buy groceries uh and the uh the other way around the the poor countries people from the poor countries also want to transport to the to the richer country so actually the the direction is is uh in both ways not just one way um and for in that sense the the country the nation state the government have an incentive to secure that border so to me that's the most obvious uh obvious implication for borders in non-security context but they are obviously more uh regarding identity and communities let me pause here for now

Hiroshi Motomura 39:20

well I mean I take your question to ask really about um the border and then border plus the wall and what's the difference right is that fair or in other words what do walls do in this context?

Dylan Caine 39:32

Yes in terms of are there more uh intangible I guess uh changes that occur within each you know polity society too because of the presence of a wall that goes trading behind the easily identifiable factor

Hiroshi Motomura 39:45

yeah no so thanks for the question the the I think there's a big there's a walls on a border um have a real significance here so let me try to talk through what I think the significance is um I think a lot of walls are um built for messaging um I think a lot of walls are built for messaging um certainly the case in some campaign that we're gonna you know not only have a wall but make make Mexico pay for it or things like this. Because I think it amplifies the narrative of we're being invaded and therefore we should build a wall. It could be a wall or it could be anti-tank uh barriers or anything like that. But I think a certain there's a really strong messaging function. I think it does not necessarily re lead to uh a closed border it tends to but I think that you can have a border wall that is um that has gates um and so um you might not have gates but if you do then the effect of the wall is not necessarily to impede traffic but to but to control the traffic and the controlling the traffic essentially is saying well we're gonna have a wall to reduce unauthorized crossing but we're gonna let in all the people who are bringing in things goods the goods that we want um so it changes the dynamics of enforcement um not just the quantum of sheer quantum of enforcement but I think it also changes the patterns of decision making in power that uh by which uh borders enforce so for example um if you had uh walls with gates um and force people to go through and even let people go through all the time you would have different people deciding to uh whether you can cross or not then it should have more open um so I mean that's just a couple couple of reasons I think walls really do um make a difference and this maybe there's a good a good time to say that you know I think a lot of immigration policy is symbolic and it's it's driven by uh political messaging um and that's why I I I focused on the what I call the invasion narrative because it drives so many different things that are going on.

David Myers 42:07

Can I follow up on this and and uh on Dylan's question and your very helpful distinction between northern and southern because it seems like uh just picking up on the messaging or really the discourse of border fortification it seems like there are national security uh rationales offered and economic rationales if I understand correctly but in the US case I wonder if we can generalize from this very often the justification for what is perhaps an economic rationale for borders um the the the the articulation of it is cast in national security terms. It's an invasion these people are murderers this is you know the the this is a threat to you know uh to the physical well-being when in fact you know the ration the the real lurking reason is economic and sort of economic maintaining economic control we might even you know in the in the most the most the more sinister rendering of it say greed right is at work you know less division of the pie uh of economic and I wonder if this is something that one can generalize about that in cases the northern cases where in fact exclusion is based on the desire to assure some degree of economic control the discourse often turns to the national security as a kind of rationale for

Luwei Ying 43:36

I'm really glad you said that aloud because uh that's I think that's the most interesting part of the discrepancy in uh the public discourse and the empirical evidence. Empirically we see that for most northern countries economic disparity is the most important uh driver Or indicator. And actually, we can uh even generalize that that to most countries around the world. Uh, if you just pull all the countries together and look at the effect. But in reality, you only see people citing security reasons. Why? Because uh as uh here also she just mentioned as well, uh a lot of walls are built for message, and there's a election uh logic built into it. That's how the voters would uh provide a message, and also as in my example, when when you consider the economic disparity, it's hard to say who is benefiting from a forest border and who is not, right? The people like consider the American Mexican border. A lot of Americans are actually walking to Mexico to get their dental care. And can you just cite that as a reason and say, I want to uh take away this cheap dental care or grocery from you, and therefore I want to build a border? Of course, no. So that won't resonate with your border, but the security reason is really well.

David Myers 45:16

Okay, I don't want to lose the second question about drones because it seems to follow on Kyle's question about social media and the internet as forces that can, in some sense, overcome physical borders.

Luwei Ying 45:26

So yes. With the drones, I would say uh another technology, but I see that as something pretty different as internet and social media. With internet, I would say the fact is is very obvious. But with drones, I would just see it as a contemporary form of an old method. For example, previously exactly. We have the soldiers, the border controls, and we build the physical fortifications, and now we have a cheaper alternative, which are drones, but that did not change the nature of border control. So it's still the same thing for me.

Hiroshi Motomura 46:10

Yeah, I mean, I agree it doesn't change the nature of border control. Well, it it does, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't, but I mean, border drones have been in use, you know, on the US Mexico border for many years. Um, I mean, they've gotten more sophisticated, of course, and there's a lot more attention paid to drones in Ukraine, and then increasingly now um, you know, Ukraine is uh is an exporter of drones right now uh to Gulf states, um and and and in even to to EU countries. But um but um it's this larger question really of I just I think of it uh as an aspect of surveillance in general. I mean, anyone who's been across the international border um, you know, with let's say even going out in and out of the country once a year, or every year you notice that you don't have to you can go through Google Entry and then you don't have to then you can flash your passport, then you don't have to even show your passport, you don't even have to stop. They've got you, you know, on facial recognition, whether you like it or not. Um so in that sense, that adds to a different dimension of what it means to be a you know a forest border. Um I just want to then what you were asking about the economic part and national security, because um I think that it's often the the message of national security is often allied with the message of economic anxiety, right? I mean it's it's not just that we're gonna be physically invaded, but we're being invaded by people who take your jobs. Um and um, you know, this is this is one of the 10 questions actually I talk about in in chapter eight about immigration skepticism and why it's important to take it seriously. And I think that um it's it's been pretty easy um for um immigration skeptics to really capture that part of the political um space, you know, it's that regardless of what the macroeconomic literature says, that's not going to help people who feel they've lost their jobs. And there could be other kinds of sources of economic anxiety ranging from automation to global imports to, I mean, to trade and also to automation. But um I think that a lot of I think there's a close political connection between national security rhetoric and economic rhetoric. And um honestly that's one of the vulnerabilities I think the Democratic Party has created for itself in the last 10 years. Well, I think that I think that um I think that um a lot of the immigrants' rights movement has has focused upon um sort of a continuation of a civil rights narrative of fighting discrimination on the basis of language, national origin, and thing, and and and you know, racial perceptions. Um and I think that um that people who are in loosely, I mean, I'm just using this figuratively, but in the rest belt. I mean, people who feel that the same people who felt uh adversely affected by international trade, I think are feeling, you know, someone like Donald Trump off is really going to turn things around and make it so that my children and grandchildren have opportunities that I see being being eroded by all these immigrants. Um there's not a sense of immigration being a source of prosperity that could be shared. And so this is also messaging, which is that um instead of thinking talking about $25 billion that you're wasting on a wall, you could talk about $25 billion could do a lot um to offset um perceived um perceived losses based on immigration. I think a lot of the mainstream Democratic Party, a lot of immigrants' rights advocates, which I guess I loosely include myself, but but I think a lot of the immigrants' rights movement has had two responses to that kind of argument when national security gets translated into economic stuff. Um two arguments. Uh, one is the macroeconomic literature shows that the country benefits as a whole. The other thing you often hear is well, that's just a labor of immigrants. Uh yeah, well, the labor of immigrants because it increases consumption and and and you know allows jobs to stay in this country that are occupied by U.S. citizens, um, you know, whether it's picking in crops or or working at hospitals or um in restaurants construction. Um the that's that economic argument. And the other argument that I often hear, frankly, is that uh those people who are skeptical uh are racists. You know, and um I was I was really struck at the the Biden, the Biden people, Biden campaign didn't really do much politically in terms of messaging with the fact that at the same time as they were decrying the money coming to the wall, that they were actually building up infrastructure in North in South Carolina, for example. You know, and so you know that's that's a that's a that's kind of a messaging blind spot, I think. That's that's what I meant by that.

Speaker 11 50:58

Yeah.

Speaker 8 50:59

Okay, so I have a whole lot of questions. So I'm gonna, as I'm a writing instructor, I'm gonna ask you um both sort of two questions. One is um what was the motivation for getting into this title research? Like, why did you decide to work on immigration? And the second thing is because it's so important right now politically, how are you making sure that your message, your research that you've done getting out into the public? Like, are you writing op eds? I know you're not posting on social media, but like I do actually. Yeah, like what do you think that your voice is heard?

Luwei Ying 51:35

Yeah, I uh so for me it's uh I I came from an international religious uh perspective, and uh I study international conflict, and naturally border is the arguably the most important institution in the international world. That's how we define sovereign states. So that's something like I I have to look at, and uh it's also something very interesting to look at because it does have many implications on the microdynamics, ranging from uh economic flows, immigration, to conflict dynamics. And uh to make sure the message goes out. Uh I'm I'm I'm trying, but also I I do have the worry from the other side, which is uh I feel these days people are getting too much information. Uh and I I I I just try to make sure whatever information that I I send out is condensed enough, of high quality, uh, and uh something worth people people thinking about.

Hiroshi Motomura 52:55

Well, these are huge questions. I'll try not to give you huge answers. But um, you know, first of all, um this immigration, um, whatever I'm doing for immigration, it's my second career as an academic. Uh I I basically moved my center of research gravity to immigration after I got tenure. I was originally hired to teach civil procedure and the international business transactions and comparative law. Um, so why did I make the switch? I think it's really because um I was I I I did some immigration law practice. I come from an immigrant family. And this picture, by the way, that's me. I wondered at the age of three, as we're on the dock at Yokohama. Um and so it's sort of narcissistic to have your own picture on the book, but uh but it on the other, but but it's also sort of a cliche.

David Myers 53:41

You've not kept up your sartorial of standards, I must say yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

Hiroshi Motomura 53:45

But that's the last time I wore both high, I think. But but but um but I you know, this is truly a cliche of I've been writing this book my whole life. I think it's because I really it's a way of thinking about my family history. Um that's one thing. But I also from a more of a legal process point of view, I I'm really concerned. I mean, I guess I study the law, I write about the law, but at the same time, I um I'm concerned about how the law is being used to mask injustice. And I think the border is the thing that works with the law, with with most with the law to create these injustices that are normalized and not even visible. So that's that's one way to think about. Um, in terms of getting the message, I think it's really hard. Um this year, as you might imagine, or really since you know January of last year, um I've been getting lots and lots and lots of media inquiries, which I actually honestly don't even have time to respond to. Um, you know, I send out batches, I try to be nice to people, but I send out batches of of you know, often a dozen emails saying, I'm sorry, I didn't have time to get back to you last week, even though your deadline was that afternoon. Um, but I think it raises larger question of how we get information out and the form it takes, because um a UCLA colleague of mine told me when I was writing an earlier book, no one reads books anymore. So some of this is trying to have different uh you know media. And I often I'm concerned that this book is but it is a book that's written in as plain spoken a way as possible. But um it it it it it's a book about ideas and not about people. And I think that I I think I feel like I've hit the sweet spot where it's it the the the cynical view of the sweet spot is it's not taken seriously by academics because it's it's too plain spoken, uh, but it's too academic to be taken. I mean, I don't expect to show up in a in a book in an airport bookstore, but still, but but but uh I had a very um you know uh kind of a almost both humbling and sobering experience because um my biggest claim to fame is I'm on a Tri-Guys video that I believe used, um, which for the demographic of of middle school people, um, and it's it's a critique of immigration policy and the summary of my entire course is just in 16 minutes. Um and that's my that's my actual significant impact on public discourse is is a 16-minute try-guys video. And if you know how try guys, it's like a combination of Monty Python, John Stewart, and and um, you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 8 56:17

So that can I find it on YouTube?

Hiroshi Motomura 56:18

Try Guys Try Immigration, try immigrating to America. Oh these are four, these are you know, I yeah, in the format they were in, they were four four um young comedians who were being zany and reached out to me to do a social justice video, which is equally zany.

David Myers 56:37

How many how many hits have you gotten?

Hiroshi Motomura 56:40

Eight million. Well, actually it's like 7.56, I think.

Speaker 3 56:48

Well that's kind of oh yeah. I I just you had a question, I think you have a question.

Speaker 7 56:55

Yeah, um Christian kind of like legal-oriented a bit, and I thought of it when you mentioned global entry and I showing your passport and surveillance, but it made me think of the broader concept of citizenship and like how the power of holding a particular passport, say someone from the EU, for example, allows them to travel visa-free, leisure, tourist visa, you know, someone from Guatemala, which arguably you could consider as more of an American group than any European person. Like from a legal standpoint, because that's they require visa to travel. I'm wondering from a legal standpoint, how like legal and policy, how does the law justify kind of that seemingly inherently discriminatory practice of like, okay, you're a European in-group, you could come here for three months, whatever, no visa. But if you're from another country, you don't have that um ability. So I'm just wondering how the law kind of interrogates that tension.

Hiroshi Motomura 57:55

I think it law interrogates it by saying that um the logic of something like this that you know, we have borders, the national borders. Because we have borders, we need to enforce them in some way. We could force them and leave them for us, but we can enforce them totally strictly. Um and that um we sometimes those are physical borders, and sometimes they're more borders of access to benefits or something, or voting even. Um, therefore, we need to document people. We need to keep track of who they are, uh, unless until we have, you know, cameras and chips and everything. Um, and that that creates these this documentation. I guess that's a history of the passport, which is a relatively modern invention, right? It'd be kind of interesting in your work to think about the passport and its relationship to the border control. Passports are pretty modern. And so um, and then it's typically justified. I mean, the the political justification typically is that uh we're going to not require visas for people from countries that have um we're not gonna require visas if the overstay rate is low. You know, this this type of thing. And and that it's so it becomes a particular bureaucratic manifestation of border control that's typically sometimes it's financial security, but more often it's justified by uh we're gonna let you into the country into in the United States if you come from a country where people go back home. And so then other countries um with a higher rate of undocumented open and overstays um then they get but but the other it's sort of the the place where you started though, I think is really worth noting, which is that we do have open borders for a lot of people as a practical matter. I mean, it's not like you can go, I can't go to Germany and live forever without uh getting a residence permit, but I can go in and out um for alternating 90-day periods. And my access to work visa is pretty, pretty, pretty easy.

Luwei Ying 59:45

I'm gonna say this is such a fascinating question, and I also learned a lot from this answer. I just wanted to at one point uh with a concept from international relationship, is of which is anarchy. So when we say laws, we really usually mean uh domestic laws, and only domestic laws are periodically enforceable. So theoretically, there's also international laws, but these are not enforceable because we don't have an international government. So, in that sense, it's impossible to have a law that equalizes all the passports across different countries and say we are equal in that sense. So in the international world, we're not equal, definitely.

Hiroshi Motomura 1:00:30

Also by worth by adding, um, literally what you said that connects to something I just want to prompted something I thought I hadn't thought of as well, which is the borders are also used for exit control. Right. And they they often use uh in many countries you cannot leave without a passport. Or you know, and and and and and um that also means that only certain people are allowed to travel.

Speaker 7 1:00:54

Yeah. I mean, that is I I feel like I don't think about that normally when terms of thinking of migration, but it's like you're stuck here and you don't have the passport even interesting.

Hiroshi Motomura 1:01:05

You can't board a plane or or any vessel. I guess you could in some countries you couldn't walk out.

David Myers 1:01:11

Yeah, and there's no international passport authority. There's no UN affiliated. I I I just looked it up. I didn't see some can do a no there's no regulatory body.

Hiroshi Motomura 1:01:23

Some countries issue passports for refugees and documents you can use. A whole other story, but I was stateless until I naturalized I was 15, and I had a document that allowed me to travel that was not a passport.

Speaker 6 1:01:35

That's interesting. I mean, there was because there was an interwar global passport system there was an answer.

Hiroshi Motomura 1:01:42

Yeah, it's like in that yeah.

Speaker 6 1:01:43

I wonder why it wasn't removed most of the um I but I'm interested in uh in borders within states. I I thought you opened with something very interesting that I considered. Um you talked about briefly the university as a border in itself, although that's it's more of an institutional border. So I'm wondering, because we've focused primarily on the borders and spatial, uh the spatial dynamics of the border, um, if you could talk a bit about institutional dynamics of bordering. Um and then with regards to the the border within the state, I'm also interested in areas that state power doesn't necessarily reach and still functions as an informal border. So for instance, insurgencies tend to um uh proliferate in areas that might not necessarily be borders uh in a formal sense, but are informal borders because state control doesn't reach them. Um I'm wondering if you guys could talk a bit about.

Hiroshi Motomura 1:02:47

I can start with you, you can add to, but it's it's um I deliberately raise these questions of states to states and university and even the the perimeter of family home and indigenous tribes because yeah, I guess they're institutional, but I think they're definitely rules that define outsiders and well, the zones of exclusion and uh the the instruments of inclusion and exclusion, just one debate or another. Um, and so people contest what the content of admission rules for universities and you know in colleges might be, but in some some some some uh higher education is open admissions, but um I don't hear much contest or pushback against the notion that some colleges and universities can have some admission criteria, you know. So I actually think that um for me it's very they're different, but they still have this the zone where um where if you think about as insiders, outsiders, but but but in fact it it's there's gonna contest among insiders about what you want to to to do. And I've had people different people tell me, I'm not saying you're I'm not saying you're saying this, but I've had someone say, Well, those that's a different kind of border. And I said, why? And they said, well, because universities and colleges admit on the basis of merit. And I said, Oh my god. Okay. Uh and then someone else said, Well, the family, that's different. I said, Why is it why is the family different? Well, the answer I got was, um, it's in a workshop, um, the answer I got was, well, well, you don't have to tell people you're excluding them from a family. Um, but you do have to tell people you exclude them from a country. And I said, wait a minute, there are a lot of people who think of the United States that the family you don't have to tell people why you're including them. So, you know, so uh uh so much. Um I think it's useful to think about this because I think national borders have given borders a bad name. Because there's a whole other set of questions about you know why they better than other alternatives, but you know, that's um and there's a second part to or what you're saying, right?

Speaker 6 1:04:57

Oh, yeah, the the the question of um the informal border as a space where the state doesn't necessarily reach you see that a lot in in in European conflicts, right?

Luwei Ying 1:05:08

Or or yeah, actually in a lot of conflicts around the world. So uh I I I think we've very correctly identified two kinds of substate borders. One is these provincial borders or state borders here within the United States. Uh these borders are quite clear, they're just uh playing an administrative role. And in fact, as I immigrate immigrant myself, I do find US being an outlier in that sense where uh different states have a lot of uh freedom and liberty in making their own laws. Uh and the other kind of subnational bother is a intangible border. Like you can't really find it on the map, but you know it exists, and it's very important. we talk about uh insurgency roles uh i actually try to study this uh empirically where i measure where exactly uh the state powder the state power extends so i'm using a measure i'm using several measures here uh one is the nighttime emission where you can see uh the economic activities on the ground usually these economic activities were organized by the by the states so you know what what are the areas the state government is actually controlling controlling another measure is uh developed by two political scientists uh Nanjang and uh Valin Zeli which use uh like census accuracy to see uh which areas are actually controlled by the states. The rationale here is that states would regularly conduct census over its population and they will ask about their age. For developed states you always see a small curve like because population know their age but for underdeveloped states uh the birth of the population is not documented or not documented well so when you ask they say oh I'm about uh 65 I'm about 70 so the numbers really cluster um uh around the whole numbers so to measure to what extent the age popular age distribution deviates from the whole numbers we know how well the government is actually controlling a region and based on that we can see the actual capacity border of a state government which I thought is very interesting and that has a really interesting downstream effect on insurgencies as you can imagine in areas less controlled by the government we're more likely to see insurgent groups

David Myers 1:08:08

there's much more to be said about borders um you have um I think really um through this conversation brought uh into um public the view um not only what's so contentious but what's so polyvalent about the idea of borders the multiple ways in which we understand that term um and um I think it's been a very rich and stimulant conversation for which I thank you both Luwei and Hiroshi thank you very much that's great