Borderline

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 organisatio...

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 te...

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 b...

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 bee...

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...

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 operatio...

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?  0...

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 il...

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...

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 r...

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...

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 botto...

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 liberalis...

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...

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 Isab...

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 Isa...

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.  ★ Support this podcast ★

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...

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.  ★ Support this podcast ★

"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 immigra...

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...

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  ★ Support this podcast ★

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...

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.  ★ Support t...

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.  ★ Support this podcast ★