A year ago I wrote in Blog de Viajes, the spanish version of this blog: “few affirmations on the academic field cause as much fun to a traveller as that one that says that borders are becoming less important. Apparently, state nations are decaying, and their borders with them which should become more permeable. But none of this happens when we travel. Getting close to borderlines is always a complicated process, marked by the inspection of our passports, the intent to trick us with the money exchange rate, the entrance to a new environment. When he moves, the traveller discovers that borderlines are not agonyzing symbols of an once-upon-a-time world, instead, they’re perfectly healthy and they still articulate particular practices for local people and foreigners”.

When I read again this post, I stopped to think how in fact the text reflects my uncomfortability with sensationalist affirmations, colorful, but unrealistic, in the end. There are several labels that fit into this category: the no-places, the end of modern era, the dissappearing borders, the simulacrum, the farewell to reality and welcome to virtuality.

The main reason of my annoyance is how little these “sensationalist” affirmations tell us about our practices, mostly if they’re strongly localized. It’s possible that our eveyday life is every time more aesthetizied, symbolized, semiotized. But, when this make us forget the referent, the material support, then things are not well stated.

The subject borders decadence fits into this context. Borderline crossing usually is a whole source of discoverings and dangers. More than mere formalisms, we find that these limits articulate a good part of material practices of the social actors of the zone. That they take advantage of the money exchange, of smuggling, of the passing through of tourists, to survive economically.

The uncertainty of the traveller facing the borderline, one can not stop looking with certain eskepticism the borders decadence theme, the overwhelming global advance.
The circulation of products is becoming freer, but people have every time more barriers to freely move, particularly from undeveloped countries to wealthier ones. And while some european countries are discussing the possibility of creating real concentration camps in the north of Africa, others still are strangers to the relations between limits, borders and material practices.

One thing: there’s nothing wrong with the little stamp on the passport. Did you notice how important it is, as a personal asset for the traveller, the growing existence of admission and exit stamps on their passports? I think this could make a good post in the future.